Rod Dreher

Art, Cooking, Suffering, Supper Clubs

Huxley Vs. Orwell

By Rod Dreher • November 28, 2012, 11:37 AM

This blog’s reader reflectionephemeral passes along this cartoon précis of the late Neil Postman’s “Amusing Ourselves To Death,” in which Postman advances the thesis that Aldous Huxley, not George Orwell, was right about our dystopian future. Example:

What Orwell feared was those who would ban books; what Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who would want to read one.

We don’t live in a “Brave New World” dystopia, but it is perfectly clear that Huxley was far, far closer to the mark than Orwell. Anyway, the cartoon is a good way to introduce the comparison. “Amusing Ourselves To Death” is here; I haven’t read it in ages, but seeing this cartoon makes me think it bears re-reading.

Posted in Culture, Ideas. Tagged Aldous Huxley, dystopia, George Orwell.

29 Responses to Huxley Vs. Orwell

Seth says:

November 28, 2012 at 11:49 am

It absolutely bears reading and re-reading; I’ve just finished it myself, after reading his Technopoly.

Tolstoy is good. . . but more and more, it seems to that Jacques Ellul, Marshall McLuhan, and Neil Postman have a great deal more to say about our current predicament.

In the words of John Prine:

“Blow up your T.V. throw away your paper
Go to the country, build you a home
Plant a little garden, eat a lot of peaches
Try an find Jesus on your own . . . “
Floridan says:

November 28, 2012 at 11:56 am

I don’t have the opportunity to seach for figures, but my understanding is that there has never been as many books of all types sold than currently.
Gus says:

November 28, 2012 at 11:58 am

Interesting article juxtaposed against the one below it. Seems like our food obsession (to which I plead guilty) is (or can be) just another form of decadence.
mlindroo says:

November 28, 2012 at 12:16 pm

I have to read it as well … in return, I encourage you all to check out Roger Waters concept album/anti-Neocon/Iraq War diatribe AMUSED TO DEATH ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amused_to_Death ) which was inspired by Postman’s book.
Johnny F. Ive says:

November 28, 2012 at 12:27 pm

Orwell was right about surveillance. Huxley was right that society would be geared toward consumerism by ending adulthood. Huxley was just sharing contemporary thought within his elite circles. His brother Julian was the director of UNESCO and he wanted to replace Chrisitanity with scientific humanism.
http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/30136084?uid=3739776&uid=2&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21101370236733

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Huxley#Eugenics_and_race
reflectionephemeral says:

November 28, 2012 at 12:28 pm

Thanks for reading and for posting the link, Rod. Looking forward to hearing what others think about it.

To borrow from what I was saying on the other thread, which is actually on point here rather than a digression there… Postman wrote: “What is dangerous about television is not its junk. … What is happening in America is that television is transforming all serious public business into junk. … [A]ll discourse on television must take the form of an entertainment. Television has little tolerance for arguments, hypotheses, reasons, explanations, or any of the instruments of abstract, expositional thought. What television mostly demands is a performing art. Thinking is not a performing art. Showing is.”

I think Postman overemphasized the importance of medium– the speed & ubiquity of communications have to be factored in, too. But that’s a quibble. His overall point seems to be quite accurate: that our treatment of serious issues– even or especially from many of our elite decisionmakers– derives from our infotainment industry. It’s no accident that one of the angry young 2010 GOP freshmen got his start on an MTV reality TV show. It’s the same skill set.

This is very speculative, but I do wonder if George Bush Jr. viewed his father– war hero, president, head of the CIA, captain of his college baseball team, still held in high regard by most– as a loser & a wimp. That was, after all, a message it was easy to take away from the omnipresent media.

