Orwell/Zamyatin vs Huxley: Who Was Right? Both?

[Kingu Kurimuzon]

Referring to Brave New World and We/1984, which do you see becoming more a reality?

Are we already there?

Do these worlds stem from a specific ideology (i.e. marxism, fascism, etc) or is it possible that different types of ideologies implemented in society can lead to the same dystopian outcome(s)?

Do you see one particular dystopia as inevitable or can it be avoided?

 

[SpankyMcFly]

Referring to Brave New World and We/1984, which do you see becoming more a reality?

Are we already there?

Do these worlds stem from a specific ideology (i.e. marxism, fascism, etc) or is it possible that different types of ideologies implemented in society can lead to the same dystopian outcome(s)?

Do you see one particular dystopia as inevitable or can it be avoided?

I thought Orwells fears more important to worry about but I think Huxley fears have already manifested, hence he was right first. I'll expound.

Huxley feared that we would be given so much information that we would be reduced to passivity and egotism. That the truth would be drowned out in a sea of irrelevance. That 'we' would become a trivial culture.

That this is already so is manifest in U.S. culture.

Here's the thing though, they are both wrong in one regard. They both envisioned a global community. A one world. This hasn't happened, yet. I'm skeptical that it's possible. In this regards then we have a built in 'reality' check. Others.

I experience this daily. I ride the metro and as I cross into another 3rd world I see the stark contrast. People in the here and now fighting for survival in a corrupt, lawless and opportunity poor environment. Meanwhile a 'slow motion' purge is going on (10-15k year) in the form of cartel violence.

This is useful to me for several reasons not least of which is keeping me tethered, grateful.

*resists massive urge to correlate overlapping and related concepts*

 

[Kingu Kurimuzon]

[MENTION=8584]SpankyMcFly[/MENTION] Both authors were temperamentally idealistic, so they had a tendency to see the best and worst in society while sometimes blinded to the middle, graying aspects. Their fear of a one world gov't likely stemmed from that same naive idealism. Seeing the best outcome often entails also seeing the worst outcome for people inclined to idealism.

I agree, we're in Huxley world already in the USA and have been for some time. But that can become an Orwellian nightmare. One sets the stage for the other, perhaps? I think it depends on things like scarcity and famine. Wealthy, larger nations are more likely to become Brave New World, whilst poorer, smaller nations tend toward 1984 (North Korea could be a good example). If the USA sees an increase in poverty and lack of basic creature comforts, we could become more 1984-like if we don't implode or Balkanize first. I think we're on the path to 1984. Now I think Russia has moved more toward the Huxley model in the wake of the fall of the USSR although there's still a good deal of the Orwell model

 

[SpankyMcFly]

[MENTION=8584]SpankyMcFly[/MENTION] Both authors were temperamentally idealistic, so they had a tendency to see the best and worst in society while sometimes blinded to the middle, graying aspects. Their fear of a one world gov't likely stemmed from that same naive idealism. Seeing the best outcome often entails also seeing the worst outcome for people inclined to idealism.

Well both are considered INFPs. It's reasonable to conclude that a one world dystopia would be involve losing their individuality or ability to pursue their 'own' thing. Of becoming a drone. MBTI aside, I think Huxley's Brave New World was satire, not prophecy per se. Brave New World specifically, has come to serve as the false symbol for any regime of universal happiness. Can't we all just get along?!?!

Huxley exploits our anxieties of both Soviet Communism and American capitalism. He taps into, and then feeds, our revulsion at Pavlovian style behavioural conditioning (modern day marketing) and eugenics. The PRICE of universal happiness will be the sacrifice of the most hallowed shibboleths of our culture: "motherhood", "home", "family", "freedom", even "love". Yielding insipid happiness that's unworthy of the name. Its evocation arouses our unease and distaste. He is seeking to warn us against scientific utopianism.

"..there is always soma, delicious soma, half a gramme for a half-holiday, a gramme for a week-end, two grammes for a trip to the gorgeous East, three for a dark eternity on the moon..."

