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2014: A Brave New Dystopian "1984" World
While many have pointed out that the Middle-East/Far-East are drifting to a more "Orwellian" world and the West is a more "Huxleyan" environ, the merger of the two dystopias is seemingly growing each day. As The Guardian previously noted, Huxley's dystopia is a totalitarian society, ruled by a supposedly benevolent dictatorship whose subjects have been programmed to enjoy their subjugation through conditioning and the use of a narcotic drug - the rulers of Brave New World have solved the problem of making people love their servitude. On the Orwellian front, we are doing rather well – as the revelations of Edward Snowden have recently underlined. We have constructed an architecture of state surveillance that would make Orwell gasp.
The most striking parallel of course is that both men foresaw the future as totalitarian rather than democratic and free.
Both Big Brother’s world and the Brave New World are ruled by authoritarian elites of a basically socialist/communist nature, whose only real purpose is the maintenance of their own power and privileges.
We discussed this a year ago but it seems an opportune time - with the world's brainwashing and control accelerating - to revisit the two
Decades ago they saw it all coming...
As The Guardian so appropriately summed up,
Huxley's dystopia is a totalitarian society, ruled by a supposedly benevolent dictatorship whose subjects have been programmed to enjoy their subjugation through conditioning and the use of a narcotic drug – soma – that is less damaging and more pleasurable than any narcotic known to us. The rulers of Brave New World have solved the problem of making people love their servitude.
Which brings us back to the two Etonian bookends of our future. On the Orwellian front, we are doing rather well – as the revelations of Edward Snowden have recently underlined. We have constructed an architecture of state surveillance that would make Orwell gasp. And indeed for a long time, for those of us who worry about such things, it was the internet's capability to facilitate such comprehensive surveillance that attracted most attention.
In the process, however, we forgot about Huxley's intuition. We failed to notice that our runaway infatuation with the sleek toys produced by the likes of Apple and Samsung – allied to our apparently insatiable appetite for Facebook, Google and other companies that provide us with "free" services in exchange for the intimate details of our daily lives – might well turn out to be as powerful a narcotic as soma was for the inhabitants of Brave New World. So even as we remember CS Lewis, let us spare a thought for the writer who perceived the future in which we would come to love our digital servitude.
And Chris Hedges' infamous comparison of the two frightening visions of the future...
The two greatest visions of a future dystopia were George Orwell’s “1984” and Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World.” The debate, between those who watched our descent towards corporate totalitarianism, was who was right. Would we be, as Orwell wrote, dominated by a repressive surveillance and security state that used crude and violent forms of control? Or would we be, as Huxley envisioned, entranced by entertainment and spectacle, captivated by technology and seduced by profligate consumption to embrace our own oppression? It turns out Orwell and Huxley were both right. Huxley saw the first stage of our enslavement. Orwell saw the second.
We have been gradually disempowered by a corporate state that, as Huxley foresaw, seduced and manipulated us through sensual gratification, cheap mass-produced goods, boundless credit, political theater and amusement. While we were entertained, the regulations that once kept predatory corporate power in check were dismantled, the laws that once protected us were rewritten and we were impoverished. Now that credit is drying up, good jobs for the working class are gone forever and mass-produced goods are unaffordable, we find ourselves transported from “Brave New World” to “1984.” The state, crippled by massive deficits, endless war and corporate malfeasance, is sliding toward bankruptcy. It is time for Big Brother to take over from Huxley’s feelies, the orgy-porgy and the centrifugal bumble-puppy. We are moving from a society where we are skillfully manipulated by lies and illusions to one where we are overtly controlled.
...
The corporate state does not find its expression in a demagogue or charismatic leader. It is defined by the anonymity and facelessness of the corporation. Corporations, who hire attractive spokespeople like Barack Obama, control the uses of science, technology, education and mass communication. They control the messages in movies and television. And, as in “Brave New World,” they use these tools of communication to bolster tyranny. Our systems of mass communication, as Wolin writes, “block out, eliminate whatever might introduce qualification, ambiguity, or dialogue, anything that might weaken or complicate the holistic force of their creation, to its total impression.”
