Huxley’s Brave New World, language, and the family
I read Aldous Huxley’s dystopian Brave New World shortly after I had read Orwell’s dystopian Nineteen-Eighty-Four. I was around thirteen years old at the time, and I didn’t quite get Brave New World although I did finish it.
In my opinion both are masterpieces, but Orwell’s novel was much more straightforward and easy to understand, as well as more frightening to me. Huxley’s work was more complex and subtle in its message. I think I perceived only about half of the content’s implications – in particular, the social programming through science. I only partly understood the rest of what was happening in that future world: the desire to eliminate human suffering by eliminating human freedom, and the huge costs humanity and individuals would pay in such a society.
Over the years, however, I’ve re-read Brave New World several times, and each time I read it I appreciated it more than before. I see our current society and current predicament as an amalgam of the two, but more like Huxley’s vision than Orwell’s. Yet I see people referencing Orwell more often – perhaps because more have read it, or at least excerpts from it?
Although it was Orwell who discussed in great depth the use of language as mind-molding propaganda – his invention of Newspeak is genius – Brave New World doesn’t ignore the use of language. In Huxley’s work, it’s the elimination of certain words as obscenities that is especially interesting in light of certain trends today; I’m thinking of the drop in the birthrate in Westernized countries and the fall in the marriage rate.
You may recall that, in Brave New World, society’s designers had not only eliminated the family but had made words like “mother” unspeakable obscenities that were offensive to even utter. Interesting, no? And remember, Huxley’s book was published in 1932, nearly a hundred years ago:
‘And “parent?”?’ questioned the D.H.C.
There was an uneasy silence. Several of the boys blushed. They had not yet learned to draw the significant but often very fine distinction between smut and pure science. One, at last, had the courage to raise a hand.
‘Human beings used to be…’ he hesitated; the blood rushed to his cheeks. ‘Well, they used to be viviparous.’
‘Quite right.’ The Director nodded approvingly.
‘And when the babies were decanted…’
‘”Born”,’ came the correction.
‘Well, then they were the parents–I mean, not the babies, of course; the other ones.’ The poor boy was overwhelmed with confusion.
‘In brief,’ the Director summed up, ‘the parents were the father and the mother.’ The smut that was really science fell with a crash into the boys’ eye-avoiding silence. ‘Mother,’ he repeated loudly rubbing in the science; and, leaning back in his chair, ‘These,’ he said gravely, ‘are unpleasant facts; I know it. But, then, most historical facts are unpleasant.’
Here’s another quote from the book:
“Mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters. But there were also husbands, wives, lovers. There were also monogamy and romance. “Though you probably don’t know what those are,” said Mustapha Mond. They shook their heads. Family, monogamy, romance. Everywhere exclusiveness, a narrow channelling of impulse and energy. “But every one belongs to every one else,” he concluded, citing the hypnopædic proverb.”
If you’ve never read the book, or if you haven’t read it in a long long while, you might want to take a look.
Hello. It’s true I had forgotten that part of Brave New World, and indeed Nineteen Eighty-Four has been more on my mind along with most other people.
In my case, it was particularly having to do with the ideological manipulation of language by fairly direct methods that we’ve seen in sex/gender realms of late. Government documents in certain jurisdictions being altered by edict to read “Parent 1” and “Parent 2”, things like that, which is why I say ‘direct’ methods. But I don’t say this to deny that more ‘Mondian’ (?) techniques also exist.
I think that people widely perceive that language and languages are being tampered with. But it may be simply a question of which means and ends in that whole matter are riding uppermost in people’s minds at a given place and time that decides which of these two major totalitarian models are most prominent. If enough people were to be, so to speak, politically sensitized to the ‘Mondian’ (repeat ?) model’s existence and nature, then one would probably see more in commentary about it.
The only thing Huxley missed was the Pill. I think about that book a lot.
His vision was a bit less dystopian than 1984 but resembles our time more.