About 10 paragraphs into the famous 1987 Newsweek “Wimp Factor” story, after quoting a bunch of people saying that people think Bush Sr. came across as wimpy, the author tried to substantiate her thesis:

The reasons are both stylistic and substantive. Television, the medium that makes Ronald Reagan larger than life, diminishes George Bush. He does not project self-confidence, wit or warmth to television viewers. He comes across instead to many of them as stiff or silly. Even his most devout backers can sense his unease on the tube. …

I don’t think it’s completely unfair to say that Bush Jr. oriented his political persona around being seen as “tough” in the day-to-day media. It was a great success at the time. But “being seen as tough on TV” doesn’t make a successful presidency.

Some partisan Republicans act as though Chris Matthews is an exemplary representative for the Democratic Party, but few if any liberals like the guy. About a year ago, he said, “George Bush took this country to war. … He was able to use the tube to convince this country it had to go to war. I would say that’s more successful than Obama’s been.”

Matthews and Bush Jr. have the same today’s-headlines-focused definition of “success” in politics. It’s not an approach that makes for reasoned discourse or long-term thinking.
Lord Karth says:

November 28, 2012 at 12:37 pm

Of course it does. Also, I commend to your attention the following:

D. Boorstin, The Image;

J. Lukacs, Outgrowing Democracy A 1984-vintage work, but still with much to say today.

J. Lukacs, Democracy and Populism.

Finally, for a more specific treatment of the entitlement/debt problem—the chief source of the coming Meltdown—I commend to your attention the works of L. Kotlikoff, particularly his Generational Accounting and The Coming Generational Storm.

There are others, that I will attempt to post later.

Your servant,

Lord Karth
reflectionephemeral says:

November 28, 2012 at 12:41 pm

Thanks for reading and for posting the link, Rod. Looking forward to hearing what others think about it.

To borrow from what I was saying on the other thread, which is actually on point here rather than a digression there… Postman wrote: “What is dangerous about television is not its junk. … What is happening in America is that television is transforming all serious public business into junk. … [A]ll discourse on television must take the form of an entertainment. Television has little tolerance for arguments, hypotheses, reasons, explanations, or any of the instruments of abstract, expositional thought. What television mostly demands is a performing art. Thinking is not a performing art. Showing is.”

I think Postman overemphasized the importance of medium– the speed & ubiquity of communications have to be factored in, too. But that’s a quibble. His overall point seems to be quite accurate: that our treatment of serious issues– even or especially from many of our elite decisionmakers– derives from our infotainment industry. It’s no accident that one of the angry young 2010 GOP freshmen got his start on an MTV reality TV show. It’s the same skill set.

This is very speculative, but I do wonder if George Bush Jr. viewed his father– war hero, president, head of the CIA, captain of his college baseball team, still held in high regard by most– as a loser & a wimp. That was, after all, a message it was easy to take away from the omnipresent media.

About 10 paragraphs into the famous 1987 Newsweek “Wimp Factor” story, after quoting a bunch of people saying that people think Bush Sr. came across as wimpy, the author tried to substantiate her thesis:

The reasons are both stylistic and substantive. Television, the medium that makes Ronald Reagan larger than life, diminishes George Bush. He does not project self-confidence, wit or warmth to television viewers. He comes across instead to many of them as stiff or silly. Even his most devout backers can sense his unease on the tube. …

I don’t think it’s completely unfair to say that Bush Jr. oriented his political persona around being seen as “tough” in the day-to-day media. It was a great success at the time. But “being seen as tough on TV” doesn’t make a successful presidency.

Some partisan Republicans act as though Chris Matthews is an exemplary representative for the Democratic Party, but few if any liberals want much to do with him. About a year ago, he said, “George Bush took this country to war. … He was able to use the tube to convince this country it had to go to war. I would say that’s more successful than Obama’s been.”

Matthews and Bush Jr. have the same today’s-headlines-focused definition of “success” in politics. Good news for folks defending Postman’s prescience, bad news for America. It’s not an approach that makes for reasoned discourse or long-term thinking.
Lord Karth says:

November 28, 2012 at 12:43 pm

Also, Bradbury’s Farenheit 451. We’re not to the point of burning books in favor of television and computer screens……yet.

