QUOTE(Rhindle @ Sat 27th February 2010, 4:38pm)
QUOTE(Herschelkrustofsky @ Wed 24th February 2010, 5:45pm)
Somey, what makes you so certain that 1984 was not a "how-to"? There were some that thought Brave New World was "a warning, not a how-to", but from what we know about Huxley's personal views, that is clearly not the case.
Neil Postman in
Amusing Ourselves to Death stated that he believed the world was more like
Brave New World rather than
1984 in that we are oppressed more by pleasure than pain. In other words, if we are all kept entertained, we won't care what the big bad governments are doing.
Oddly enough, this brings us back to a point that I've been trying make about the economic and psychosocial dynamics that are common to all forms of addictive behavior, including conspicuous consumption and dissipative entertainment. What keeps coming back to mind here are the penetrating insights of Max Weber and William S. Burroughs.
Under conditions of health, pleasure drives are always self-terminating — this makes them intermittent and periodic in nature — you reach a state of satisfaction and then you are done with that drive for a while.
Continuous drivenness is a morbid condition. It occurs in situations where the superficial seeking of goods or pleasure disguises an effort to avoid a deeper-lying anxiety or pain, one for which the displacement activity is no balm, and thus appears infinite and unquenchable.
Jon Awbrey