In Orwell’s and Huxley’s day the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (the structure of a language influences its speakers’ worldview or cognition) was tacitly accepted by most educated people, similarly with Freudianism. Like Freudianism, the popular idea of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is not exactly the same as the actual theory. But like Freudianism the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis hasn’t held up that well, although there are still some adherents to various weakened forms.
The Left’s games with language are probably better understood as marketing techniques. If you treat what you read in the media with at least as much skepticism as you read an advertisement, you’re probably going to be okay. If you’re dismayed by how many people fall for what they see in the media, reflect on how many people are swayed by advertisements.
The most common technique we see in the kinds of items neo typically comments on here is the selective citation of facts to support a narrative. This can take a very crude form: for example, they said that Governor Walz belonged to a National Guard unit that recently returned from Iraq. There’s two truths in there: he was part of the unit, and the unit went to Iraq and returned. But the narrative that Walz himself went to Iraq is false. And they don’t say it: they just put two unrelated facts in the same sentence and count on the reader to supply the suggested narrative to himself.
I read those, along with Atlas Shrugged, around 1965 or so. I doubt I finished more than one of them because they seemed to be absurd even for dystopian literature. I read them again about 25 years later, with some maturity and a great deal more historical knowledge, and realized that yes it could happen here, though it seemed unlikely. About 5 years ago, after another go, I realized that while we were not quite there then, some of it was inevitable. In the case of Atlas Shrugged, I could even put real names to some of the fictional characters.
It is unnerving that you have decided to post this piece today–the reason it makes me step back a bit and take a deep breath is not because of your post, but rather what I read in this morning’s local newspaper. The University of Montana has a unit known as the Mansfield Center and it is named after a local politician who was well loved and respected. Here are some quotes about a new program.
“The U.S. Department of Defense also offered help. The Mansfield initiative is one of 13 projects funded through the Defense Department’s National Defense Education Program. Last year, NDEP’s $53 million disbursement included four Civil Society projects; to Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Indiana University and the University of Montana.”
It will bring together students from the backwoods of MT to Chicago (I am assuming the South Side) to talk about the differences between rural and urban communities and their interests in government. I have mentioned here several times that the D party is pouring millions of dollars into rural MT in order to help them give up their ideas of independence, democracy, etc. This particular program will focus on language–what a surprise! The commies are really coming on strong here. Here is another excerpt from the article it is a summary of one MT student’s new thinking:
“Spending time with the Chicago students gave Faherty[Mt student] a new empathy for how urban and rural world views miss one another. For example, he said the Chicago residents had much more personal experience with immigration issues because their city has become a hub of relocation efforts. But the Windy City visitors had far less familiarity with firearms, which they saw as abstract elements of gang violence while the Montanans considered them routine tools for hunting and recreation.”
Also from the same article:
“The Mansfield Center was an ideal fit, Vaughan said, because its namesake’s personality embodied all those elements. As Senate Majority Leader, Mike Mansfield shepherded consequential bills like the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act to passage by three-quarters of the Senate — a margin almost unimaginable in these more radicalized times. But Vaughan said students also like Mansfield’s personal history: how he ran away from home to join the military and worked as a Butte miner before becoming a senator and then ambassador to Japan.
“People know the Mansfield legacy and story — they learn how skilled he was bringing people together,” she said. “We want young people having the skills and knowledge to be fully participating citizens in our country,” Vaughan said. “That goes beyond voting. It’s also soft skills like civil discourse — how to work with people of differing views to find common ground. Mike Mansfield was so skilled at that.”
Over the next three years, the program intends to refine its methods and results. One thing it’s already learned — the legacy of COVID-era Zoom meetings does not help build interest in something as amorphous as civic democracy.”
Like I said America’s communist party will use any vehicle to win–indoctrinating the next generation is key.
Back in the late 60s and early 70s, when I was in HS, I listened to Jean Shepherd’s radio show almost every night. He had a theory about Orwell and Huxley. It was that the former was foretelling what the USSR was turning into, while the latter was seeing our future. (Of course, there are other commie countries which survived the fall of the Soviets, and there are other hedonistic democracies like ourselves.) I suspect there’s something to that.