The result is a monochromatic system of information. Celebrity courtiers, masquerading as journalists, experts and specialists, identify our problems and patiently explain the parameters. All those who argue outside the imposed parameters are dismissed as irrelevant cranks, extremists or members of a radical left. Prescient social critics, from Ralph Nader to Noam Chomsky, are banished. Acceptable opinions have a range of A to B. The culture, under the tutelage of these corporate courtiers, becomes, as Huxley noted, a world of cheerful conformity, as well as an endless and finally fatal optimism. We busy ourselves buying products that promise to change our lives, make us more beautiful, confident or successful as we are steadily stripped of rights, money and influence. All messages we receive through these systems of communication, whether on the nightly news or talk shows like “Oprah,” promise a brighter, happier tomorrow. And this, as Wolin points out, is “the same ideology that invites corporate executives to exaggerate profits and conceal losses, but always with a sunny face.” We have been entranced, as Wolin writes, by “continuous technological advances” that “encourage elaborate fantasies of individual prowess, eternal youthfulness, beauty through surgery, actions measured in nanoseconds: a dream-laden culture of ever-expanding control and possibility, whose denizens are prone to fantasies because the vast majority have imagination but little scientific knowledge.”
Our manufacturing base has been dismantled. Speculators and swindlers have looted the U.S. Treasury and stolen billions from small shareholders who had set aside money for retirement or college. Civil liberties, including habeas corpus and protection from warrantless wiretapping, have been taken away. Basic services, including public education and health care, have been handed over to the corporations to exploit for profit. The few who raise voices of dissent, who refuse to engage in the corporate happy talk, are derided by the corporate establishment as freaks.
...
The façade is crumbling. And as more and more people realize that they have been used and robbed, we will move swiftly from Huxley’s “Brave New World” to Orwell’s “1984.” The public, at some point, will have to face some very unpleasant truths. The good-paying jobs are not coming back. The largest deficits in human history mean that we are trapped in a debt peonage system that will be used by the corporate state to eradicate the last vestiges of social protection for citizens, including Social Security. The state has devolved from a capitalist democracy to neo-feudalism. And when these truths become apparent, anger will replace the corporate-imposed cheerful conformity. The bleakness of our post-industrial pockets, where some 40 million Americans live in a state of poverty and tens of millions in a category called “near poverty,” coupled with the lack of credit to save families from foreclosures, bank repossessions and bankruptcy from medical bills, means that inverted totalitarianism will no longer work.
...
The noose is tightening. The era of amusement is being replaced by the era of repression. Tens of millions of citizens have had their e-mails and phone records turned over to the government. We are the most monitored and spied-on citizenry in human history. Many of us have our daily routine caught on dozens of security cameras. Our proclivities and habits are recorded on the Internet. Our profiles are electronically generated. Our bodies are patted down at airports and filmed by scanners. And public service announcements, car inspection stickers, and public transportation posters constantly urge us to report suspicious activity. The enemy is everywhere.
...
“Do you begin to see, then, what kind of world we are creating?” Orwell wrote. “It is the exact opposite of the stupid hedonistic Utopias that the old reformers imagined. A world of fear and treachery and torment, a world of trampling and being trampled upon, a world which will grow not less but more merciless as it refines itself.”
Watching Aldous Huxley describe the world we have now a stunning 60 years ago is horrific...
h/t Kirk
Though, in our view, Emmet Scott summed up the present in relation to Huxley and Orwell's prophecies best:
The most striking parallel of course is that both men foresaw the future as totalitarian rather than democratic and free. Neither presumably believed their vision of the future to be inevitable, though it is equally clear that each saw aspects of mid-twentieth century life which clearly pointed in the totalitarian direction. Thus 1984 and Brave New World may be seen as warnings against what might be if the trends identified by the two authors persisted. What these trends were and why the authors saw them leading towards totalitarianism is an important question and one that will be addressed presently.
The totalitarian states described by Orwell and Huxley differed in most details, though there were also many correspondences. Both Big Brother’s world and the Brave New World are ruled by authoritarian elites of a basically socialist/communist nature, whose only real purpose is the maintenance of their own power and privileges.
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brave new world revisited is one of my favourite books .... pretty much nailed it in just 40 pages. Both authors are spot-on.
Reject the basic assumptions of civilization, especially the importance of material possessions.
