[ExI] 1984 and Brave New World

Tom Nowell nebathenemi at yahoo.co.uk
Sun Jan 31 15:09:10 UTC 2010


1984 and Brave New World are both reflections on the dystopian consequences of some of the utopian thinking doing the rounds at the time they were written.

1984 reflects "The Soviets were our allies against Hitler, and they are delivering a Communist revolution to the world! This is great for Socialism!" Orwell drives home how horrifying Stalinist communism is to anyone who peers beneath the surface, and warns against totalitarianism. As a work of futurology, it did give us a clue as to how bad East Germany could get under a regime where the Stasi employed 1 in 5 of the population as an informant. In fact, 1984 probably did seem contemporary in Berlin in the 80s.

Brave New World reflects the utopian thinking of those who believed a technocratic elite could bestow happiness for all, and its focus on biological engineering of people and society reflects the early 20th century eugenicists. In a time when people were publicly advocating the sterilisation of undesirable types, and where people were using dubious biology to push forward their own political views, Huxley warns us of one way in which this could end up.

 In our modern time, we think of 1984 as old-fashioned - our politicians have found it's better to sell us surveillance as a policing and counter-terrorism tool to help us feel safer, and they sell war with the co-operation of a willing media (as the Iraq war inquiry in Britain is showing). In our time of rapidly advancing biotechnology, Brave New World retains its power to shock.

 Hopefully, we live in less class-obsessed times and slightly less racist times than Huxley (or at least we're all aware that genocide is not acceptable in polite company), but we still have to consider how our technological choices will affect our society. There are some transhumanists out there who I wouldn't let within a mile of any political policy decisions.

Tom


      



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