On why Orwell is better remembered, I think there are two related reasons. He was the clearer thinker of the two, and the better writer. His images are much more vivid. Huxley was fuzzy about much.
Eeyore:
I think Shepherd was correct.
However, I disagree on the writing prowress of Orwell versus Huxley. Both were great and their styles were very different. Huxley was more indirect and artsy whereas Orwell was very clear and straightforward. I think both were excellent and perhaps even geniuses.
I’m very fond of Huxley’s Crome Yellow .
Orwell is much more widely read than Huxley, and his name has entered our language, as a negative adjective: “orwellian”.
neo
I’m very fond of Huxley’s Crome Yellow .
My cousin read Huxley’s Point Counterpoint for a college course, and still talks about the book 60 years after she read it.
No, I haven’t read it.
this therapeutic state is also seen in Logan’s run, the memory of the time before, is carried by Peter Ustinov’s old man, so the carousel, is a way to mask, the antihuman inpulses of the regime, carried out through the runner,
OT, a fascinating detail related on TCM Jules Dassin who directed Topkapi, wanted Peter Sellers in the role, that Ustinov ended up with, and Ustinov was desired for the Pink Panther role, which is eerily ironic because the man who he was the bat man, for, David Niven was also in the film, Maximilian Schell was also in the film, as a character not unlike Robert Wagner’s role in the Pink Panther,
this antiseptic version of the world also ended up in Woody Allen’s Sleeper which has a few too many echoes in the current zeitgeist, and Sylvester Stallone’s Demolition Man where the eminence gris is played a character name Cocteau, a tip to surrealist film making,
Re: Crome Yellow
neo, Gringo:
Weirdly great. His first novel. His take on the Bloomsbury set.
When Uncle Aldous was a shrewd young observer with an acid tongue and not yet trying to change the world. (Though I love his utopianism too.)
For anyone doing the audiobook thing, Robert Whitfield’s rendition of “Crome Yellow” is wonderful.
I often think of that scene in ” 1984″ where the interrogator is demanding that the main character lie about how many fingers he is holding up. To me that is transgenderism, where we are supposed to suspend all rational thought process and agree that a man becomes a woman simply by declaring and / or believing it.
We talk about Gender Ideology as a tool of the left – which it is- but I believe it should be seen as a kind of quasi religious cult – in and of itself – that has taken over institutions all over the English speaking world. A cult that demands that we agree with all it’s dogma.
CS Lewis wrote “That Hideous Strength” after the end of WWII, and it belongs with Huxley and Orwell’s work, and comes at it from a surprising angle that I won’t spoil by writing about it. But in the story, his insights into where the relationships between men and women, the state and the man, the college and the student, the state and the NGO, organizational management, etc, etc were profound for a man of 1948, even more so than Huxley and Orwell. It is well worth reading, and pondering.
as I mentioned before I read brave new world in high school, along with 1984 and the Fountainhead for good measure, it was around that time that nbc did an adaptation of it, that didn’t really capture it’s essence, I did find it unpleasant, at a certain point, I caught the more contemporaneous version of 1984, with the late John Hurt as Winston Smith, and Richard Burton as O’Brien, it wasn’t as unsettling in the same way, although the end scenes are hard to take,
Re; Point CounterPoint
I read most of Huxley’s books in college for an independent study project. PCP is a bit of a slog. I tried to reread it 20 years ago and failed to finish.
It was a more vibrant read in its time. Most of the characters were current intellectuals and artists. Huxley included himself as the character Philip Quarles.
I’ve also tried to reread “Eyeless in Gaza,” his big serious literary novel after “Brave New World” with a similar lack of success, as much as it pains me to admit.
Huxley really was more of a Big Thinker, which I mean in a good way, than a conventional novelist. “Brave New World” was where he broke away from literature to his particular mission as a writer.
BTW, his essays are a delight and underrated. Orwell’s too.
One thing you take away from Huxley’s essays was how hard he worked as a young man establishing himself. Amazing output.
huxley:
I love the part where he goes into the history of Crome. The poem written by Sir Hercules! And Denis’ discovery of the real meaning of “carminative.”