I agree, we're in Huxley world already in the USA and have been for some time. But that can become an Orwellian nightmare. One sets the stage for the other, perhaps? I think it depends on things like scarcity and famine. Wealthy, larger nations are more likely to become Brave New World, whilst poorer, smaller nations tend toward 1984 (North Korea could be a good example). If the USA sees an increase in poverty and lack of basic creature comforts, we could become more 1984-like if we don't implode or Balkanize first. I think we're on the path to 1984. Now I think Russia has moved more toward the Huxley model in the wake of the fall of the USSR although there's still a good deal of the Orwell model

My favorite Huxley quote "That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach.'

P.S. Break the cycle, rise above, focus on science

 

[Zangetshumody]

I have read Brave New World, and I have not read 1984. I have had in-depth discussions about 1984, sufficient to avoid reading it, because I came to the conclusion that it was pretty much a rehash of Animal Farm (which I also haven't read, but I think I've seen some movie adaptation). Animal Farm is obviously a critique of Leninism, which includes a critique which might be analogously extended toward Fascism (although the rhetoric of Fascism is markedly different from State-Socialist rhetoric, the political behaviors do fall neatly together under the banner of totalitarianism, even if the internal rationale is distinguishable, this becomes a hollow difference of superficial ideological justification). Ok, so far I have discussed a book that wasn't even mentioned in the original question...

1984, the big brother state; depicts the overt erosion of a democratic edifice, and the suppression of the libertarian-open society, and is the ideological equivalent of the modern manifestation of the "liberal-left", that although is not fully depicted by the Hillary Clinton supporters using white guilt to win votes in their "ground game", includes all the operative elements: this is the vision of a single narrative in the private realm, that when transgressed, threatens the realm of the Public good, because there is a perpetual emergency that needs the curtailing of extravagances,— of any personal and private privileges, which the state can no longer afford to lend to its citizenry, without the attaching of correlating, ideologically defined, penalties and ad-hoc measures. I'm using the word "privilege" here, in a technical sense, all so-called rights created by legislation— to be generally available to it's legal subjects, are known as privileges;— to understand the state and its basic functioning, in the modern context of liberal democracy, is that the state manufactures privileges, to improve the general lot of its subjects: through the 1984 scenario, we see that its time for the citizenry, to let the State collect-on, and also to payback, the State for those 'extra-freedoms' over the years, because of some higher, existential hazard to the State-tribe's morality, that the state is forced to (re-actively) refocus itself around. The Fascist German state coalesced its higher goals around the concepts of social-justice for the marginalized and abused Ayrian race; a sacred victim because of its latent ideological claim of supremacy: whereas, and since in the modern re-emergence of this style of politics, there is no nexus of superiority, the concept of the sacred-victim, stands as an open place-holder, passed around between the economically marginalized "female" or "black-female" or even the marginalized and disdained "immigrant with antithetical values"- all three of which are statistically identified and addressed, in a realm of sacred-victim politics— that is divorced from evaluating specific and particular problems, and, just as the Nazi propaganda used to do, scapegoating the sources of all existential-hazards to the ['liberal-left's:'] tribe-"morality"; hazards which are simultaneously needed to demand the ideological concessions placed upon the private sphere, as it takes reactionary measures to entrench and strengthen its levers of authoritarian "interventionism", and growing mechanisms of language debasement, until the sacred-victim placeholder comes to define the meaning, value and the interpretive apparatus for all life (substitute "Big-brother" for 'sacred victim' in the case of 1984);- [tangent:] it is the invention of a (secular) false God, and the subsequent degenerative affects thereof, what is funny, is that most false God's used by religious zealots, don't suffer from the same degeneracy, because its easier to fudge a complex array of competing principles, whereas there is no such convenient inhibitor for secular philosophical lunacy; the false God does operate as the Christian Scriptures describes it though: it is what the Christian Scriptures define as the devil: "THE GOD OF THE WORLD", aka. Idol-worship, the beast to a free-will [The God of the World biblical concept, can also lend deeper resonance with Neitiche's critique, if one is not bound to label Christianity with those who merely self-identified as Christians).