My simplification of that excellent article is LIES BACKED BY VIOLENCE summarizes how both of those dystopias operate, where the relatively prolonged success of backing up legalized lies with legalized violence drives the survivors from the Orwellian to Huxleyan states. Both suffer from the longer term paradox of final failure from too much success at controlling society with lies. Meanwhile, however, the controlled opposition is not able to provide better systems of death controls, and therefore, the whole process plays through from tragedy to farcical tragedy. The basic problem is that we can not get better government because the existing government gets too good at lying about what it is actually doing, and also too good at developing controlled opposition that also lies about what governments should do.
That is a very good simplification.
In my opinion LIES, that is the ratio of lies told on important matters as well as overall in private and public, is the central factor for the Western decline.
Somehow technological advances offering easily perceivable improvements in daily life together with a Protestant ethic had reduced the ratio of LIES for about one and a half centuries.
Now that "natural selection" advantage of avoidance of lies has perished as no further dramatic improvements can be expected, we're sliding back into the dark ages.
Or in other words back to levels present in Arabic culture countries (lies everywhere in regular life), or to a lesser degree Asian culture (save-face mentality.)
Besides the bread and circuses atmosphere, the two asshole parties try to distract the middle class with meaningless social issues such as abortion and gay rights that only affect a small percentage of the people while the endless wars and banksters destroy this country. Democracy is completely useless because votes will be swayed by people in power to vote against their interests or continue to vote for free shit while plundering the nation's treasure
This is one of the best articles I've read on ZH. Apart from all the others that is ;-)
I believe this article hits the nail exactly on the head of the new world being created by the totalitarian ruling elites.
I venture to say that all things being equal, we are already & will continue to be subjected to the Huxley model. What one might call benevolent or passive totalitarian dictatorship. On the occasions that that doesn't work or if anybody dares to step outside the matrix, they will apply the Orwellian model; imposition by force.
And yes, it most certainly is of a socialist/communist/fascist nature. The days of individualism, freedom, liberty, free thinking are coming to an end. Unless people see what's happening and revolt against it. The longer it's left, the harder it becomes.
It's time to stock up on rope and piano wire.
I pay for cable and enjoy sports (actually, part of my livelihood depends on an elevated understanding of college and pro sports, but it's a poor argument, because I can get all the information on the internet. Maybe I'm a little lazy.). So kill me. But, I also enjoy the mindless blather just so I am informed of the latest attempts to disenfranchise our minds. Call me Ishmael.
At 60 years of age, I believe I have the freedom to make informed choices. Those who do not watch TV, I have no issue with. In fact, I applaud them for their ability to see the problem and deal with it.
In terms of which dytopian reality we are surely descending into, tryanny and totalitarianism will always be opposed by those who can identify it. I think that's human nature. The problem is that there are so many who cannot see, and so few who do that those who do - like many at ZH - choose just to go their own way and not speak up. It's almost a surrender bourn of weariness.
I am sometimes saddened by this condition. Even just last night, lying in my bed, I wondered how we got from the America I knew as a kid in the 60s to where we are today. I have no answer except for apathy.
I still believe that good, rational men and woman will prevail, even though their victories will be small and often unnoticeable. There are already many opposed to and actively fighting the corporatist/narcissist oligarchy. For the masses, there will be misery. For the informed, redemption.
Use time wisely.
Thank you for your thoughtful words. A good read.
The Lowest Animal
By: Mark Twain.
I have been studying the traits and dispositions of the lower animals (so-called), and contrasting them with the traits and dispositions of man. I find the result humiliating to me. For it obliges me to renounce my allegiance to the Darwinian theory of the Ascent of Man from the Lower Animals; since it now seems plain to me that the theory ought to be vacated in favor of a new and truer one, this new and truer one to be named the Descent of Man from the Higher Animals.
In proceeding toward this unpleasant conclusion I have not guessed or speculated or conjectured, but have used what is com¬monly called the scientific method. That is to say, I have sub¬jected every postulate that presented itself to the crucial test of actual experiment, and have adopted it or rejected it according to the result. Thus I verified and established each step of my course in its turn before advancing to the next. These experiments were made in the London Zoological Gardens, and covered many months of painstaking and fatiguing work.
Before particularizing any of the experiments, I wish to state one or two things, which seem to more properly belong in this place than further along. This, in the interest of clearness. The massed experiments established to my satisfaction certain gener¬alizations, to wit:
1. That the human race is of one distinct species. It exhibits slight variations (in color, stature, mental caliber, and so on) due to climate, environment, and so forth; but it is a species by itself, and not to be confounded with any other.