The key word being “yet”.

Your servant,

Lord Karth
Bryan says:

November 28, 2012 at 12:54 pm

Orwell if we’re talking “Homage to Catalonia,” by far his best work.

Huxley if we’re talking “BNW” versus “1984,” easily.

“Hourly Reporter Kicked in Coccyx by Mystery Savage” should be put on my tombstone.
Charles Cosimano says:

November 28, 2012 at 1:04 pm

Forget the book. Take a look at the 1956 film version of 1984 and see the omnipresent television monitors.

Huxley, was of course, more accurate. But the problem is that it really is hard to see anything wrong with his society. People are happy, they enjoy their lives and those are good things.
Paul Emmons says:

November 28, 2012 at 1:19 pm

>I don’t have the opportunity to seach for figures, but my understanding is that there has never been as many books of all types sold than currently.

One would expect this when the population of the world is about three times what was in the year 1900 and three entire continents are waking up.

But I must say that in physical terms, the last two books I bought a week or two ago were distinctly substandard. One of them looked less like a book than like the manual that would be shipped with a videogame. It was about an inch shorter and an inch narrower than another I had bought several years ago in the same series! The other was a copy of the late Jacques Barzun’s “From Dawn to Decadence”, whose copy in our university library, purchased upon its first publication, was a hefty, magisterial tome in keeping with the stature of its content. What I received was, again, about an inche smaller in every dimension and with a binding that I don’t expect will survive one reading.

Worst of all, I will probably find it uncomfortable to read either volume without a magnifying glass. They are an insult to their authors and customers alike. They fairly scream, “buy it on Kindle next time.”

I suppose I will soon succomb and do so, but with trepidation. Hurricane Sandy has already given its victims
a hint of how quickly these electronic gadgets can fail us. They are fair-weather friends. The more knowledge we entrust to them, the more suddenly we could all be plunged into a new dark age. As a librarian, I worry about this a lot, particularly when even our academic libraries are climbing on board the e-book bandwagon. We may not be burning our books yet, but we have been blithely throwing LP recordings into the dumpster (despite the warnings of the Library of Congress that the LP is a more durable medium than the CD) and shipping bound periodicals to warehouses off-campus.

Faced with a choice between Brave New World and Big Brother, I’d go for the former in a minute personally. But our future may be worse than either one. I only cross my fingers that it will be after my time.
Greenman says:

November 28, 2012 at 1:40 pm

If we are recommending books, I will suggest a more recent novel is The Unincorporated Man by Dani Kollin and Eytan Kollin – http://www.theunincorporatedman.com/

“A brilliant industrialist named Justin Cord awakes from a 300-year cryonic suspension into a world that has accepted an extreme form of market capitalism. It’s a world in which humans themselves have become incorporated and most people no longer own a majority of themselves.

Justin Cord is now the last free man in the human race – owned by no one and owning no one.”

And along Orwell’s surveillance theme is The Traveler by John Twelve Hawks, which focuses on the creation of a “Virtual Panopticon: a society where all individuals become so accustomed to being watched and monitored that they act at all times as if they were being observed and are as such completely controllable.”
MC says:

November 28, 2012 at 1:56 pm

I’m not so sure that 1984 was really about banning books. I think it was about political correctness, the subversion of the truth, language, education and thought itself for political purposes. In that sense, I think Orwell was every bit as prophetic as Huxley.
EngineerScotty says:

November 28, 2012 at 2:00 pm

Its a lot easier to delete a file (including one “belonging” to someone else–particularly if you possess a mobile device sold by a vendor such as Apple or amazon, who take the view that the content on the device is not really yours, and may be nuked at the vendor’s whim) than it is to destroy a book in dead-tree form.
KMT says:

November 28, 2012 at 2:04 pm

The Huxley dystopia facilitates the Orwellian one.
Siarlys Jenkins says:

November 28, 2012 at 2:09 pm

This is exactly what destroyed unions. All the time that the whole family used to spend down at the union hall is now spent on the couch watching TV.
Joe Carter says:

November 28, 2012 at 2:37 pm

Postman was a prophet.