What is terrible, is that the calls for authoritarian interventionism, can always be advanced, if responsible and principled governance occurs in some interim, the liberal-left alternative, is a populist redress of ideological imbalances, whereas they judge other brands of politics for their inability to deliver on their spectrum of Authoritarian-expectations, even as the liberal-left fails to produce workable policy (and notice how Authoritarians are incapable of ever addressing "problems" with real suggestions of workable "solutions"),— is taken as meaning there is some form of freedom that isn't being regulated sufficiently to redefine the policy of ad-hoc social-engineering as successful, which at its end-game, is the redefinition of words, and thought-policing instead of convincingly, dealing with the human condition. It shares all the features of the worst elements of repressive Theocratic orders, but uses the language of the Public good interpreted in their cannon of ideology. "Big Brother, is only your friend..." (is not that different from Big Brother just wants to help you get to paradise/heaven, or 'helping everyone to locate and protect the dignity of their "radical [insert identity] self-love"').


___
Brave New World, is a totally different discussion, in some sense, the least-worst aspects of the brave new world are already in effect, and this is through no fault of 'political elites', its more an indictment of people, themselves. I think it is safe to say, that if Capitalism is not going to cater to people sufficiently as it used to, its up to people, within the current system, to purchase their own freedom: with just a little bit of coordination/collaboration, its hardly a difficult project to embark on. People traditionally tithed 10% of the their income to churches, this sort of investment, starting 10 years ago, could pay for alternative co-ordination of resources and working conditions: workers buying their factories, and then administrating them to their own betterment etc. (at the very least: this is sufficiently plausible in advancing/maturing capitalistic environments). People blaming their system for the 'fact' of their own production of limited opportunities, have no-one to blame for their own slave-mentalities, they have simply looked-over the reading materials that affirm the line I'm extolling (this is meant to refer to the brave new world model of cultural control, through distraction that is opted into by lack of considered or determined deliberations of modeling and creating a different experience of what is preferred (which I contend, is more a problem of design, and the lack of mentality for real design, than a [lazy] conspiracy [theorist mentality]).

I should further elaborate on the brave new world scenario, in other interesting points it raises, but that might also move away from the topic substantially.

 

[Lark]

Orwell's vision of big brother is based on a lot of things, not all of which were future what ifs or possibilities but some of which were things he was actively satirizing and he thought were going on in his day, the prolefeed for instance is meant to be the tabloid press, the view screen TV.

The big idea Orwell had which was different to Huxley's was violence, Orwell and Huxley had read each others books, I dont think the relationship was exactly acrimonious but Orwell totally disagreed with Huxley that his "peaceful but manipulative" regime could come about without self-sustaining, self-perpetuating violence and "enemies foreign and domestic" (even if they had to be largely the invention of the regime itself).

Orwell thought this because of his experiences in Spain and all the violence there, that most of the the totalitarian regimes in his day and even the movements were all violent and vicious, the guy was clearly pretty traumatised and its no surprise he was shot in the throat, almost killed and had a lost a lot of friends to murderous sorts. Huxley hadnt.

Personally I think that Orwell's depiction could be most accurately that of a regime or movement or social order in crisis though, its no mistake that there's a lot of deprivation in his airstrip one, no one, not even the regimes supporters or the inner party, is enjoying any kind of existence. They are all miserable. Its a better depiction of a 3rd world dictatorship or bannana republic than anything else.

The elites in Orwell's dystopia are a bunch of sadists, they get their jollies from witch hunting opposition, engineering the same from mere apathy if they need to, then through torture they produce broken men, its not a wonder nothing works and everything is broken when that's what you specialise in.

So in the developed world I think its more like Huxley than Orwell's utopia, plus the Soma, ie recreational drug use, hedonistic sex, leisure time and engineering of morons and semi-morons looks more like what's happening in the developed world, maybe more by accident than design, still all the same. All those trends are seen as desirable (by the left) and liberating (by the left) or as guilty pleasures (by the right) to be denied but indulged so long as there is a profit margin (by the right).

I've never, ever got why drugs decriminalisation and the popularising of drug use is seen as a progressive or a left thing precisely because of insights like Huxley's but I'm on my own in that respect.

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

So in the developed world I think its more like Huxley than Orwell's utopia, plus the Soma, ie recreational drug use, hedonistic sex, leisure time and engineering of morons and semi-morons looks more like what's happening in the developed world, maybe more by accident than design, still all the same. All those trends are seen as desirable (by the left) and liberating (by the left) or as guilty pleasures (by the right) to be denied but indulged so long as there is a profit margin (by the right).

