Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. 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. What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think. But in Huxley’s vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Wherever else the terror had happened, we, at least, had not been visited by Orwellian nightmares.īut 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. When the year came and the prophecy did not, thoughtful Americans sang softly in praise of themselves.
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