2. That the quadrupeds are a distinct family, also. This fam¬ily exhibits variations (in color, size, food preferences, and so on; but it is a family by itself).
3. That the other families (the birds, the fishes, the insects, the reptiles, etc.) are more or less distinct, also. They are in the procession. They are links in the chain, which stretches down from the higher animals to man at the bottom.
Some of my experiments were quite curious. In the course of my reading I had come across a case where, many years ago, some hunters on our Great Plains organized a buffalo hunt for the entertainment of an English earl. They had charming sport. They killed seventy-two of those great animals; and ate part of one of them and left the seventy-one to rot. In order to determine the differ¬ence between an anaconda and an earl (if any) I caused seven young calves to be turned into the anaconda’s cage. The grateful reptile immediately crushed one of them and swallowed it, then lay back satisfied. It showed no further interest in the calves, and no disposition to harm them. I tried this experiment with other anacondas; always with the same result. The fact stood proven that the difference between an earl and an anaconda is that the earl is cruel and the anaconda isn’t; and that the earl wantonly destroys what he has no use for, but the anaconda doesn’t. This seemed to suggest that the anaconda was not descended from the earl. It also seemed to suggest that the earl was descended from the anaconda, and had lost a good deal in the transition.
I was aware that many men who have accumulated more millions of money than they can ever use have shown a rabid hunger for more, and have not scrupled to cheat the ignorant and the helpless out of their poor servings in order to partially appease that appetite. I furnished a hundred different kinds of wild and tame animals the opportunity to accumulate vast stores of food, but none of them would do it. The squirrels and bees and certain birds made accumulations, but stopped when they had gathered a winter s supply, and could not be persuaded to add to it either honestly or by chicane. In order to bolster up a tottering reputa¬tion the ant pretended to store up supplies, but I was not de¬ceived. I know the ant. These experiments convinced me that there is this difference between man and the higher animals: he is avaricious and miserly; they are not.
In the course of my experiments I convinced myself that among the animals man is the only one that harbors insults and injuries, broods over them, waits till a chance offers, then takes revenge. The passion of revenge is unknown to the higher animals.
Roosters keep harems, but it is by consent of their concu¬bines; therefore no wrong is done. Men keep harems but it is by brute force, privileged by atrocious laws, which the other sex was allowed no hand in making. In this matter man occupies a far lower place than the rooster.
Cats are loose in their morals, but not consciously so. Man, in his descent from the cat, has brought the cats looseness with him but has left the unconsciousness behind (the saving grace which excuses the cat). The cat is innocent, man is not.
Indecency, vulgarity, obscenity (these are strictly confined to man); he invented them. Among the higher animals there is no trace of them. They hide nothing; they are not ashamed. Man, with his soiled mind, covers himself. He will not even enter a drawing room with his breast and back naked, so alive are he and his mates to indecent suggestion. Man is The Animal that Laughs. But so does the monkey, as Mr. Darwin pointed out; and so does the Australian bird that is called the laughing jackass. No! Man is the Animal that Blushes. He is the only one that does it or has occasion to.
At the head of this article we see how three monks were burnt to death a few days ago, and a prior put to death with atrocious cruelty. Do we inquire into the details? No; or we should find out that the prior was subjected to unprintable muti¬lations. Man (when he is a North American Indian) gouges out his prisoners eyes; when he is King John, with a nephew to render untroublesome, he uses a red-hot iron; when he is a reli¬gious zealot dealing with heretics in the Middle Ages, he skins his captive alive and scatters salt on his back; in the first Richards time he shuts up a multitude of Jew families in a tower and sets fire to it; in Columbus’s time he captures a family of Spanish Jews and (but that is not printable; in our day in England a man is fined ten shillings for beating his mother nearly to death with a chair, and another man is fined forty shillings for having four pheasant eggs in his possession without being able to satisfacto¬rily explain how he got them). Of all the animals, man is the only one that is cruel. He is the only one that inflicts pain for the pleasure of doing it. It is a trait that is not known to the higher animals. The cat plays with the frightened mouse; but she has this excuse, that she does not know that the mouse is suffering. The cat is moderate (inhumanly moderate: she only scares the mouse, she does not hurt it; she doesn’t dig out its eyes, or tear off its skin, or drive splinters under its nails) man-fashion; when she is done playing with it she makes a sudden meal of it and puts it out of its trouble. Man is the Cruel Animal. He is alone in that distinction.
