# The Coming Dystopia



## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

I'm a pessimist, so of course we're heading for oblivion - but what kind? I read an interesting article recently about correspondence between Orwell and Huxley, with them discussing that the _1984_ vision is losing ground over _Brave New World_. I certainly see many aspects of the latter in modern life.

Here's a characterisation of their differences by Neil Postman:



> 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 of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egotism. 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. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions." In 1984, Orwell added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we fear will ruin us. Huxley feared that our desire will ruin us.


Makes me think that we should ignore the political process if we want to change the world, and instead take the battle to the internet and other forms of media and culture.


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## Fsharpmajor (Dec 14, 2008)

Strong language warning. That stated, here's one of the Daily Mash's takes on this subject:

*http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/...they-can-lock-down-the-internet-201204035088/*

And another:

*[url]http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/society/britain-officially-a-dystopia-201203225043/*[/URL]


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## Cnote11 (Jul 17, 2010)

Oh yes, I read that Polednice. I think what is going on is a mix of both, and then a little bit of neither. I do feel like we're fast approaching absurd mediocrity in the mainstream, if we're already haven't been there. I honestly do think, and this relates to the plastic surgery thread, that our current political system is a reflection of the populace. We can try to change the political system but the attitude of the populace remains the same. It is the attitude that creates the change, and not the other way around. This is why many people who have plastic surgery still remain unhappy and need to get more, because it is an internal issue. We can't make a superficial change if we want to change anything. Sadly, that is all people really want to go for, because the tendency of people to take the short-term idea over the long-term idea, even if they know the short-term is a horrible one or will not last. Ah, people.


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## Fsharpmajor (Dec 14, 2008)

I think this thread ought to be leading somewhere, and maybe I derailed it myself with my Daily Mash links. In which case, I apologize.

Anyway, here's a good editorial from the Independent on Cameron's and May's proposed surveillance system:

*http://www.independent.co.uk/opinio...-the-act-of-a-pm-with-no-beliefs-7615452.html*

A sleuth might be able to identify my alter ego in the comments at the end of it.


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## kv466 (May 18, 2011)

'La la la, lalala, la la lala'..."and I feel fine".


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## Fsharpmajor (Dec 14, 2008)

kv, I can understand why you're not concerned with British politics. There's no reason why you should be. What we're trying to see off here in the UK, though (and I think we've gotten rid of it--it will probably never fly again) is the equivalent of your so-called Patriot Act, which I think even George Orwell could not possibly have named more euphemistically.

Osama bin Laden did far more damage to the liberty of your country than he could ever have imagined, thanks to the Patriot Act. As a free people, we don't want anything even remotely resembling it to take hold here.

It wouldn't do what it was supposedly meant to do, and it would be used for things that it was supposedly not meant to be used for. That is, if it could even be implemented in the first place. And because, in the end, it probably couldn't be made to work either way--any idiot, even me, could fly rings around it in any number of ways--it would be a complete waste of public money which we could have spent on constructive things.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

I'm not that worried about the quote you posted, Polednice, suggests to me re Huxley. If people want to tune out and just consume en masse, well let them. I don't have to, nobody has to.

I see Orwell's dystopia of more relevance, in various ways. Of course in the Stalinist state of North Korea, it's a horrible reality.

But even in Western democracies there's an element of it realised, eg. _1984 _the novel coined the term _double-speak _and _thought control_. This of course involves the media. I hate it when they do _double-speak_, same with politicians or business leaders. Just say what you mean. But of course they're massaging the truth, trying to hide the ugly reality. Genocide becomes _ethnic cleansing_, an invasion of a country becomes _deployment of forces_, mass sackings becoming _downsizing_. A distortion of the language with hidden agendas. I'm not a fan of their politics, but guys like John Pilger and Noam Chomsky speak to this (eg. the latter's _Manufacturing Consent_, which I saw 20 years ago on TV - they probably wouldn't show it now, which also says something).

However, I am optimist, or at least not totally pessimist, that at grassroots level, in our local communities, we can make changes. It's happening as we speak. Eg. look at Muhammad Yunus' _Grameen Bank _in Bangladesh, giving small loans to the poor for them to be able to start a business. Yunus won a Nobel Prize for his efforts. But he's a guy who's not in his ivory tower, he's out there involved at grassroots level. It's happening here as well, people on the ground doing something, replacing the bullsh*t with real solutions, real vision.