But Huxley wrote the Doors of Perception. This was a major influence on the drug culture of the 60s. Keep in mind that I've never read anything about Huxley, but I think his feelings about recreational drug use might have been more complicated than that. Though I suspect you've hit on something here.

 

[Lark]

But Huxley wrote the Doors of Perception. This was a major influence on the drug culture of the 60s. Keep in mind that I've never read anything about Huxley, but I think his feelings about recreational drug use might have been more complicated than that. Though I suspect you've hit on something here.

I have that book but I've yet to read it, from what I've heard it was a kind of very documentary account, like he was being very experimental as opposed to merely recreational but I dont know for sure and I'm not 100% sure of the influence on the later sixties drugs culture.

Huxlye's utopia was Island though which featured a community of buddhists so far as I know, living a kind of Shangrala existence but with all the benefits of high tech innovations, its been a while since I read it so I hope I'm recalling it right.

He also wrote another book called ends and means which I really liked which was kind of his critical appraisal of popular movements and suggestions for alternatives, the influence of buddhism, psychoanalysis and just a sort of reflective communitarianism was really plain there.

 

[Kingu Kurimuzon]

I see a few suggested that we're in a mild form of what's portrayed in Brave New World, but not by design. I have to agree, that it's really the natural course for wealthy, capitalist republics to end up that way as humans are comfort-seeking creatures and the market more or less feeds that craving for comfort.

I would also say that a real world variant of 1984 could easily develop more by accident than by design in a democratic-republican society. I think the social engineers who lay the groundwork for such a state aren't seeing that extreme as the natural result of their engineering. Perhaps a few "at the top" but ultimately the foot soldiers of ideology don't see it as the ultimate desired goal. Proponents of PC culture are likely to scoff at the suggestion it is analogous to newspeak

Checks and balances between the left and right are healthy to prevent the Orwellian state but I fear that a Huxleyan society arises out of complacency of a well fed public, and to prevent BNW from becoming reality the same checks and balances between left and right might not be enough. We need a certain level of sustained hunger, as a whole

 

[Zarathustra]

Bradbury

 

[Tater]

For the most part, both. They just cover different angles.

Orwell's vision of oppression came from the outside. Totalitarianism, surveillance, cultural engineering, etc.

Huxley's vision stemmed from self-imposed factors. Self-narcotization, technological distractions, and slavery to primal desires.

As long as people have at least some say in how their government conducts itself, you can't create one without the other.

Which came first? That's kind of a chicken or the egg question.

However, Orwell pretty much hits every note in terms of where we are and what has come to pass. Huxley's foresight on eugenics has strong nascence, but hasn't reached a comparable level with as much sustainability.

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

I have that book but I've yet to read it, from what I've heard it was a kind of very documentary account, like he was being very experimental as opposed to merely recreational but I dont know for sure and I'm not 100% sure of the influence on the later sixties drugs culture.

I do know that the group The Doors took their name from it, so at least it had some influence. And some of the ideas seem to be a lot like some of the stuff I've read about in books like The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.

Huxlye's utopia was Island though which featured a community of buddhists so far as I know, living a kind of Shangrala existence but with all the benefits of high tech innovations, its been a while since I read it so I hope I'm recalling it right.

That sounds interesting. I'll have to check it out. At the moment I'm more interested in utopias than dystopias, tbh.

Bradbury

I honestly think this is more applicable to today than 1984. (Although it did occur to me that a lot of these computers these days could be used like telescreens.) I haven't read Brave New World so I can't comment on that.

 

[Lark]

I do know that the group The Doors took their name from it, so at least it had some influence. And some of the ideas seem to be a lot like some of the stuff I've read about in books like The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.


That sounds interesting. I'll have to check it out. At the moment I'm more interested in utopias than dystopias, tbh.



I honestly think this is more applicable to today than 1984. (Although it did occur to me that a lot of these computers these days could be used like telescreens.) I haven't read Brave New World so I can't comment on that.