But in the character of Mr. Scogan there is some dialogue that prefigures some of Brave New World. Huxley was percolating the ideas even back then.
I read both Point Counter Point and Eyeless in Gaza way back when. Both are overlong and uneven, but the good parts are memorable and very good.
Orwell is much more widely read than Huxley, and his name has entered our language, as a negative adjective: “orwellian”.
Cicero:
Basically agree.
But I would note, for better or worse, that Huxley’s “The Doors of Perception” was a substantial spark triggering the psychedelic revolution which continues to reverberate.
Jim Morrison, founder, lead singer and main songwriter of The Doors, knew his Blake, but he was referring to Huxley’s pioneer work of psychedelia.
Huxley’s last novel, “Island,” describes an Indian Ocean utopia which incorporated psychedelics into its world.
“Island” was Huxley’s attempt to counter the dystopia of “Brave New World.” His last will and testament.
Huxley’s wife injected Huxley with LSD at his request in his final hours as he was dying of cancer.
Which happened to be the same day JFK was assassinated.
neo:
I could do with a reread of “Crome Yellow” and “Brave New World.” I’ve got them in French, which is now my excuse to revisit old loves.
I also consider Huxley’s weirder later novels, “Ape and Essence” (a post-apocalyptic world) and “After Many a Summer Dies the Swan” (seeking scientific immortality) worth consideration.
Huxley’s range and depth, not to mention his heart — well, mold broken.
as an inside joke, there is a stan lee cameo in dr strange, with him reading ‘the doors of perception’ maybe that inspired jack kirby who seems to have been involved in the more fantastic elements of the series,
Then there’s Huxley’s “The Perennial Philosophy” — his attempt to compile and reconcile Western and Eastern mystical traditions in 1945.
Way, way ahead on that curve.
He left Europe in the late 30s for California, in part heartbroken that the political turmoil would lead to WW II. Huxley was seeking better solutions.
Huxley was always doing recon for the future and in a serious way.
Also the day of C. S. Lewis’ passing. Weird.
huxley, I was looking forward to your comments on Huxley. And here you have delivered!
Philip Sells:
Praise from the praiseworthy!
I wouldn’t be who I am today without Aldous Huxley, which is more a statement about me than him, but still…
Brave New World gave me the Heebie-Jeebies.
In Brave New World the peace is kept not just by genetic conditioning, but by making sure everyone is entertained at all times. Remember Electromagnetic Golf? Orgy-Porgy?
There’s a visit to a school where VERY young children are expected to experiment with sex-play, and scolded if they don’t want to participate. Hmm.
I think about that book a lot more lately. 🙁
}}} the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis hasn’t held up that well
Officially, perhaps, but one must keep in mind, these are often the same people gaslighting you about so many other things that are going on. So is the SWH actually not very well-based in reason and fact, or is that what you’re being told to believe?
If part of the goal is to manipulate you with language, with propaganda, then certainly making you unaware of the significance of language to the directions you think is hardly a bad idea for those people, is it?
Sorry, the fact is, words available to you — and the meanings ascribed to them, both overt and subvert — are of massive significance to how you think about literally everything.
Learming mathmatics is being increasingly derided in schools — first they reduce pushing basic arithmetic skills (“Why? We have calculators!!”), and now, the ludicrous “box math” — go ahead and look it up, if you are unfamiliar with it.
What it is, essentially, is an attempt to delay the introduction of what is probably the most important single concept for mathematics ever created — place notation** — until children are older, less adaptable, and less able to truly absorb the concept and add it to their full mental toolset. In other words, reducing their capacity to think with rigor and precision.
This is relevant because mathematics itself is a form of language that helps structure the thought process. It provides a great deal of “concrete” concepts to manipulate and process with — and thus teaches that there ARE absolutes in the world from an early age.
Our children are slowly being reduced back to None, One, Many in terms of thinking.