Anyway, this is a tangent. But the dystopia, the massaging of fact and covering up (or forgetting?) of history is happening, sadly. Not many people care about it. But as the saying goes, if you forget the past, you are bound to repeat your mistakes.

Other dystopias are Bradbury's _Fahrenheit 451 _and also Robert Harris' _Fatherland_, a novel which imagines what the world would be like if the Germans had won the war. Again, it's about covering up history, the main character ends up finding the foundations of the demolished Auschwitz concentration camp. We just rewrite history, cover it up, that's what worries me most.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

I think things will be fine so long as people don't get their panties in a self-fulfilling doomsday prophecy knot.


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## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

Sixsharps, are you saying that you wouldn't be that bothered if Huxley's vision of a dystopia became a reality? Do you see it less apocalyptically than the alternatives?


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

I agree with Cnote that we're getting a mix of both. The media bombards the public with a sea of useless/irrelevant information while simultaneously withholding the vital information that ensures a well informed citizenry who can then act accordingly. The public is also coerced into fearing what should not be feared, and is distracted by endless trivialities while ignoring the gravest of issues at our peril.

Here in the states there is a deeply cynical attitude towards politicians and the congress which has an approval rating of something like 13%. There are so many corporate lobbyists in Washington that the people feel like it's a lost cause.

Leisure time is gradually harder to come by as more and more of the middle class is slipping into poverty. Sid James mentioned that he is an optimist and there is something to that. Things will eventually hit bottom when the majority is squeezed hard enough. Then the **** will hit the fan, heads will roll, and the privileged few will be forced to make concessions.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

starthrower said:


> ...Sid James mentioned that he is an optimist and there is something to that. Things will eventually hit bottom when the majority is squeezed hard enough. Then the **** will hit the fan, heads will roll, and the privileged few will be forced to make concessions.


Yes, well some historians see history as a continuing cycle of repression followed by liberalisation (or concessions, as you say). Or certain periods of history at least.

Of course it's not always clear. Eg. China is still a dictatorship, but one that has converted to the market economy. Chairman Mao would be rolling in his grave. But despite the economic developments in China and other strongly emerging Asian countries, there are still things going on there like political persecution and the suppression of free speech, freedom of press, etc. & even their methods of business are not entirely above board, eg. there is a lot of corruption, which the state is trying to clamp down on (now the death penalty is given in China for corruption which leads to many people being out of a job, companies being forced to close, etc.).

This may be again a digression, but I think the problem in the modern world is that increasing living standards (eg. economic development) is often like a smokescreen covering deeper issues.


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

No doubt about that last statement, Sid. It's like the frog that boils slowly in the heated pot. Also, the cycle of repression will continue unless the public is sufficiently educated/informed well enough to demand the structural changes to break the cycle for at least a few generations until people forget.


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## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

Polednice said:


> Sixsharps, are you saying that you wouldn't be that bothered if Huxley's vision of a dystopia became a reality? Do you see it less apocalyptically than the alternatives?


Sorry, this question was supposed to be directed at Sid - I just looked at the blueness of the avatar and got confused as to who posted #7.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Polednice said:


> Sixsharps, are you saying that you wouldn't be that bothered if Huxley's vision of a dystopia became a reality? Do you see it less apocalyptically than the alternatives?





Polednice said:


> Sorry, this question was supposed to be directed at Sid - I just looked at the blueness of the avatar and got confused as to who posted #7.


Oh, okay.

Having thought deeply more about this, I think there is ultimately little difference between these dystopias. I think that they are all basically about control of one kind or another. Imposing things from above and inhibiting bottom up type democracy or participation in running society, etc. Authoritarianism of one kind or another.

As I said, it's not always apparent. Former leader of Singapore Lee Kwan Yew did a good job in terms of economics in running/developing the country. But in terms of democracy & developing democratic system, he failed. Under him, political prisoners - dissident intellectuals, etc. - languished for decades in prison. But people were "happy" as they had the highest economic growth rates of the region. Even a former Prime Minister of Australia praised Mr. Yew.

Maybe in this sense, Orwell's vision of a drab Stalinist state in_ 1984_ is less accurate than the consumer society obsessed with pleasure & egotism over everything else which Huxley suggests. Anyway, when asked about his not so stellar record on developing democracy in Singapore, Mr. Yew always talked about "Asian values," eg. that these are not compatible with democracy, whether Western style or not. I think he was mixing up that with his own vested interest in maintaining a one party state, a facade of democracy. I think that again it's jargon using to cover up the reality, or his type of reality, of not allowing for plurality and diversity of opinion.

