https://www.tau.ac.il/education/muse/maslool/boidem/170foreword.html
We were keeping our eye on 1984. When the year came and the prophecy
didn’t, thoughtful Americans sang softly in praise of themselves. The
roots of liberal democracy had held. Wherever else the terror had
happened, we, at least, had not been visited by Orwellian nightmares.
But 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. Contrary to common belief even among
the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell
warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression.
But in Huxley’s vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of
their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come
to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their
capacities to think.
What Orwell feared were 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 wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would
deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so
much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared
that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would
be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a
captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture,
preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and
the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World
Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the
alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take into account man’s almost
infinite appetite for distractions.” In 1984, Huxley added, people are
controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled
by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will
ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.
This book is about the possibility that Huxley, not Orwell, was right.