I really miss him. I’d give up a year of blog reading to have another collection of his essays like ‘Conscientious Objections.”
Noah172 says:

November 28, 2012 at 2:57 pm

Life in the USSR and other communist societies resembled 1984 in important aspects; that communism later collapsed does not prove Orwell wrong.

Orwell was right about the manipulation of language to control thought — although in our time this is done more through the tyranny of political correctness than overt censorship and suppression on the part of the state.

Similarly, Orwell was right about the manipulation of historical memory to achieve a form of tyranny over the mind of man: “He who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past.” Such manipulation and politicization of history has been one of the Left’s major projects in its “long march through the institutions.”

Orwell was right about the mollification of the “proles” through government largesse and crass entertainment.

Orwell was right about modern warfare becoming increasingly, ruinously expensive, yet involving ever smaller numbers of professionalized specialists rather than the mass conscript armies of the world wars, such that the bulk of the population has less and less personal connection with the wars being waged in their name. The pointless, endless, unwinnable nature of the wars depicted in 1984 serves as an eery precursor to our democratic imperialist misadventures in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

Orwell was right about the learned stupidity required of inhuman ideology; modern political correctness requires the kind of reality-denying and -ignoring controlled madness that characterized members of Oceania’s Inner Party (a theme of Steve Sailer’s writing: see his tag “political correctness makes you stupid”)

Orwell’s description of the bitter political divisions between Oceania’s Ingsoc, Eurasia’s Neo-Bolshevism, and Eastasia’s “Death-worship” — a reflection of the division between Trotskyists and Stalinists — as so much sound and fury among essentially equivalent programs finds a great deal of fulfillment in our own contemporary politics. We have the neocon-dominated Republicans and the neolib-dominated Democrats. FOX/WSJ versus NYT/WaPo/network news. Mass immigration, free trade, welfare/warfare state, “humanitarian intervention,” political correctness informing policy after policy — all the order of the day no matter who wins our ever more expensive kabuki elections.
Gus says:

November 28, 2012 at 3:20 pm

Huxley’s vision means books don’t need to be burned. No one will be particularly interested in them when they can play Centrifugal Bumble Puppy or Electro Magnetic Golf. Or for that matter have lots of guilt free, consequence free sex or take Soma (a gramme is better than a damn).
J.J. Gonzalez says:

November 28, 2012 at 4:17 pm

Tough choice, but I’ll vote for Orwell. Not only did he get much right with 1984 and Animal Farm, but he foresaw WWII in Coming Up for Air.

And let’s not overlook Ayn Rand — another doomsdayer who got a lot right.
Paul Emmons says:

November 28, 2012 at 4:29 pm

Noah172

>Orwell’s description of the bitter political divisions between Oceania’s Ingsoc, Eurasia’s Neo-Bolshevism, and Eastasia’s “Death-worship” — a reflection of the division between Trotskyists and Stalinists — as so much sound and fury among essentially equivalent programs finds a great deal of fulfillment in our own contemporary politics.

Indeed. I don’t know how much respectability it has among Orwell’s criticis or cognoscenti, but my interpretation of 1984 is that in reality the three governments get along very well and that the wars are a lie. The party leaders appreciate the wastefulness of warfare, and that without it they can all live in greater luxury, especially if the little people can be duped into slaving away under subsistence conditions in the belief that they are in a life-and-death struggle. This belief is created entirely by propaganda.

This possibility should give us pause as to how much of what we see, hear, and read on the media we can believe. I’m heartened by how the Internet and cell phones have enabled us all to be reporters of what we see and hear. But whether this quantity of primary-source material from amateurs can make up for the declining support of professional journalism in print and broadcasting alike remains to be seen.
EngineerScotty says:

November 28, 2012 at 5:02 pm

And let’s not overlook Ayn Rand — another doomsdayer who got a lot right.

