Chris Hedges: 2011, A Brave New Dystopia
Hedges (brilliant) ..
The two greatest visions of a future dystopia were George Orwell’s “1984” and Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World.” The debate, between those who watched our descent towards corporate totalitarianism, was who was right. Would we be, as Orwell wrote, dominated by a repressive surveillance and security state that used crude and violent forms of control? Or would we be, as Huxley envisioned, entranced by entertainment and spectacle, captivated by technology and seduced by profligate consumption to embrace our own oppression? It turns out Orwell and Huxley were both right. Huxley saw the first stage of our enslavement. Orwell saw the second.
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This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 29th, 2010 at 9:33 AM and filed under Articles, Arts, Civil Rights, Foreign Affairs, Law Enforcement, Media, Philosophy, Technology, War. Follow comments here with the RSS 2.0 feed. Skip to the end and leave a response. Trackbacks are closed.
One Response to “Chris Hedges: 2011, A Brave New Dystopia”
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At the risk of sounding snarky and hopelessly self-aggrandizing, I had considered writing this article (i.e., a comparison of Orwell and Huxley in today’s zeitgeist – specifically pointing out that both were correct in different ways) quite some time ago, as I have been thinking about this for almost a decade. Still, Hedges is among my favorite writers, and he did a much better job of it than I probably wouild have.
However, he did leave out a particularly strong aspect in Huxley’s corner: pharmaceuticals. So many types of “soma” to choose from!
Peace.
Posted on 29-Dec-10 at 10:13 am | Permalink