8 hours ago, ┌HP┘ said: We're slowly becoming a god dammed cyberpunk irl.
Anyone here ever read Brave New World? People love to say we're at the cusp of becoming an Orwellian society, but tbh from what I'm seeing Huxley was closer.
(Curious fact, he was Orwell's teacher.)
Brave New World has a strong understanding of technology, the human id, colonialism, and the biological.
For instance, the importance of biotech, which Corona reminded us all of recently, given that it’s pretty clear they cooked it up in a lab just like the characters at the beginning of that book. Dividing society along arbitrary identity lines as a useful political tactic to obfuscate power, is another theme Brave New World explores in a way that 1984 does not. Overall though, I think it’s a bit flighty, drug-obsessed and not as grounded as 1984, which has a total focus on language (yours, mine, ours, theirs) as the most potent weapon wielded by the powerful against the weak (i.e. propaganda) and the importance of surveillance, marketing, and manufacturing consent.
While drugs are prevalent today, I don’t think it’s true that power/capital/governments want their people sedated and drifting through their days in narcotic bliss. If anything, there seems to be a psychotic and oppressive obsession with people being “on” and “engaged” constantly, prisoners to their anger and hatred. Less tantric sex, more raging at your television/phone. Prescient as Huxley was on a variety of subjects, that’s a decidedly 1984 vibe for me. The image of the angry, self-righteous face screaming at you on your giant television screen, while simultaneously watching you in your home and listening to your every word… that’s 1984 and it’s the world today.