The significance of understanding basic arithmetic is not trivial. If I am a reporter, and tell you that there are three hundred groups, of about fifty people each, numbering over a million people … any mathematically apt thinker is going to go… Wait. WHAT?. You don’t need to actually calculate it, your brain already feels those three numbers don’t work together.
But if you are innumerate, you have no feel for numbers… you just take the claim as valid.
This works in simpler instances, too. If I am using a calculator, and punch in two numbers, but make an error and add or lose a digit in there — there’s a chance of me going, “wait, what?” and seeing that there is a problem, so I check and find my error. But with no feels for the numbers, I just take whatever gobbledegook the calculator spits out as true. And perhaps someone dies because my number is off by an order of magnitude.
This may feel as though it’s digressed in some unrelated direction, but I assert it has not — the real fact is, mathematics is a form of language and it absolutely supports the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis — knowing mathematics greatly orders and regularizes your thought processes — it gives them rigor and reliability which lacking mathematical ability/exposure is much harder to attain. Not impossible, but more difficult.
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** Place notation is a massively significant concept in terms of basic understanding of advanced concepts in math. It has been often suggested that the Greeks would almost certainly have developed at least early differential calculus had they not been saddled with Roman Numerals, but instead had the concepts of place notation available for manipulating numbers.
Among other key mathematical concepts that derive almost entirely from the 1600s is the notion of limits.
The classic “Zeno’s (Achilles’) Paradox” exists because of the failure of the Greeks to understand the idea that the sum of an infinite series can be a finite limit — e.g.,
is 1, not infinity. This is because it’s very very hard to calculate sums in roman numerals, especially fractional numbers.
And limits are absolutely central to the notion of derivatives… and derivatives lead directly to differential calculus.
Re: Huxley vs Orwell
Interestingly, Orwell had a copy of “1984” sent to Huxley and Huxley replied. Huxley didn’t believe the future was a boot stamping upon a human face forever.
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My own belief is that the ruling oligarchy will find less arduous and wasteful ways of governing and of satisfying its lust for power, and these ways will resemble those which I described in “Brave New World”…
I feel that the nightmare of “Nineteen Eighty-Four” is destined to modulate into the nightmare of a world having more resemblance to that which I imagined in “Brave New World.”
https://lettersofnote.com/2012/03/06/1984-v-brave-new-world/
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BTW, Huxley taught French to Orwell (Eric Blair) at Eton.
did not know that,
looking back at it, who was right, orwell or huxley,
in cuba in the 30s they considered social democracy although they didnt call it that, both the authentics and the orthodox entertained instituting the Constitution of 1940, even though it was a fools errand, free education, free healthcare free housing, that was Fidel’s promise, and well we know how that ended up,
now Looking at Russia, after the Soviet collapse, and the Soviet style interlude, you have a ideological renewal regime* under Putin, much like the Colonels of Greece, and Brazil,
thats what Herman Kahn called it, an authoritarian state, with a strong cultural and nationalist bent,
ignore some of the alliances in engages in the periphery, One might call it the Gangster state as with China, until the Time of Xi who wants a Maoist infused model, the Oligarchs and the Siloviki came out of different parts of the Bureaucracy, the latter the Security Services although not exclusively,
now the transnational transhumanists doesn’t like the former, because standards and reality enter into the mix
PD James Children of Men, sketched out what a slow collapse looks like
alan moore in the black dossier, does suggest, how an Airstrip regime, might appear after the downfall
OBH, that was a very interesting thought. It suggests a couple of questions which, if I ask them here, threaten to hijack the thread, which is, after all, non-‘open’. Well, I shall chance it… might not get another opportunity….
1. Given math being a language, is it really the case that it fits Sapir-Whorf (SW) premises, since the controlling mechanism, so to speak, of the latter was predicated, as I recall, on vocabulary primarily, whereas in math-as-language, the primary bottleneck is probably grammatical, that is, does the speaker understand the syntax required or not? It would seem to me that the causes of deficiencies in communication or comprehension between math and other languages are therefore orthogonal.