If you're interested in Utopia's there's some good cheap ones in the Dover thrift editions range, I'd recommend Edward Bellamy's Looking Backwards, though most it has been realised without the sort of nationalist left wing collectivism he envisaged, that book and its sequel Equality were big influences upon the guys who thought up Participatory Economics, which is a kind of Utopia I guess itself, there's Herland, a feminist utopia in which an undiscovered valley exclusively peopled by women, who only give birth to daughters, is discovered by a party of men, I liked it but its an early work and would probably be dismissed as naive utopianism like Bellamy's was. Marx hated utopianism BTW, a lot of the communist manifesto is given over to a literary criticism of it, John Gray loves Marx for that, curious when you consider that Gray's favourite writers are Hayek and Popper for reason which would appear to be contra Marx, or at least Marxism.

I mentioned The Gate To Woman's Country in a thread some place, its a feminist utopia of sorts, The Dispossessed is an anarchist one or at least an anarcho-syndicalist one but its highly ambiguous, the revolution is on the verge of disintegration at the very same time its main rival is also disintegrating.

William Morris' News From Nowhere, about a mainly pastoral distant future of post-capitalism (and properly speaking post-socialism, post-communism, post any other ism) is a contrary vision to Bellamy's because Morris didnt like a lot of Bellamy's technocratic urban aesthetics, for the same reason Oscar Wilde wrote The Soul of Man Under Socialism, which is a kind of artistic utopian socialism, remarkable because it appeals to selfish motives and affirms individualism.

We, I thought was a good generic criticism of groupthink and a lack of privacy but in the main its a criticism of the under valuing of technicians in a collectivist social order, which is kind of to do with the political wrangling and struggles of Zam's day.

The Iron Heel is about oligarchy per se and its interesting but a shite read, badly, badly written if you ask me and its protagonists are detestable, their politics like a broken record.

Orwell wrote a great essay about utopianism, it was a survey of different pamphleteers in the interwar years if I remember right but it never got much attention, its one in which he waxes lyrical about an anti-communist alternative to capitalism arising out of a "united states of Europe".

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

...

Interesting. Thanks for the list. I bookmarked articles about all of these. The only two I'd heard of before are We and Herland. I'm familiar with Gilman from The Yellow Wallpaper.

 

[Lark]

Interesting. Thanks for the list. I bookmarked articles about all of these. The only two I'd heard of before are We and Herland. I'm familiar with Gilman from The Yellow Wallpaper.

I thought that was an awful book/story, I didnt like it at all, I thought Herland was much better/different to it.

Bellamy used to be really popular in the US, they had nationalist clubs up and down the country, its a little like Henry George being forgotten too though and his ideas about the socialisation of rents and the payment of all of the adult population a dividend from the revenue that would create.

 

[Blackout]

oh geesh, this is probably closer to what I was really curious about and wanted to ask. Personally I think they're both becoming true but I don't really know what is leading to them because it seems like the left and right are both kind of going in that direction. Personally, right now I think the liberals are guilty of it, because they are completely against diversity, they are intolerant and against free speech.

So, honestly it just seems like it's "mindless following" and a lack of any real democracy and consent. Personally at this point I think I lean more towards a mixture of capitalism/and liberalism but I am not quite sure anymore.


The whole idea that we should be completely "internationalist" have more or less no borders has really becoming alarming to me at this point and I really question how nationalist itself is outright wrong? it seems kind of absurd and ridiculous to me and I honestly think is extremely naive and kind of out of touch with reality. You can't just trust people that easily. We're not on the verge of some utopian peace and it's that mindset and how prevalent it has becoming which is frightening and bizarre to me.

I think that liberalism can sort of work (but it's hard to believe that anymore considering how bad this whole situation is) but I don't think it can at the extent at the government having too much control and all of the time or power in deciding everything through virtually un-democratic means. What I mean is that you cannot necessarily "force" liberalism/socialism on a culture as then it becomes the opposite of that. Plus, it can always just as easily turn into a dictatorship. But either way, whether you're liberal/or conservative when has the government not had most of the control? it then seems to me that democracy itself is more or less a fabrication and lie that doesn't really even work in reality (hardly)

It almost seems like a large majority of people are prone to fascism either way (or "anti-fascism) which is obviously why the world is the way it is.