But basically they were all right in various ways. Francis Bacon's famous quote that _knowledge is power_ comes firmly to mind here. Also, what Edmund Burke siad, _all it needs for evil to flourish is for people of good will to do nothing_.

As I said, I see grassroots things as the big hope for gradual change from bottom up. It's happening as we speak but I mainly see it reported in the local papers here, not in the national ones.


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## Fsharpmajor (Dec 14, 2008)

Polednice said:


> Sixsharps, are you saying that you wouldn't be that bothered if Huxley's vision of a dystopia became a reality? Do you see it less apocalyptically than the alternatives?


I'm sure I would find Huxley's dystopia preferable to Orwell's if I actually lived in it. The question, I think, is what, exactly is wrong with his world, if everyone fits in their slot, is happy, has no need or desire to question anything, and has no sense of actually being in a dystopia. Orwell's world is hell, but how is Huxley's world different from heaven?

I think what's wrong with it is that it would mark the end of the quest for knowledge, and the end of human progress. Without those things, we would no longer be human. We might just as well be bees.

(I also don't much care for the Biblical idea of heaven for that reason).


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## Fsharpmajor (Dec 14, 2008)

Polednice said:


> Sorry, this question was supposed to be directed at Sid - I just looked at the blueness of the avatar and got confused as to who posted #7.


NOW I find this out, after I've already posted an answer....

You damn well better click "like" on it!


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

What I would like to see here in the states is for the public to begin boycotting all of the monopolized industries to what ever degree is possible, because what we have here is government subsidized monopoly capitalism. For some things there is little alternative, such as buying gasoline. But if the public continues to enrich the coffers of the mega corporations, they will continue to use their profits to even further corrupt the political process. But there is no excuse for not finding alternatives to corporate media and mediocre education. The library is free, and the internet costs less than cable television.

I don't have a lot of hope about this coming to pass because there are already so many working poor who can only afford to go to Wal-Mart. And how many people in America have ever read a word of Edmund Burke, Aldous Huxley, Thomas Paine, or any other important writer/thinker? I work in a blue collar field, and it's amazing to hear the depth of ignorance spewed by co-workers. People are misinformed and as a result are constantly arguing against their own best interests. They get their information from Rush Limbaugh and Fox "News".


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## sah (Feb 28, 2012)

Sid James said:


> Also, what Edmund Burke siad, _all it needs for evil to flourish is for people of good will to do nothing_.


Unamuno (The agony of christianity):

"...no hay que decir tanto homo homini lupus, que el hombre es un lobo para con el hombre, cuanto homo homini agnus, el hombre es un cordero para el hombre. No fue el tirano el que hizo el esclavo, sino a la inversa... Porque la esencia del hombre es la pereza, y, con ella, el horror a la responsabilidad".

My translation:

We shouldn't say so often _homo homini lupus_, man is a wolf to man, but _homo homini agnus_, man is a lamb to man. It wasn't the tyrant who created the slave, but the opposite... Because the essence of man is laziness, and with it, the dread of responsibility.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

Do people _really_ want freedom?

A few do, but on the whole I don't think it's what people want most, and it seems to be pretty easy to take it from them. Few societies in the history of the world have been free - in most, the majority of the people have been fairly acquiescent peasants, serfs, or slaves.

Why do they accept that status? I can brainstorm at least three reasons:

1. Pessimism: they believe they can't do better, so there's no need to change anything. They might even have things as good as they can be, so any change would be worse. This belief was reinforced by the experience of failed revolts, with public torture and execution. It could also be reinforced by the experience of invasion, and a gratitude for the steady exploitation of an elite that needed your continuing labor as compared to the sudden destructive exploitation of an army that could leave you dead for all it cared.

2. Religion and ideology: The gods made the world this way / this is the way the world is supposed to be. This would be reinforced with impressive monumental architecture, complex ritual, cryptic texts, arcane cosmologies - all overseen by a religious elite in a close symbiotic relationship with the secular powers. A grave error, common among people with a secular personality, is to underestimate the phenomenal psychological/emotional power of religion.