Except unlike Orwell and Huxley, Rand apparently thought capitalist tyranny a good idea.
cka2nd says:

November 28, 2012 at 6:03 pm

As Noah172 demontrated, in a particular place and time, Orwell was right, while in this particular place and time, Huxley may be right. I haven’t read Husley, but is the difference perhaps because Orwell was describing the kind of dystopia that Stalinist Communism would result in, while Huxley was describing one arising from the decline of Capitalist society?
geronimo says:

November 28, 2012 at 7:16 pm

what is the problem with kindle, tablets and ‘computer screens’? In my tablet I have books I’d never have easy physical access… I have whole libraries of techincal books, some of them that I’ll never read, thanks to the modern technology (and the torrents, never forget them)

and as Cosimano said, BWN’s society is fine. People are happy and free and prosperous.
Paul Emmons says:

November 28, 2012 at 9:08 pm

As a Christian, I don’t think that it will ever be possible to for our species to design a society as stable, or which seems to keep everyone as content, as the one envisoned by Huxley. For one thing, I don’t remember him ever considering the finitude of energy sources that has begun to trouble us now. It seems to run on perpetual motion machines. In one passage, for instance, he describes the reason for athletic facilities, which the population was conditioned to attend obsessively, being located so far from where they lived: the rationale for this location was so that they would “consume transport” and therefore keep additional workers gainfully employed. The energy involved was no issue. No doubt this prospect would delight capitalist automakers today, but can we imagine a central planner being so prodigal?

Nevertheless, I tend to agree with those who find Huxley the more interesting in terms of ideas. Brave New World has suffered by comparison to 1984 as to literary values such as style and character development; but in other ways it ought to be read and discussed just as widely.
pacopond says:

November 28, 2012 at 9:11 pm

Neil Postman died far too soon. I still miss him from time to time.

I happened across “Teaching as a Conserving Activity” early in my teaching career, over 30 years ago. His idea of homeostasis and the need for schools to work against society’s unreflective curriculum hit home with me. (This response is probably why I, who have been a liberal since teenage years, have started to read Rod and TAC.)

I read “Amusing Ourselves to Death” in the early ’90s, and am sorry I gave my copy away.

As for Orwell and Huxley, I agree. Huxley got it mostly right, though his novel postulates a society that, while hedonistic and shallow, is also tightly and centrally controlled. I have taught both novels for years, and tried to explain to students the dangers Huxley anticipated.

If Orwell warned against a collectivist fascist/soviet totalitarianism, and Huxley sounded the alarm against shallow, self-satisfied conventionality and control by hedonic engineers, a recent dystopian novel worth reading is Margaret Atwood’s “Oryx and Crake,” in which social inequality, a corporate-dominated libertarian culture, and genetic engineering are the targets of satire.
Kris D says:

November 28, 2012 at 9:55 pm

Glad that Lord Karth brought up Fahrenheit 451; not so much about the book burning, but other aspects of technology that Bradbury got right. I-Pods, big screen TVs, interactive reality TV, pills to make you feel better, pills to make you forget.
Hector_St_Clare says:

November 29, 2012 at 10:22 am

Re: Orwell was right about modern warfare becoming increasingly, ruinously expensive,

In particular, Orwell’s point about modern warfare reminds me a lot of something that the Marxist intellectual Paul Sweezy said in the late 1960s, in his book ‘Monopoly Capital’. Sweezy suggested that the real point of the modern American military wasn’t to defend our security, or even primarily to advance American capitalist ideals: it was, in large part, to use up the surplus generated by oligarchic late capitalism, in a way that didn’t trickle down to the poor and working class and thereby undermine the logic of the system. This dovetails really well with what Orwell said was the purpose of warfare in his imagined future.