Huxley's Dystopia

"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 that 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 bumble puppy. 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, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us."

-Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves To Death

Hedonism: the pursuit of pleasure. It's an age-old concept, initiated by Adam and Eve in their greed of the seductive wisdom held in the forbidden fruit, and fictionalised a multitude of times in Dr Jekyll's duplicity, the effervescent Lord Henry and his idolised project, Dorian Gray, and the less contemporary population of the Capitol in Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games, amongst other examples. Adam and Eve resulted in the fall of man, Jekyll sells his soul to the Devil, Dorian Gray stabs himself in an egoistic demise, and the Capitol fall victim to their own blindness. In no case is it what the protagonists hate that ruins them but, as Huxley implies, what they love: Adam and Eve were seduced by the love of power and equality, Jekyll by the freedom of magic and power, Dorian by his own beauty and pleasure-filled sensual lifestyle, and the Capitol by its sheer egoistic culture. In all instances, it's power, egoism, hedonism, which develop the tragic climax of the narrative arc.



I'll admit to not having read either 1984 by George Orwell or Brave New World by Aldous Huxley - I do own a copy of the former and the latter has been sitting on my to-read list for a while, though!! - nor have I read Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves To Death, hence I cannot speak from a literary perspective based in the conclusions drawn by the writers themselves. I was scrolling through a tumblr of literary quotes, nonetheless, when the repeated Orwell caught my eye; thus I found the above quote.

"People will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think."

Increasingly, we inhabit not merely our contemporary planet earth, but a constructed virtual world - and the latter often more than the former. Our identities are defined by our Facebook page, the quality of our life gleaned from the aesthetic of our Instagram posts, our heritage and culture construed by the content of our Twitter characters, our standards based upon the photographed celebrities and popular media, our entertainment and opinions moulded from the vlogs, tutorials, speeches and hauls published on Youtube, self-help books and guides to life dominate what bookshelves are left. And of the constant upgrades and technological innovations? Our culture is in a constant pursuit of hedonistic pleasure, self-serving and aesthetically-obsessed. Faster, better, easier. Is this necessarily bad? Will this be, is this, our apple, our deal with the devil, our picture, our blindness?

In a Guardian article earlier this year, neuroscientist Daniel J Levitin argued that our addiction to technology is making us less efficient. The results of a Cambridge University study  published this year suggest that extra screen-time has negative implications for GCSE performance. Several recent psychological investigations, such as by the British Psychological Society, imply that the inability to disconnect from the online world compromises health and performance. Ergo, technology is bad for us? But it's also brought so many improvements; mobile phones across developing countries in Africa have levelled the market for nomadic farmers and increased the quality of life by easing the transmission and reception of remittances, millions who before were separated by distance are now connected with ease via the internet, and it has introduced a multitude of new medias and opportunities for employment, economically and socially improving the quality of life for many. 

I don't think technology is bad. I do, however, think Huxley had a point in his suggestion of a trivial society, a self-oppressive culture caught in its pursuit of pleasure and self-service. It's the culture of technology which is the dreaded dystopia we risk entering. The trap of the virtual world lies in its ignorance of the real world; the internet is an amazing platform upon which to raise awareness, increase inter-connectedness, provide freedom of speech and encourage thought. But it also risks self-indulgence and a loss of perception. Take, for instance, media platforms like Instagram; Instagram is essentially a photo-sharing network, providing a virtual album and the ability to 'like' other people's posts. The trap arises when the attainment of a perfect picture precedes and predominates the experience of an event, restricts spontaneity, and clouds the present; when a moment cannot be enjoyed until the picture, edited and filtered, has been captured and uploaded; when the number of likes determines the quality of your experience. Or when one's identity is based upon the quality of a Facebook page; the number of friends, the number of likes on your profile picture, the wittiness of the status updates; the constant need to be connected, available, online. Is there anymore individuality? Privacy? Experience? Or perhaps this is another kind of experience, a new expression and encouragement of individuality? It's a complex web (literally), but an excessive obsession is the underlying trap which threatens to reverse the (arguably) improved quality of life brought by technology. Other risks lie with the threat of extremism and ideological manipulation, evidenced most explicitly in the rise of people joining the support of terrorist groups like ISIS through internet propaganda. It's a balance which needs to be understood and explored, between freedom of speech, extremism, addiction, virtual ignorance and socio-economic development.

"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."  

I've never been interested in e-books, kindles and google-books; the thought of making youtube videos capturing my life has never appealed to me; updating twitter about my dinner and following celebrities on Twitter no longer attracts me. I like books; I like writing old-fashioned letters and diaries; I like the personal privacy and indulgence of select anonymity. That doesn't make the alternatives necessarily bad - it's just a different kind of information. There is so much information out there, millions of billions of pixels and codes floating through cyber-space, multiplying every second. What to we read? How do we divide our time? Is there so much information that it drowns us, reduces us to passivity, egoism, ignorance? Again, it's balance which is essential. The culture of technology certainly threatens to undermine itself, not increasing awareness and understanding but conversely and inadvertently encouraging ignorance and egoism. It's when we become preoccupied with the self-serving, egoistic element in technology that Huxley's dystopia becomes apparent and our culture grows trivial. We can drown in the currents of information and technology, or we can use it as a vessel to stay afloat in the real world. 

Huxley is not right. But he is onto something. 

C