Sure, we're all talking about PRISM now but give it a month or two.
1. More people have read 1984 than have read Brave New World.
2. Brave New World is so ridiculously accurate that most people are too afraid to think about what this means.
We fear 1984 while living (for the most part, the only real difference is that we don't have, or need, a direct controlling force) Brave New World.
"We fear *1984* while living *Brave New World*".
-- run4yourlives
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Drugs are NOT central theme in BNW it's just simply a metaphor. Super king burgers, reality TV, NFL, wrestling, facebook, MTV, in essence all pop culture is SOMA of nowadays
"Go back to bed, America. Your government has figured out how it all transpired. Go back to bed, America. Your government is in control again. Here. Here's American Gladiators. Watch this, shut up. Go back to bed, America. Here is American Gladiators. Here is 56 channels of it! Watch these pituitary retards bang their fucking skulls together and congratulate you on living in the land of freedom. Here you go, America! You are free to do as we tell you! You are free to do what we tell you!"
Bill Hicks
― Bill Hicks
God I love Bill Hicks.
Or, in my case, what if I want a grilled cheese sandwich with tater tots instead of filet mignon and caviar? I hated Sundays on the boat because that was always "Steak & Lobster" day, and I was the one asshole who didn't like steak and didn't like lobster.
I agree that people should probably take an interest in civics. I agree that people should have the information needed to care deeply about civics, if they wish. I don't agree that people should feel compelled to care civics or anything else that Bill Hicks or any other self-righteous prententious jerk tells us to care about, any more than we should be compelled to care about what the government tells us to care about.
If the freedom to do as we please leads to people actually doing as they please, and that offends you, then perhaps freedom isn't what you were looking for in the first place.
Nobody would want to watch American Gladiators if they were not made to do so. Not directly told to, but somehow... maneuvered into it. Not quite the same as the grilled cheese sandwich!!!
And what makes you think that the same hidden influence by others isn't why I like grilled cheese?
And of course you (and me) like grilled cheese sandwiches because of influence, but it might be a different kind of influence. I remember the sandwiches from my childhood and they had nothing to do with the gross multi-pound monsters presented in (sorry) Man vs Food and other glutony glorifying TV shows.
No matter how high your IQ, if you think yourself immune to any sort of influence, you have proven yourself a mark. But if you recognize the possibility of influence and learn at least a bit of the compliance techniques, you make yourself at least partially resistant.
You aren't an asshole; you're a vegetarian. I hear that's quite respectable these days. Myself, I'll have your steak and lobster - thanks!
I'd downvote you if I could... but I think that's why you replied.
Everyone here created an account at some point. This one was created by me about 95 days ago. I see you have observed that. Very nice I guess.
observance Noun
* The action or practice of fulfilling or respecting the requirements of law, morality, or ritual.
* An act performed for religious or ceremonial reasons.
> That is what my commented contributed towards.
Well, actually, you failed in your observance of the guidelines[1] of this website.
* Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say in a face to face conversation.
I doubt you'd have said that to me in person. You can claim on here you would, of course.
* If your account is less than a year old, please don't submit comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. (It's a common semi-noob illusion.)
Your account is less than a year old, which is a threshold of some merit here.
* Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site. If you think something is spam or offtopic, flag it by going to its page and clicking on the "flag" link. (Not all users will see this; there is a karma threshold.) If you flag something, please don't also comment that you did.
I assume this applies to comments as well as submissions.
soylent, youtube, hacker news, reddit, 4chan and other internet pop culture, some of which are actually made in SOMA nowadays.
Try Delta+ Gamma-. A well kept secret by Condé Nast is how young / low on the wage curve their readers are compared to others in the same professions.
Alpha (“the upper class”) Beta (“the second upper class”) Gamma (“the middle class”) Delta (“the second lower class”) Epsilon (“the lower class”) Double-Plus (“the superior subdivision among Alphas”) Plus (“the superior subdivision among Alphas, Betas, Gammas or Deltas, but inferior to Double-Plus”) Minus (“the inferior subdivision among Alphas, Betas, Gammas or Deltas”) savage (“a person outside the integrated portions of society, and therefore separate from all classes”)
Since we're referencing Huxley, I'd recommend "Island". And for everyone jumping on this dystopian bandwagon, I'd recommend "Stand on Zanzibar" as far more accurate.
I haven't, but I'm on another SSRI now, and I can't begin to see this as a drug useful for placating the masses. If anything, it's increased my motivation to fix things that are broken. It's replaced apathy with a wide range of sometimes intense emotions.
Some people call them happy pills, but my experience is they're something else entirely.