 

[Blackout]

I thought Orwells fears more important to worry about but I think Huxley fears have already manifested, hence he was right first. I'll expound.

Huxley feared that we would be given so much information that we would be reduced to passivity and egotism. That the truth would be drowned out in a sea of irrelevance. That 'we' would become a trivial culture.

That this is already so is manifest in U.S. culture.

Here's the thing though, they are both wrong in one regard. They both envisioned a global community. A one world. This hasn't happened, yet. I'm skeptical that it's possible. In this regards then we have a built in 'reality' check. Others.

I experience this daily. I ride the metro and as I cross into another 3rd world I see the stark contrast. People in the here and now fighting for survival in a corrupt, lawless and opportunity poor environment. Meanwhile a 'slow motion' purge is going on (10-15k year) in the form of cartel violence.

This is useful to me for several reasons not least of which is keeping me tethered, grateful.

*resists massive urge to correlate overlapping and related concepts*

Uh, I think it's pretty close man, that's kind of what is the most frightening to me. It's pro "internationalism" anti-borders, anti-nationalism (it means you're a "fascist") globalism, no consent or say in your life hardly at this point, big monolithic culture/everything, no free speech. It's insane to me.

honestly though and on a mainstream level, I would hesitate to even call much of what we are saying and is being termed as "liberalism" and is in fact, anything but some sick perversion. Again I suppose (and on a global scale) we're heading full on to a Communist dictatorship again, much like what was seen in the Soviet Union and in Communist China. It's horrible. I think that's often why liberalism doesn't work, or what it starts to resemble when it looks wrong.


And the one thing, the one thing I find so frustrating and aggravating. Is so many people who consider themselves "liberal" seem to themselves either misinterpret or misunderstand what the Communist Manifesto was even about. For one, it's mostly these "liberals" who are the ones who think that big government should have all the say /power and then think that in some grand idealistic fashion everything not only can get along, but they "most" get along.

And they forget the core tenants of Communist; which is again, Karl Marx's ideal was "communism" but he saw it as a far off future goal (and it was written in the late 18th century, are we really there yet?)

The whole main idea was I believe "real" democracy, a real and fair representative electorate government that is based on what the people themselves want. It's the redistribution of the resources/land ownership in a fair and "communal" (but democratic) way, which in many ways would translate to no one taking advantage of working class people so much, as the entirety of society is reliant on them yet they hardly get any respect. They do all the hard work everyone is too lazy to do themselves. But that's all anyone wants to do, is to screw them over, and it's just become some desperate attempt to gain power and trick working class people and ruin a country.

No where did Marx say "GIVE ALL THE POWER TO YOUR GOVERNMENT" and you just get a dictatorship. Cum-laude Liberal/Marxist liiiiiiiiiiaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrs. I hate them so much.

This is the ironic thing with Donald Trump, too. The liberals have all lost the working class people and they have no absolutely no idea why, nor do they care. And that's the thing, you can't be a real Marxist and not care about what working class people want.

 

[Lark]

oh geesh, this is probably closer to what I was really curious about and wanted to ask. Personally I think they're both becoming true but I don't really know what is leading to them because it seems like the left and right are both kind of going in that direction. Personally, right now I think the liberals are guilty of it, because they are completely against diversity, they are intolerant and against free speech.

So, honestly it just seems like it's "mindless following" and a lack of any real democracy and consent. Personally at this point I think I lean more towards a mixture of capitalism/and liberalism but I am not quite sure anymore.


The whole idea that we should be completely "internationalist" have more or less no borders has really becoming alarming to me at this point and I really question how nationalist itself is outright wrong? it seems kind of absurd and ridiculous to me and I honestly think is extremely naive and kind of out of touch with reality. You can't just trust people that easily. We're not on the verge of some utopian peace and it's that mindset and how prevalent it has becoming which is frightening and bizarre to me.

I think that liberalism can sort of work (but it's hard to believe that anymore considering how bad this whole situation is) but I don't think it can at the extent at the government having too much control and all of the time or power in deciding everything through virtually un-democratic means. What I mean is that you cannot necessarily "force" liberalism/socialism on a culture as then it becomes the opposite of that. Plus, it can always just as easily turn into a dictatorship. But either way, whether you're liberal/or conservative when has the government not had most of the control? it then seems to me that democracy itself is more or less a fabrication and lie that doesn't really even work in reality (hardly)

It almost seems like a large majority of people are prone to fascism either way (or "anti-fascism) which is obviously why the world is the way it is.

