Something noting the characteristics and parallel fears of the "not too distant future", that we are living today. A thoughtful piece asking questions something along the lines of "are we amusing ourselves to death with modern information technology?" or are we "living in a time of deceit, and deprivation of true information and meaning?"A pondering of whether our intellectuals and wage slaves alike are becoming reduced to passivity and egotism, amidst facebooks, iphones, twitters, and xboxes, or are we just subject to the illusions of truths concealed from us by corrupt media, fearful governments and scheming elite.
Is truth drowning in a sea of irrelevance?*
Are we held captivated by the complex of fears strangling human civilization?
Are we nawing off our own capacity for action at the most perilous hour of our existence, with paranoia or frivolity?
Are the numerous distractions, entertainments, and flashing lights a death knell or the sign of a society having an anxiety attack about its future, while attempting to rub out the fears of our impending doom?
They say monkeys have a lot of sex when their afraid. Is this a warped and strangely analogous explanation for why the internet is mostly porn, and chatroulette a global forum for masturbators and flashers?
Are we in pain or compelled by pleasure?
Suffering or in the throws of elation and enlightenment?
*Will it be the things that we love that destroy us or our hatreds that drive us to our ends? Is there something beyond the dichotomies of loves and fears?
Can it be just that black and white? Can it be shades of grey? ...Perhaps just maybe existence and what we are dealing with here at the end of the first decade, at the start of this new century is far more colourful and complex than that, and comprehension requires letting go.
Anyway, there was supposed to be a commentary contrasting the dystopian world visions of Aldus Huxley and George Orwell here...but there isn't.
I'm too distracted by fear, love, passion, anger and anxiety to write, all I have are questions.
*Image excerpted from Amusing Ourselves to Death by Stuart McMillen
Did you know Neil Postman wrote a book comparing those two visions? It's called Amusing Ourselves To Death. Here's the foreward: http://www.serendipity.li/jsmill/post_1.html
ReplyDeleteYes, my intention was to discuss Neil Postman's thesis and conclusion. While I don't entirely agree with Neil Postman's assertion that Aldus Huxley was right, not Orwell, I never got around to debating it.
ReplyDeleteI have become stymied by the shear complexity of the issues facing human beings on this planet today. You see, I know enough about geopolitics, economics, repression, surveillance and media to understand that Orwell's vision of life on earth is indeed happening in many different manifestations all over the planet. But I also know quite a bit about information technology, social movements, and the inherent egotism of technological design and emerging media to see Huxley's dystopian conclusions abound in today's world.
Given that variables abound, everyday the world turns, perception is finite, subjectivity profoundly limiting, there is no such thing as an accurate vision of an emerging world. We make it what it is, based on what we believe, see in it, and choose to create. Even that statement is one version of reality. For some the world is made, based on someone else's beliefs, and it is fed to us, and we accept it or choose something else...or are forced to accept it as it is.
I am afraid I am defeated by theory and lack a solid epistemological grounding to posit anything of significance.
P.S. Thank you for mentioning Postman and posting a link.
ReplyDeleteA better summary is also available here: http://www.recombinantrecords.net/tag/aldous-huxley/
ReplyDeleteThanks to Stuart Mcmillan
Thought so.
ReplyDeleteSocial media, at least, is a fusion of the two visions. Postman was a Luddite and that seems to have been his primary lens and objective. He thought things were better in the past when everyone wrote with quills. But people have always been stupid. I suspect the only difference is now visible culture is created by and for people across socioeconomic backgrounds, not just the educated cultural elite. But people have always been thought-controlled, distracted and stupid. The Crusades didn't happen because people were informed about the issues. The Roman Coliseum wasn't built because the Caesars wanted everyone to have a good time. These days instead of the Catholic Church and Roman Nobility it is CNN, Fox Network, NBC, Professional Sports, Facebook, Twitter, Blogger, Wordpress, etc. We see clearly people's hands in their own oppression. But it has always been this way. Marx didn't rouse people by writing his Manifesto; rather he inspired a few key elites, and the thug among them, Stalin, set out to change the entire world by trying to force people into agreement. People are not going to "rise up" to do anything except vote the best singers or ship themselves off to wars they don't understand. The only minds we can hope to free, I think, are our own.
In other words I'm in the subjectivity camp.
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