Revisited
One unintended result of walking around Disneyland ($DIS) for 10 hours was getting through two-and-a-half audiobooks.
I finished the third book, Amusing Ourselves to Death; Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, last night.
A fun fact that I deduced as the book went along, but that I didn’t know at first, was that it was published in 1985.
Despite the time difference between the publication date and, well, yesterday, the book still holds up.
Anytime a book starts by talking about George Orwell and Aldous Huxley’s books, count me in:
“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. 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 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. 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 what we desire will ruin us.
This book is about the possibility that Huxley, not Orwell, was right.”
Nowadays, everyone, at least in the United States, keeps bringing up and re-reading Orwell’s 1984.
But I’ve always been a greater fan of Huxley’s Brave New World even though its plot is equally dark despite its sunnier (drug-induced) disposition:
“A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced because they love their servitude.”
For any protagonist in a dystopia, there need to heed Shane Parrish’s advice on the difference between positivity and perseverance:
“So often we’re told that having a positive attitude is the important thing. You can get through the setbacks if you find the silver linings and believe in what you are doing. But it’s important to remember that persistence and a positive attitude aren’t the same things. They differ in some pretty fundamental ways.
Positivity is fragile. If you’re positively certain that you’ll be successful, you’ll start to worry the minute things deviate from your plan. Once this worry seeps into your mind, it’s impossible to get out. You’re done. When the going gets tough, positive attitudes often vanish.
Persistence, on the other hand, anticipates roadblocks and challenges. It gears up for the fact that things never go as planned and expects goals to be hard to attain.
If you run into failure, persistence continues, and positivity disappears. Persistence is antifragile and benefits from setbacks, while positivity, like that Guernsey calf, crumbles when it runs into hard times.”