The higher animals engage in individual fights, but never in organized masses. Man is the only animal that deals in that atrocity of atrocities, War. He is the only one that gathers his brethren about him and goes forth in cold blood and with calm pulse to exterminate his kind. He is the only animal that for sordid wages will march out, as the Hessians did in our Revolu-tion, and as the boyish Prince Napoleon did in the Zulu war, and help to slaughter strangers of his own species who have done him no harm and with whom he has no quarrel.
Man is the only animal that robs his helpless fellow of his country takes possession of it and drives him out of it or destroys him. Man has done this in all the ages. There is not an acre of ground on the globe that is in possession of its rightful owner, or that has not been taken away from owner after owner, cycle after cycle, by force and bloodshed.
Man is the only Slave. And he is the only animal who en¬slaves. He has always been a slave in one form or another, and has always held other slaves in bondage under him in one way or another. In our day he is always some mans slave for wages, and does that mans work; and this slave has other slaves under him for minor wages, and they do his work. The higher animals are the only ones who exclusively do their own work and provide their own living.
Man is the only Patriot. He sets himself apart in his own country, under his own flag, and sneers at the other nations, and keeps multitudinous uniformed assassins on hand at heavy ex¬pense to grab slices of other peoples countries, and keep them from grabbing slices of his. And in the intervals between cam¬paigns, he washes the blood off his hands and works for the universal brotherhood of man, with his mouth.
Man is the Religious Animal. He is the only Religious Ani¬mal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion, several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself, and cuts his throat if his theology isn’t straight. He has made a graveyard of the globe in trying his honest best to smooth his brother’s path to happiness and heaven. He was at it in the time of the Caesars, he was at it in Mahomet’s time, he was at it in the time of the Inquisition, he was at it in France a couple of cen¬turies, he was at it in England in Mary’s day, he has been at it ever since he first saw the light, he is at it today in Crete (as per the telegrams quoted above) he will be at it somewhere else tomor¬row. The higher animals have no religion. And we are told that they are going to be left out, in the Hereafter. I wonder why? It seems questionable taste.
Man is the Reasoning Animal. Such is the claim. I think it is open to dispute. Indeed, my experiments have proven to me that he is the Unreasoning Animal. Note his history, as sketched above. It seems plain to me that whatever he is he is not a reasoning animal. His record is the fantastic record of a maniac. I consider that the strongest count against his intelligence is the fact that with that record back of him he blandly sets himself up as the head animal of the lot: whereas by his own standards he is the bottom one.
In truth, man is incurably foolish. Simple things which the other animals easily learn, he is incapable of learning. Among my experiments was this. In an hour I taught a cat and a dog to be friends. I put them in a cage. In another hour I taught them to be friends with a rabbit. In the course of two days I was able to add a fox, a goose, a squirrel and some doves. Finally a monkey. They lived together in peace; even affectionately.
Next, in another cage I confined an Irish Catholic from Tipperary, and as soon as he seemed tame I added a Scotch Presbyterian from Aberdeen. Next a Turk from Constantinople; a Greek Christian from Crete; an Armenian; a Methodist from the wilds of Arkansas; a Buddhist from China; a Brahman from Benares. Finally, a Salvation Army Colonel from Wapping. Then I stayed away two whole days. When I came back to note results, the cage of Higher Animals was all right, but in the other there was but a chaos of gory odds and ends of turbans and fezzes and plaids and bones and flesh not a specimen left alive. These Reasoning Animals had disagreed on a theological detail and carried the matter to a Higher Court.
One is obliged to concede that in true loftiness of character, Man cannot claim to approach even the meanest of the Higher Animals. It is plain that he is constitutionally incapable of ap¬proaching that altitude; that he is constitutionally afflicted with a Defect, which must make such approach forever impossible, for it is manifest that this defect is permanent in him, indestructible, ineradicable.
I find this Defect to be the Moral Sense. He is the only animal that has it. It is the secret of his degradation. It is the quality, which enables him to do wrong. It has no other office. It is in capable of performing any other function. It could never hate been intended to perform any other. Without it, man could do no wrong. He would rise at once to the level of the Higher Animals.