3. Bread and circuses: well-fed and well-entertained people evidently seem not to feel they need freedom.

In my judgment, in the US is in some danger of #1 and #2, but not too much; and in enormous danger of #3, and it might already be too late.

But I really think it will be ok. In the first place, there is still a lot of conflict and even some idealism among our elites, so that they probably won't let each other have too much power. I'm not sure there's enough conflict to stop them from ruling as an oligarchy - after all, they all invest in each other's corporations and control both political parties - but there might be. They might also realize - I think the banks and the tech guys do - that it's much harder for innovative business to flourish without freedom.

In the second place, they seem to know that if they try blatant censorship (as opposed to just using their media industries to alienate dissent) they will draw too much unwanted attention to their activities. So the literature, art and music that I like will remain legal, if in some cases unfairly disparaged by power and its followers, and I'll probably be allowed to spend my life traveling as long as I continue to pay my taxes and bills and don't become politically significant.


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## Cnote11 (Jul 17, 2010)

I'd like to add an amendment to what you posted, Science. It isn't just from a religion perspective that people believe "this is the way the world is supposed to be". It seem to be a common human instinct to believe that they world is inherently just, and those that are in negative positions deserve it. But religion really is bad at giving people that, "It is okay because I'll get my just due in the next life" syndrome. It really pacifies them.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

Cnote11 said:


> I'd like to add an amendment to what you posted, Science. It isn't just from a religion perspective that people believe "this is the way the world is supposed to be". It seem to be a common human instinct to believe that they world is inherently just, and those that are in negative positions deserve it. But religion really is bad at giving people that, "It is okay because I'll get my just due in the next life" syndrome. It really pacifies them.


Yes, though the physical force has to be there to back it up. One thing that I sometimes wonder about is that during the English Civil War, in the 1640s, as soon as the religious/political authority showed its weakness, ideas like socialism and equality appeared. I mean, _instantly_. Maybe the same thing in the German peasants' revolt of the 1520s, and some of the Anabaptist movements of that time.

Once literacy was widespread and the printing press cheap, perhaps those kinds of regimes were doomed. One of the things that seems to have undermined the USSR was its inability to stop the samizdat.

Let's say an analysis like that is correct. The question for me is, how does the internet change things? Obviously a state that cannot control its internet will have problems - the Green Revolution, though it failed, and the Arab Spring, though we can't be sure how it will go, show us that much. But the really big states, like China, can control the internet fairly effectively. If/when print culture passes, it may turn out that the internet gives the state more power than it ever enjoyed previously - more than Orwell's thought police could've dreamed of.

That may be why wikileaks is being treated as such a threat. It's not just that Manning is the Ellsberg of our time - it's that the state finally has a chance to crack down on all of that _forever_, and the authoritarians can feel the power coming to them.

If they do get that power, the religious leadership is already ready to serve them, at least in the US.

But they'll have to take it slowly in order to avoid a backlash, and maybe the right-wing authoritarian religious leaders won't be able to manage that.

Anyway, we have time. Freedom almost certainly has at least a few more decades, and once it's gone I'd guess we won't _really_ miss it for a few more decades after that.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

starthrower said:


> ...
> 
> I don't have a lot of hope about this coming to pass because there are already so many working poor who can only afford to go to Wal-Mart...


You may be right. Things like market gardens, eg. growers more or less selling direct to the public, without the "middle man," eg.the big supermarket chains here, always squeezing the growers for their own profit/gain. But I haven't shopped in a market garden, I wonder what the price difference is, is it so great that an average worker could no choose the market garden option over the big chains? I don't know, I have no experience in this.



> ...
> And how many people in America have ever read a word of Edmund Burke, Aldous Huxley, Thomas Paine, or any other important writer/thinker? I work in a blue collar field, and it's amazing to hear the depth of ignorance spewed by co-workers. People are misinformed and as a result are constantly arguing against their own best interests. They get their information from Rush Limbaugh and Fox "News".


Yes, it's hard not to be despondent. But Orwell himself wrote in _1984_, if there's any hope left, it's in the proles (proletariat, or workers). I don't agree with that kind of left wing ideology - eg. Marx's dictatorship of the proletariat, didn't work in practice in USSR, etc. - but I think that (as former Aussie Prime Minister Bob Hawke said) _don't underestimate the intelligence of the Australian electorate_. In other words, people can think, when pushed to think. When the going gets really tough, they use their brains alright, and that's when movements for change occur, on local and national levels.


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