If I, for example, don’t understand the rules of operation (the ‘syntax’) of matrix algebra, then there are certain realms of information that I won’t be able to transmit or receive unless and until I learn those rules. But once I do, given that the ‘vocabulary’ of number is universal, given that condition, I then have access to the information space of which knowledge of matrix algebra is the gate. I don’t have to learn new ‘words’ (numbers or variables), maybe just new (to me) valid manipulations of those words.
2. Does SW necessarily rely on the trait of abstractness in language and particularly vocabulary? By which I mean the lack of a necessary connection between word choice and the thing, the reality, being represented by that word. A given rock, for example, could be called either ‘rock’ or ‘platypus’, but in principle, if everyone agreed that the latter is what they’re going to call it, then by God, it’s a platypus.
But with math, this doesn’t seem to work somehow, because as long as the controlling grammar (commutativity, etc.) remains invariable, then absolute correspondence between vocabulary (numbers) and reality seems to be both necessary and inevitable, really rather intrinsic to the whole universe. If I have a set of six rocks and everyone in the world, one fine day, arbitrarily agrees to call that a set of nineteen rocks instead, it seems to me that the ripple effects would somehow cause an automatic refutation of that attempt at some point, because the concept of ‘nineteen’ is determined by the basic order of reality in a way that the concept of ‘rock’ or ‘platypus’ might not be.
Re: “box math” (sounds kind of hateable) – I’m not yet sure that it’s such a bad thing, since after looking at an example, I came to realize that it’s essentially the method that I more or less use routinely when doing arithmetic in my head for large values, without formalizing it to that degree.
ObloodyHell:
Zeno’s Paradox is a disease.
Calculus is the cure.
There is a much simpler explanation for why math instruction is being dumbed down than “the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is true, applies to math, and is being exploited by elites” (my loose paraphase).
It’s that if you lower the bar enough to where anyone can pass, then you can cover up the politically incorrect distributions of math achievement among classes protected by the Civil Rights Act.
The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis comes in strong and weak flavors. The strong form, that language absolutely determines the possibilities of human thought, has not fared well.
However, there is no denying the weak versions, that language affects the possibilities of human thought.
This is the point of all the Newspeak innovations which the Left is constantly inflicting upon us.
There is a much simpler explanation for why math instruction is being dumbed down than “the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis…”
Niketas Choniates:
Math and Sapir-Whorf are red meat for me, but I agree one need not wheel out SWH for the current state of math instruction.
@huxley:There is no denying the weak versions, that language affects the possibilities of human thought.This is the point of all the Newspeak innovations which the Left is constantly inflicting upon us.
I have a lot of doubts about this. For example, something like half of languages (not obscure ones either, examples include Latin and Chinese languages) have no words for “yes” or “no”, yet the speakers of these languages can still give and withhold consent, agree and disagree, and express all the other things we use “yes” and “no” to express. There are languages without the word “run” yet speakers of those languages can still run and are not known to be in any way disadvantaged in running ability.
No, I think it just comes down to nothing more sinister than marketing techniques. Think of how many advertisements describe buying something as an “investment” or “savings”.
Niketas Choniates:
You are arguing against strong Sapir-Whorf. Not having words for yes/no/run doesn’t rule out using such concepts. Weak Sapir-Whorf argues that it may affect using them.
For instance, there is research showing that Russians who have two separate words for light-blue and dark-blue perceive the difference more quickly than English speakers having only one word, blue.
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What makes this experiment so interesting, then, is that it provides the first evidence that language, independent of other aspects of culture, is directly influencing color perception. It does so by showing that that influence is occurring online, and can thus be reduced or eliminated (reversed, even) by interfering with that influence using a verbal working memory manipulation. Obviously, this is just the first step in conclusively showing that language, independent of other cultural influences, can affect perception, and how it does so, but it’s a much needed first step. For anyone who’s interested (or mildly obsessed, as I am) in linguistic relativity, this is therefore a very exciting study.
https://scienceblogs.com/mixingmemory/2007/05/07/the-font-color0000ffbluesfont
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Also, dismissing such effects as marketing doesn’t really dismiss them.