Since the Moral Sense has but the one office, the one capacity (to enable man to do wrong) it is plainly without value to him. It is as valueless to him as is disease. In fact, it manifestly is a disease. Rabies is bad, but it is not so bad as this disease. Rabies enables a man to do a thing, which he could not do when in a healthy state: kill his neighbor with a poisonous bite. NC) one is the better man for having rabies: The Moral Sense enables a man to do wrong. It enables him to do wrong in a thousand ways. Rabies is an innocent disease, compared to the Moral Sense. No one, then, can be the better man for having the Moral Sense. What now, do we find the Primal Curse to have been? Plainly what it was in the beginning: the infliction upon man of the Moral Sense; the ability to distinguish good from evil; and with it, necessarily, the ability to do evil; for there can be no evil act without the presence of consciousness of it in the doer of it.
And so I find that we have descended and degenerated, from some far ancestor (some microscopic atom wandering at its pleasure between the mighty horizons of a drop of water perchance) insect by insect, animal by animal, reptile by reptile, down the long highway of smirch less innocence, till we have reached the bottom stage of development (namable as the Human Being). Below us, nothing.
Those that are elected have nothing to decide, and those that decide are not elected. That's the opposite of AUTHORITARIAN, sheeple.
What does AUTHORITARIAN mean?
AUTHORITARIAN means that the AUTHORIZED person is held responsible for it's orders - and therefore has the right to command the subordinates. Just like parents are held responsible for their children. Or the boss and his employees. It's the natural order.
How could a Plutocracy be authoritarian, if the primacy of politics does not even exist?! A Plutocracy therefore can not be an authoritarian system. Politicians in Plutocracies are political actors, but have only minimal or no power, do not decide and therefore no authority.
Contrary to Plutocracies, authoritarian systems have clear hierarchies of responsibilities and those responsible are those that are visible. Name me one organization that functions properly, that is not organized after the authoritarian principle.
Every functioning organization is authoritarian:
Authoritarian is the NATURAL order.
The PERSON with the AUTHORITY also bears the RESPONSIBILITY.
The problem in Huxley's world, in this plutocratic regime is, that the powers that decide are hidden and therefore authority does NOT exist, because authority is bound to personal responsibility and therefore to the person being authorized. And hidden rulers are not authoritarian, because hidden rulers cannot be held responsible, because then they would be no longer hidden rulers.
Has Goerge Soros ever been held responsible for what he does with his destructive neo-marxist "Open Society" weapon of destruction? Are the Money Masters ever held responsible for inciting wars? Have they ever received any AUTHORIZATION to their power?
If this would be an AUTHORITARIAN system, it would be easy to determine who is the responsible authority!
In Plutocracies exists no authoritarian principle.
Sheeple, if you do not recognize, that the problem is the DESTRUCTION of all authorities, then you will only demand more of the poison.
Defend your personal freedom! After gay marriage the discrimination of pedophilia must end!
Who has the right to determine that only a certain kind of family was the right one? That's nothing the evil state should be allowed to decide!
Who has the right to force people to speak a certain language? Immigrants are humans and all have the same rights! They must have the right, to use their language!
If English is no longer the language of the majority, then it must be adopted! Freedom for the people! Down with the evil state!
Individual freedom! Down with the "authoritarian" evil state!
Sheeple.
Authoritarian is a term used to describe those who apply authoritarianism whether they are elected or not, or whether they are just puppets of other people hiding in the shadows etc.
Therefore in your piece, although you say that those who wield power are not really the elected politicians, the latter can be, and are still, authoritarian.
Do not confuse Authority with power.
Hidden power can, by definition, not be authoritarian.
Every authoritarian system has a clear hierarchy. The one on top carries the highest personal responsibility and therefore has the most power.
Contrary to authoritarian systems hidden powers can not be held responsible. Otherwise they would no longer be hidden. Hidden systems also imply, that actors play the roles of deciders, although they do not have the power.
The reason why the hidden rulers HATE authoritarian systems. And sadly sheeple are dumb enough not to recognize, that everything in our daily life that works really well, is an authoritarian entity or system.
Democracy does only exist as fata morgana and in reality has never existed. What exists in reality as "Democracy" is in fact a Plutocracy - the hidden rulership of money.
