Huxley and Orwell

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy.

Neither have come to pass at this point. What we are seeing now is the usual story of people getting bored with comfort and beginning the process of destroying then rebuilding society. At the moment people are not so much made useless by distraction as by fear; fear of poverty and loneliness to be precise. Everything seems very complicated at the moment so people are unsure of what action to take, there is so much to lose by failing. However, the human brain is very adept at cutting through bullshit distractions and focusing on the things they find worthwhile. All it requires is one person to give us a direction to work towards, to promise us that there can be more to the world than this, and our society will have an effective uprising against the oppressors.

The human is more restless than Huxley gave it credit for. We can't be satisfied with frivolity for long. We need to feel that we are living dramatic, meaningful lives. The powers that be in the western world recognize this, and that is why you are seeing a rise in traditional methods of control like oppressive police and military and focused, epically dramatic propaganda. If either vision comes fully to pass it will be Orwell's. Humans can be oppressed by force for centuries, so long as their fed enough. But we get bored and destructive when we have nothing to work towards that feels meaningful to us.

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To clarify:
Humans can be oppressed by force for centuries, so long as their fed enough. But we get bored and destructive when we have nothing to work towards that feels meaningful to us.
I mean that it is natural for humans to start rebelling when there is no reason not to. Only wealthy societies don't last long because of boredom, same goes for communist societies. You need an oppressive, violent, propaganda-filled regime to maintain the status quo, otherwise either the poor or the bored will rebel.

I, for one, would argue that our culture is not far off from that which Huxley feared. People can, generally, be divided into two groups:

1. Those that recognize that there's something wrong with modern life, but don't do anything about it or completely misunderstand the nature of their lives and end up attacking something completely irrelevant

2. Those who don't give a shit and just want to get on with their lives

Neither is going to accomplish anything significant. Fact: You can't change a country like America. I've never lived for any significant time outside of America, so I can't say for sure, but I wouldn't be surprised if life were mostly similar to how it is here, albeit slightly more ethnocentric.

I would like to see a really different type of society, but it seems that the only modern societies left on the planet are ultra capitalist. I'd love to live somewhere different from what I'm used to, but everywhere I've traveled just seems the same, differing only in cultural trivialities.

The capitalist, business-oriented model of society has done a very good job of bringing progress to our technology, and there is no denying that. Competition, the very nature of capitalism, is the best way to bring about changes. At the expense of all of this competition, the human race as a whole is wasting too many resources, pouring too much effort down the drain, just to keep people working, keep things moving.

People are reluctant to throw away the capitalist model of society for many reasons, but a communist model, based around a strong government that controls all production, would result in much better use of resources as compared to how the world works today. Unfortunately, most people, even those who understand it, are very wary of communism, with good reason. The Soviet Union, the closest our world has ever come to a communist society, failed miserably.

For starters, Russia is fucking huge. Trying to create a new society, the likes of which has never been attempted before, on such a large scale, is doomed to failure. You really do have to start small. I myself would argue that you should stay small as well - most of the problems in our world stem from the fact that governments try to assimilate too much territory and gain too much power for the good of anyone but the ambitious, but that's another matter entirely.

Second, the 20th century was a period of great industrial growth. The Soviet Union, vying for power, tried to keep up with the West, but simply couldn't without the power of competition inherent with capitalism. In this sense, it was also a failure, but that need not be a problem in a modern communist state.

In our modern world, we really don't need much more of this competition; we can produce food and the other necessities of life with little human input, computers are plenty fast, efficient, and small, public transportation technology is pretty advanced. This list goes on, but basically, there is little need for capitalist competition in most aspects of society. A central organization, dedicated not to creating the highest profits but the most efficient and effective uses of technology and resources, would ideally be in charge of providing for the people. Socialism in government is not a bad thing - even in the United States, the government holds a monopoly over various aspects of modern life, from our water and electrical utilities to our roads. Why not extend the concepts to all the other things we need to live, live comfortably, and entertain ourselves? A government can exist that honestly has the people's best interests at heart, enough that they can be trusted with all production, it's just that every government so far hasn't lived up to those promises.

The last of the major problems with the USSR was simply that Stalin fucked everything up by trying to maintain his position of power while competing with the West. Who knows how history would have turned out if he hadn't risen to power?


Unfortunately, the power of businesses would (at best) shut down any attempts to establish a centralized, communist government in most capitalist societies (or, at worst, the leader of which would end up in ten different dumpsters), so I don't know where the hell someone would try to implement such a system without bringing guns into the situation. You will never be able to change the United States, but at least you could coexist beside it, potentially.

Capitalism is a very interesting thing, of course - I would even go as far to say that it's a good thing in many ways. It brings us all kinds of new toys and gadgets and television shows to entertain ourselves with. It gives birth to new art forms and gives us powerful computing machines to create things with. It just happens to be my sincere belief that the business-centrist model of society isn't the most rewarding way to live life. If you froze technological progress (just humor me, since this term is hard to define) at this point in time, got a group of a few hundred thousand people, and established a state not dedicated to progressing technology but progressing society, it would be a much more interesting place to live. You can do all kinds of interesting things with the computers and electronics that already exist, there are still stories to be told, songs to be written, and most people just want to keep on living with their family and friends anyway.

I think we should just nuke everything.

If we just nuked everything, we wouldn't have anything to fight for or care about and we would end up creating problems out of thin air. It's human nature, and won't ever change. Where there is emotion, there will be violence. There is no way around it.