Ace of Spades HQ: "A recent Matt Lewis column mentioned a book called Amusing Ourselves to Death, by Neil Postman, which was published in 1985. Yes, It's Old (TM). Its central thesis struck a chord with me: That freedom and reason will be lost in America not in an Orwellian way, but in a Huxleyan one. Orwell's vision was of a government ruthlessly suppressing books and changing written accounts of the past in order to change the thinking of the present.RTWT, it's short. I highly recommend Postman's book also even if I disagree with his recommendations and agree that it's often shallower than it should be. Did I forget to mention that Postman was definitely liberal and the original edition's cover had a picture of Reagan with a bozo the clown nose? So there's that.
Rick Tempest spoke about this at the end of the most recent AoSHQ podcast. Rick doesn't read much, so when he does finish a book, it's like The Only Thing He Can Talk About.
Anyway, Huxley's vision was that no totalitarian state was needed for such a descent into infantilization and restriction of thought: That all that was necessary was that the means of distraction and infantilization be provided to the population, and the people would voluntarily choose that path, no Mintruth needed, no black-armored thought police required. Orwell's vision was therefore of a forcible lobotomy, conducted by the state; Huxley's was one of a voluntary one, people checking in to an outpatient clinic every day to have bothersome parts of their brains excised."
It's worth the whole price of admission just to read the first half of chapter 11 -- even if he's wrong. The best recent -- and scary -- take on the Huxley/Orwell reckoning includes this:
But what then of American democracy?And it was written before Snowden happened. It's relatively long but also far, far beyond a RTWT. Even if you don't like the ending.
Liberty is, in the grand sweep of human history, a rare and most extraordinary state. If, as Jefferson claimed, the tree of liberty must be watered from time to time with the natural manure that is the blood of tyrants and martyrs, the obvious question arises: can it survive in the absence of such fertilizer? The barren dirt of human nature from which it grows does not inspire confidence. Libertarianism has thus always been attached to the doctrine of perpetual revolution. The lemma which undercuts all systems of perpetual revolution is their assumption that revolutionary activity will remain possible in perpetuity.
This, then, is the deepest question facing the future of the open society: Are revolutions still possible in modern states?
My answer? Perhaps—but not for much longer. From what can already be seen on the horizon, two factors seem destined to incapacitate any future revolution: Public Dependency and The Emerging Panopticon.
My own take is that we're about to transition from Huxley to Orwell as an emphasis -- but Aldous will not be laid off.
Unlike the rest of us.
Posts