To wit: launching a grand patriotic endeavor with much fanfare and overwhelming public support (exploiting a sense of national unity and purpose fostered by the recent war), having that endeavor set up a secret parallel justice system answerable to nobody, indefinite detentions...
oh, and the ensuing clashes between the wronged and the merely indifferent... the lowly everyday employees in the terrible scheme for world domination who wish they could get out of it, or do something about it, but fear for their lives and their futures...
(Postscript. Then there's a bunch of Christian allegory tacked on inelegantly, which, as Orwell pointed out, undermines the dystopian horror - c.f. http://www.lewisiana.nl/orwell/ )
To continue your metaphor, when it holds up a mirror, we can all see our own faces.
It makes us consider how little it might take to turn us into collaborators in such a future. That might be a useful thought for tech companies right now.
Munch, munch!
Please herewith be guided accordingly;
John F. Alexander
<1> http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/06/phew-it-was-just-metada...
The society in A Brave New World is a dystopian science fiction fantasy world that is a far cry from any society that has ever existed.
I think both books are good and offer important warnings to society, but 1984 is simply a much more grounded and realistic view of a conceivable totalitarian state in the near future.
Could you justify this further? I'm curious as to your reasons for writing off Brave New World. I just recently finished it (I've read 1984 a few times already too), and I found Brave New World to resemble life in America a lot more than 1984 did, at least based on my personal experiences and not what I hear on the news. However, before I go and write up a bunch of stuff, I am interested in hearing your view.
Another book that I read around the same time as A Brave New World was Fahrenheit 451. Of course, people always associate that book with censorship issues, but there were also similar themes to A Brave New World, in respect to society being distracted and not caring about important stuff etc. There were a lot of interesting predictions in the book too. Whenever I see someone walking around with headphones on blocking out the world, I am always reminded of Fahrenheit 451 (especially when it's me!).
EDIT: some predictions in Fahrenheit 451: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/06/06/ray-bradbury-dead...
For Brave New World, you would need strict population control (mandatory sterility), mass manufactured test tube babies with hatcheries and conditioning centers, working class castes that are chemically stunted, near-mandatory government issued hallucinogens, far less chaste sexual mores, etc.
Like I said, it is a science fiction fantasy world with a multitude of plot-significant fictional technologies. Even the human birthing process is far more unrealistic than the entirety of 1984. The only science fiction I recall from 1984 were artificial foods, telescreens, voice recognition, and some military equipment, all of which are quite realistic today (and were mostly so in real-world 1984).
Eternal war against an ill-defined enemy
The perversion of everyday language in order to hide the truth
Rewriting history frequently so that what becomes important is allegiance to the party rather than the truth (first Obama opposed mass surveillance, now he's for it).
The impression of ubiquitous surveillance, and the use of technology to control the masses, even if its not clear just now much there actually is (NSLs etc)
Two minutes hate, where hatred is channelled at an arbitrary, abstract enemy (talk radio)
Indefinite and secret detention, and of course torture
Information strictly controlled and the truth at a premium (this one is more like Kafka I guess)
I admit there are elements of Brave New World that fit very well too (particularly those highlighted in that cartoon), but lots of other predictions of 1984 do chime quite nicely with the current situation in the US (even if the society depicted is absolutely nothing like the current US in many ways).
Or, if you believe Bradbury, it's about Television Is Evil and nothing else:
http://www.laweekly.com/2007-05-31/news/ray-bradbury-fahrenh...
> Fahrenheit 451 is not, he says firmly, a story about government censorship. Nor was it a response to Senator Joseph McCarthy, whose investigations had already instilled fear and stifled the creativity of thousands.
[snip]
> Bradbury, a man living in the creative and industrial center of reality TV and one-hour dramas, says it is, in fact, a story about how television destroys interest in reading literature.
> “Television gives you the dates of Napoleon, but not who he was,” Bradbury says, summarizing TV’s content with a single word that he spits out as an epithet: “factoids.” He says this while sitting in a room dominated by a gigantic flat-panel television broadcasting the Fox News Channel, muted, factoids crawling across the bottom of the screen.
And because BNW is clearly plagiarism of We, that adds another quite ironic dimension.
"The story takes place in a near-future society that is almost totally mechanized, eliminating the need for human laborers. This widespread mechanization creates conflict between the wealthy upper class—the engineers and managers who keep society running—and the lower class, whose skills and purpose in society have been replaced by machines. " -wikipedia
I also counted the amount of cameras between green park station and victoria, just walking through the tube one day. I think the number was something around 30, but it's been a while.