Totalitarianism is perhaps the inevitable consequence of complexity. As systems become more complex, they become more centralized. And that is the culture medium of totalitarianism.
BTW, Tyler "Fox Newsy" Tyler couldn't stop himself from throwing the communist/socialist monkey wrench on this.It might kinda be like this, LEST WE FORGET that the system of complexity where we are now was not due to the means of production being in the hands of the workers or the state exclusively; rather than the means of production being in the hands of privates who also own the state...
A totalitarian structure is by definition a Far Left socialist/communist/fascist structure.
It is the exact opposite of a Right-leaning doctrine which believes in maximum personal freedoms, small government and individualism etc etc.
maximimum personal freedoms, small governments and individualism are imho neither Left (social) nor Right (national/conservative). they belong to the school of thought around Liberalims (which includes libertarianism)
You will not find any socialist/communist/fascist government that applies -- as opposed to just talking about it -- such things as "maximum personal freedoms" or "small government" etc. These ideologies are all totalitarian by design, all support collectivism, and therefore always belong on the Left.
In my life, I have never encountered any government that can be truly said to be on the "Centre Right or Far Right", despite the endless fallacious propaganda spewed out by our Western educational systems and MSM. And sadly believed by millions who know nothing better.
One example is the British Conservative Party which used to be on the Centre Right, but nowadays has moved quite a long way to the Left. Cameron and Osborne have used the phrase "we're all in this together" many times before and since May/2010 in relation to the disasterous economic shambles. This phrase is political code for saying that savers must pay the debts of the irresponsible debt-burdened people who speculated or failed to conduct due diligence when borrowing money. Naturally, I reject such blatant collectivism.
Well, what is your oppinion on Pepe Mujica or Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Are they fascist? Totalitarian? Extreme lefties?
You will also not find a single father loving his children not protecting them.
If you hate your children, allow them everything.
Liberalism is the expression of a society that no longer is a community. Every person who no longer feels part of the community is somehow liberal.
Community is evil, individualism is good? Only for those that for 3000 years have been living among other people as a minority; a minority that sticks together and has it's own rules and identity. Destroying the majority's identity and it's will to exist as community and transform it into a conglomerate of individuals serves the interests of this minority - but destroys the majority, the nations, peoples and their culture.
Africa for the Africans.
Asia for the Asians.
And White countries for everyone because only individuals exist and no ethnicities and races...
Do you enjoy the White genocide?
I don't think Adolf or Il Duce ever considered themselves very "lefty"... And the one who put the Fasces in fascism was none other than Benito...
But it has already happened.
It is not a future, it is the present.
Have any of the commenters here actually READ these two fine books?
The article author has a selective understanding of them imho.
Yes. BNW approached tyranny from a corporate pov but it had a central theme of a eugenically bred caste system that was subsequently conditioned into 'liking' its environment. No mention was made of this.
1984 pictured a society tyrannized following a nuclear war by an establishment that was necessarily brutal, partly as a result of having much less capital to draw from as a result of nuclear war.
NO mention ws made of this war consideration limiting the "freedom" of the establishment's ability to maintain some level of cohesion in a society - which is ALL that governments do.
BOTH are dystopic tyrannies. Sure. But you have a one-way trip from BNW --> 1984 if you have a (supposedly controllable) nuclear exchange. There's ZERO likelihood of going from 1984 --> BNW.
Where's the West - and the USA atm? Suffering BOTH BNW AND 1984!
Where's it going? Not as far as 'Blade Runner' if TPTB are allowed to have their way, not "Agenda 21" either. We'll be lucky if we end up with 'Threads'.
Most humans live in a fantasy they built to dwell in while alive. Fantasys are Personal constructs of objectivity which, of course, do not exist in fact, but which allow humans to live in a world that is whole, predictable more or less, and satisfying because a fantasy has dimensions and supports for living. These are personal intellectual worlds that most humans do not share with others.
A large proportion of the living humans do not think in the terms of intellectual creations. We live and die without having become aware of such terms as Utopian and dystopic, for which they have no use in the personal fantasys of most humans. In general, such humans are relatively happy, simple folk.
Yet we speak of the Brave New World like it is meanful to all in 20th century society. In fact we speak to only a few who may share our views of such a book and its meaning. We are a small tribe and a very poor language with which to build fantasys, or intellectual creations.