Corporations spend billions of dollars on marketing in order to affect consumer behavior. That doesn’t mean everyone seeing a commercial for Coke marches out lockstep to buy a Coke. But enough do buy Coke.
I suspect such efforts are effective to some degree — like weak Sapir-Whorf.
huxley:
Agreed that language can affect how people think but doesn’t determine thought or prevent thinking things for which there are no words.
The left works extremely hard to change language in order to affect perceptions – no more “illegal aliens” but instead “undocumented workers.” No more “homeless” but people who are simply “unhoused.” And of course the emphasis on pronouns. It all helps to move the Overton Window.
Leftists are not dumb in terms of their knowledge about how to influence people.
In the Hemingway novel “The Sun Also Rises” there is a famous line
“How did you go bankrupt?”
Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.”
Which seems so apropos as to how we are in the midst of losing our freedoms and slipping into Dictatorship.
Orwell was an interesting man. He remained a Socialist for the rest of his life and flirted with Communism until he volunteered to fight for the Republic in Spain and saw how evil the Communists really were. His biographer also wrote that Orwell although not a genocide supporter, had antisemitic feelings. Even though he wrote plenty about World War II he never (or rarely) mentioned the Holocaust.
Hitchens seem to prize orwell over burnham, which is ironically because they were both fmr Trotskyites and Orwell was as much a sympathizer of the point, burnham was who came up with the three superstate formulation, I remember reading that from one of his essays Hitchens, of course like Conquest, the former went to work for the Security State, Burnham for the OPC, Conquest for the IRD
noted here,
https://cynthiachung.substack.com/p/the-life-of-james-burnham-from-trotskyism
Corporations spend billions of dollars on marketing in order to affect consumer behavior. That doesn’t mean everyone seeing a commercial for Coke marches out lockstep to buy a Coke. But enough do buy Coke.
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OK, but I’m recalling the observation of a business executive that half of his advertising budget was wasted. He just didn’t know which half.
from what I could ascertain from a number of review, Burgess didn’t have the sexual assault in the theatre, that Kubrick included, but he did include the other scenes, there is a certain nonchalance about the grim spectacle, that maybe he intended, in all the folderall,
https://spinstrangenesscharm.wordpress.com/2024/08/
I found Huxley a very readable writer, which may be a little surprising because the world he wrote about in his novels about contemporary life is long gone. There’s something about the comedy that lives on. “Chrome Yellow” is a good short read. I also enjoyed his other, less well-known, early satires, “Antic Hay” and “Those Barren Leaves,” though they’re less compact. Huxley’s “serious” novel “Eyeless in Gaza” didn’t really do it for me. I don’t have much memory of “Point Counter Point,” except that it wasn’t as wild or Waughian as the other early novels.
One thing about “Brave New World” that got to me was that the characters go to the “feelies” the way that people went to the movies. “Feelies” struck me as a really strange word and concept, but now I realize that for Huxley, “movies” must have been a very strange (and perhaps barbarous) word and concept.
Those who liked “Brave New World” should have a look at Yevgeny Zamyatin’s “We.” It must have been an influence on Huxley, who shifted the focus from the dreams of the early Soviet Union to the West of the 20s and 30s. Orwell, who wrote about Zamyatin shifted the setting yet again to the totalitarian and wartime regimes of the 30s and 40s.
FWIW, Bruno Rizzi, an Italian shoe salesman, was an influence on Burnham, and perhaps on Orwell.
miguel cervantes on August 12, 2024 at 11:17 am said: — link to spinstrangenesscharm post, which is only a long excerpt from this substack article by N. S. Lyons, which I thoroughly recommend, especially in concert with Neo’s post on Melanie Phillips’ explanation of the UK election.
Anybody who can put together a coherent exposition of a major socio-political situation by mashing Machiavelli and Pareto is worth reading!
https://theupheaval.substack.com/p/britains-foxes-are-beset-by-wolves?publication_id=330796&post_id=147555144&isFreemail=true&r=bj80t&triedRedirect=true
The conclusion:
1984 was scarier.