day no. 17,356: big brother and the brave new world

“We were keeping our eye on 1984. When the year came and the prophecy didn't, thoughtful Americans sang softly in praise of themselves. The roots of liberal democracy had held. Wherever else the terror had happened, we, at least, had not been visited by Orwellian nightmares. But we had forgotten that alongside Orwell's dark vision, there was another - slightly older, slightly less well known, equally chilling: Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley's vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think." — Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business

The oppression Huxley's Brave New World produced was a result of passivity, not passion. Orwell's Big Brother needed you to love him before he could be done with you, but Huxley's Brave New World needed nothing from you per se. We fear fascism while we indulge in nihilism. While we worry that someone may want something so badly that they would try to force us to do want it too, we miss the fact that we want less than we used to as we settle for more indifference. Orwell predicted a world where one thought stomped on every other thoughts, but Huxley predicted that the thoughts would stamp themselves out.