What you're describing isnt a feature of either Huxley, Orwell or the novel "We", which are the subject of the thread, in fact Orwell's novel features nationalistic factions in perpetual struggle with one another using the constant war to control their domestic populations.

 

[Lark]

Uh, I think it's pretty close man, that's kind of what is the most frightening to me. It's pro "internationalism" anti-borders, anti-nationalism (it means you're a "fascist") globalism, no consent or say in your life hardly at this point, big monolithic culture/everything, no free speech. It's insane to me.

honestly though and on a mainstream level, I would hesitate to even call much of what we are saying and is being termed as "liberalism" and is in fact, anything but some sick perversion. Again I suppose (and on a global scale) we're heading full on to a Communist dictatorship again, much like what was seen in the Soviet Union and in Communist China. It's horrible. I think that's often why liberalism doesn't work, or what it starts to resemble when it looks wrong.


And the one thing, the one thing I find so frustrating and aggravating. Is so many people who consider themselves "liberal" seem to themselves either misinterpret or misunderstand what the Communist Manifesto was even about. For one, it's mostly these "liberals" who are the ones who think that big government should have all the say /power and then think that in some grand idealistic fashion everything not only can get along, but they "most" get along.

And they forget the core tenants of Communist; which is again, Karl Marx's ideal was "communism" but he saw it as a far off future goal (and it was written in the late 18th century, are we really there yet?)

The whole main idea was I believe "real" democracy, a real and fair representative electorate government that is based on what the people themselves want. It's the redistribution of the resources/land ownership in a fair and "communal" (but democratic) way, which in many ways would translate to no one taking advantage of working class people so much, as the entirety of society is reliant on them yet they hardly get any respect. They do all the hard work everyone is too lazy to do themselves. But that's all anyone wants to do, is to screw them over, and it's just become some desperate attempt to gain power and trick working class people and ruin a country.

No where did Marx say "GIVE ALL THE POWER TO YOUR GOVERNMENT" and you just get a dictatorship. Cum-laude Liberal/Marxist liiiiiiiiiiaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrs. I hate them so much.

This is the ironic thing with Donald Trump, too. The liberals have all lost the working class people and they have no absolutely no idea why, nor do they care. And that's the thing, you can't be a real Marxist and not care about what working class people want.

I'm not sure you've read much Marx, have you read Huxley or Orwell?

 

[Blackout]

I'm not sure you've read much Marx, have you read Huxley or Orwell?

Yes of course, I have read all of them. I think that easily similar results could be achieved or simply happen regardless or whether or not it fully exactly in line to what happened in 1984/Brave New World.

Globalism itself is another aspect that was probably never quite featured within them I suppose but easily could have been featured in some kind of a dystopian future novel.

"internationalist" itself isn't all bad, and I suppose I am upsetting people by being honest perhaps, but to an extreme level I don't think it's really completely safe/healthy, but that is also amongst other polices as well that could easily reek havoc on public life. i suppose it's not really the policy itself but the way and degree in which it's implemented. Plus I don't think it's always on a political level, but also on a social level as well that I imagine could contribute to such problems.

There are also other issues that could easily be argued are perhaps becoming true, such a strict control of information, constant surveillance and authoritarian control over public life, and a lack of ability to make your own decisions and enjoy certain comforts or freedoms that only really come with living in a "free" country. Also, I think like in BnW, there's more of a division and emphasis between "class"divisions in society as well. It cannot really be argued that we are increasingly moving towards this kind of society and world, especially as we continually lose personal freedoms on a continual basis; which is more or less I am sure what the ruling elite seek for themselves. 9not to mention it's becoming increasingly like overly surveillance police state)

I would also argue that Communism itself, Marxists ideas have nothing to do with the idea or notion of a "perfect" or idealistic and "utopian" society but yet it's often interpreted vaguely and more or less viewed in such a manner such as that, which is why it's often implemented or done in a wrong way.