The Books Most Responsible Part 2 - Issue #29
1984 by George Orwell
1984 [Orwell, George] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. 1984
Neil Postman, whose book I lauded in part one, put me on to reading "1984" and Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World." I came to Postman's conclusion after reading both: That George Orwell was right, but Aldous Huxley was more right. (Now if you will take the time to read Postman's "Amusing Ourselves to Death, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about. But I'm not telling, because you really need to go read the book.) Regardless, what struck me as so true when I read "1984" was the way in which power hungry despots fool with words in order to fool with your head. They hollow them out and change their meanings, and then punish you when you transgress their new meaning by bumbling on with the one you knew for the last fifty years. You've probably read or heard the following quote before as it's been floating around social media for a couple years, but it bears repeating:
War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.
And then later...
The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.
And because the party did its job so well, it rendered the population complacent, a bit stupid, and obedient.
In a way, the world−view of the Party imposed itself most successfully on people incapable of understanding it. They could be made to accept the most flagrant violations of reality, because they never fully grasped the enormity of what was demanded of them, and were not sufficiently interested in public events to notice what was happening. By lack of understanding they remained sane. They simply swallowed everything, and what they swallowed did them no harm, because it left no residue behind, just as a grain of corn will pass undigested through the body of a bird.
That sounds about right. I see that happening. But in "1984," the party accomplished its will through brutality, starvation, torture and endless wars. (Well, I give him the fact that we are currently but a hair's breadth away from endless wars. We do have breaks between wars of a few years to a decade long...) But I think, it's far easier to render a population complacent and obedient by giving them bread and circuses. Which brings me to Huxley...
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Brave New World [Aldous Huxley] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Brave New World
I read this book while I was at my sister and brother-in-law's place in Colorado some years back. They, like me, never get rid of a book, and they have a marvelous library. I spotted the title on one of their bookshelves and decided there was no opportunity like the present. I read it and was amazed. Because it felt like I was reading about the present to a degree. Of course, it's a very stylized book--a philosophical treatise masquerading as a novel. Nevertheless, Huxley was well ahead of his time envisioning what the future might hold based on the trends of his day which would have been the 1930s.
He envisioned an infantile populace kept happy and content with whatever lot the government dictated for them through the miraculous drug, Soma, the happiness drug. Soma cured any turbulent emotion, from rage and depression to deep, passionate or familial love. The population got all the sex they wanted, lots of fun entertainment, and no reason, whatsoever, to worry their pretty little heads about anything pertaining to survival. Because the government took care of all that. Why? Well, I'll let him explain:
As political and economic freedom diminishes, sexual freedom tends compensating to increase. And the dictator (unless he needs cannon fodder and families with which to colonize empty or conquered territories) will do well to encourage that freedom. In conjunction with the freedom to daydream under the influence of dope and movies and the radio, it will help to reconcile his subjects to the servitude which is their fate.
At the time, Huxley was probably thinking of substances like opium and cocaine, but I suspect he would be turning over in his grave right now if he knew how many people are dependent upon drugs for depression, anxiety, bipolar, ADD, ADHD, and all the others just to get through a day. The sexual license of our time, sadly, would not surprise him in the least. He predicted that. Here are a few more quotes from the book that thrill me to no end.
The world’s stable now. People are happy; they get what they want, and they never want what they can’t get. They’re well off; they’re safe; they’re never ill; they’re not afraid of death; they’re blissfully ignorant of passion and old age; they’re plagued with no mothers or fathers; they’ve got no wives, or children, or lovers to feel strongly about; they’re so conditioned that they practically can’t help behaving as they ought to behave. And if anything should go wrong, there’s soma. Which you go and chuck out of the window in the name of liberty, Mr. Savage. Liberty!” He laughed. “Expecting Deltas to know what liberty is! And now expecting them to understand Othello! My good boy!"
"I'm thinking of a queer feeling I sometimes get, a feeling that I've got something important to say and the power to say it—only I don't know what it is, and I can't make any use of the power."
These two books, thus far, warned my young mind about the dangers of trying to recreate Eden before the time and outside of God's providence. In the first place, it always creates more harm than good because the sinfulness of humanity is invariably left out of the equation and things go disastrously wrong like an explosion in a science lab. In the second place, Eden by man is almost always a front for despotism.
I've got one or two more books on my mind that I'd like to address, but I'm running out of time, space, and most folks attention spans for emails. So, I guess there will be a part 3 next week!
Until next time, folks...
