[ExI] Huxley or Orwell - who got it right?

[spike]

From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of spike
Subject: Re: [ExI] Huxley or Orwell - who got it right?

 

>… On Behalf Of William Flynn Wallace
Subject: [ExI] Huxley or Orwell - who got it right?

 

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/feb/02/amusing-ourselves-to-death-neil-postman-trump-orwell-huxley?utm_source=pocket <https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/feb/02/amusing-ourselves-to-death-neil-postman-trump-orwell-huxley?utm_source=pocket&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=pockethits> &utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=pockethits

bill w

 

 

 

>…Good article BillW, reminiscent of so many debates I had with my father-in-law who is much more a Huxley fan than I am, while I am more an Orwell fan than he.

 

>…Brave New World is a book I found interesting, but not horrifying at all.  It wasn’t clear to me that it was dystopian, certainly not all of it.  …  The article seems to think we are in danger of amusing ourselves to death, but I would argue that if one dies laughing, one does not literally perish in most cases, and even if so, that would be a good way to go…. Spike

 

 

Background on those debates: my father-in-law is your classic hard rightwing sort, favorite president was Reagan etc.  I am more an upwing moderate or even extreme moderate.

 

The basic idea of my original post: Orwell wrote a clearly dystopian novel, one that horrifies me, but Huxley’s excellent thought-provoking Brave New World is not clearly dystopian, and I am not horrified.  It occurred to me that there would be those who would not find Nineteen Eighty Four all that terribly unsettling, but are horrified by Huxley’s BNW.

 

What kind of people would that be?  Anyone here lose sleep over the risk of becoming BNW?  Why?

 

spike  

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