this post was submitted on 22 Jan 2025
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Nah.
Telescreens were mandatory.
In the real world, people would voluntarily install them, and pay for the privilage of doing so.
Yeah, more like this guy was right.
Every day Huxley is proven more correct than Orwell because through the magic of SOMA (addictive phones hitting dopamine rushes), people can be surrounded with the truth and completely ignore it, and as you said, pay for the privilege of being lied to because it feels nice. (And oh man, that's a major industry on OnlyFans, being lied to because it feels nice)
Huxley understood our desires could break us more than our hate.
I can't find it, but I recall an interview with Zizek around when Snowden dropped his leaks, and it was about how it really changed nothing, and he was noting how the revelations of torture during the Iraq War had changed nothing either. He thought disclosure was a moot point now, society was checked out. He was right.
In 2019, Giorgio Agamben gave a week of lectures in Berlin. In the middle of it, he suddenly paused and said: "I hope that everyone in this room realizes that all political action has become impossible." He meant that political action is no longer possible because we are governed by economic powers.
The “Amusing Ourselves to Death” comic does a good job showing how Huxley did a better job predicting the future.
It seems to me that they were both right. If I didn’t know better, I’d be inclined to think that the wealthy and powerful used their works as a roadmap instead of a warning.
They were both right. The very first point aged incredibly poorly, considering how many books are banned nowadays.
The fascist jocks think Orwellian tactics will work because they get to run around hurting people in the process. The fascist nerds think the Huxley addiction to distraction will work because they get to sell billions of dollars of ads in the process.
They’re both fascists though, and something is going to have to happen to change that.
They were both right - it's just that Orwell's prophecies manifested in east while Huxley's did in the west.
They were both right. I wouldn't say either was more right actually. If you merge both of their worlds, you get pretty close to what we're living in.
Brave New Wolrd and Farnheit 451 with Handmaid's Tale...I mean, even Zuckeberg with Meta is trying to be the villain ceo of Ready Play One.
Edit: https://lemm.ee/post/53222800 These post is relevant to this discussion.
Specially the comment from [email protected]
Good callout to Fahrenheit 451. I think Beatty's monologues are pretty important because they're strongly argued. His positions aren't wholly irrational, he has given it careful, deliberate thought for a long time. The first time I read it I recall feeling compelled and almost convinced by his arguments, which is such a beautiful way to express it. Bradbury literally argues against the existence of the book Fahrenheit 451 itself, his own competing ideas that someone else would want to erase, through Beatty's monologues. He made a compelling argument for it, too. All the books disagree, so what even is truth?
Knowing how to be psychologically resilient against such arguments is important, I think.
Now that we're adding more dystopian books to the thread I'd like to shout out to Kallocain (1940) by Karin Boye. It's more of a totalitarian state similar to 1984 but has an aspect of truth drugs, a hot topic back then, and thought criminalization.
Interesting, shades of Severance. The severing of parts of their life achieves a similar result of preventing (instead of detecting) individual acts and thoughts of rebellion.
TikTok. Yet people are begging for someone to spy on them if it means feeding their addiction to short form content.
And Meta, X, Alphabet, etc...
I think Orwells Animal Farm describes the current situation in the US better. There might be less communism but some things (like the TikTok ban) seem to be stolen directly from the book.
Yelling at a homeless person for owning a telescreen.
....and they line up around the block to get the new ones that can see and hear them even better. Our timeline's version has access to our fingerprints, can identify our faces from millions of others, know our hobbies, our work schedule, our political leanings, etc, etc. We're deep in this nightmare.