1984 or Brave New World

[moonwalker]

Which book do you think will represent the reality more, even tough its still belong the conspiracy theories.

My opinion is the close future will be similar to 1984 book, even tough communist like propagandism isnt effective for forcing the masses, but the late future considering eugenics, nuclear weapons, human cloning are with Brawe New World..

[Tchek]

Brave New World...

People will love their own servitude.

[Leto]

I've read both. Probably, we're closer to 1984, don't know.

[Empecinado]

In totalitarian countries (and authoritarians) 1984 is used as a form of social control: existence of censorship, sacralization of power and its exercise through traditional social structures (family, nation, religion).

While in liberal democracies, elites prefer to control the people through a Brave New World, ie through the use of drugs (LSD in the 60s, design drugs in the 90s, hard drugs like cocaine and heroin etc ...), hypersexualization of society and consumerism.

[harmonique]

I'd say it's a combination of both. Although at the moment I feel like we are closer to 1984.

And then of course there is Ray Bradbury's perspective in Fahrenheit 451...

[The Happy Warrior]

For people living in Western liberal democracies, Brave New World is far closer to reality.

[Herr Abubu]

We are not quite Brave New World and not quite 1984. There are elements of both today. What we are seeing is in many ways a synthesis, with elements of both, paving the way for a third way, which encompass far more than only the Brave New World and 1984 views.

In matters of intelligence gathering and surveillance, we're going down the road of 1984. Doublethink and mind control is also very prevalent. People are taught, not to be active thinkers, but to be passive receivers of knowledge. Even otherwise very intelligent people fall for this ploy, which is why you will have people who are otherwise very skilled as doctors, lawyers and engineers, for example, who can't for the life of them notice errors when they see them. Not accepting official explanations of events and things is seen as lunacy. There are even medical diagnoses for people who don't conform to official beliefs.

On the other hand, our contemporary world produces all sorts of things through which people can escape the facts of their lives, through which they can live in their own little bubble, much like in Brave New World. You have easy to access pornography to sap away the vigor, the virility, of men, while vastly misrepresenting the sexual relations between men and women. You have women's pornography, erotic literature, which gives women the impression. Both sexes are convinced repeatedly that the next rush of dopamine, the next orgasm, is the only thing to seek in life.

I find Huxley's own perspective of the origins of the world described in both 1984 and Brave New World quite interesting, because it was something I realized a long while ago.

"May I speak instead of the thing with which the book deals — the ultimate revolution?

The first hints of a philosophy of the ultimate revolution — the revolution which lies beyond politics and economics, and which aims at total subversion of the individual's psychology and physiology — are to be found in the Marquis de Sade, who regarded himself as the continuator, the consummator, of Robespierre and Babeuf."

Communism, Nazism, Fascism—they were all attempts at bringing the Enlightenment and the French Revolution to their final logical destination. They have all lost, however, to the liberal Anglo-American order. It's only fitting, because, in my view, the Enlightenment and the French Revolution are, before everything else, of an Anglo origin. Communism, Nazism and Fascism were all the mongrel children of Britain.

This synthesis of these two dystopic views, this Third Way, could be the plot of a book, better and more descriptive of the world we live in and the future of it than both. I guess it doesn't make much sense to write such a book, however, when you are living in it.

[RenaRyuguu]

I prefer Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

Brave New World is a dystopian novel by English author Aldous Huxley, written in 1931 and published in 1932. Largely set in a futuristic World State of genetically modified citizens and an intelligence-based social hierarchy, the novel anticipates huge scientific developments in reproductive technology, sleep-learning, psychological manipulation, and classical conditioning, that are combined to make a utopian society that goes challenged only by a single outsider. Huxley followed this book with a reassessment in essay form, Brave New World Revisited, and with his final novel, Island, the utopian counterpart. The novel is often compared to George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four.