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1984 vs Brave New World - Which are we closest to?

You missed the third group i.e. the Pigs from Animal Farm.. The exploiters who seek claim to represent us in our fight for freedoms, but end up becoming the new elite. Its that group, who see opposition to the revolution as criminal and the ones we should be very careful with, as they're are on the rise now.
May I suggest a minor alteration to the above?
 
You missed the third group i.e. the Pigs from Animal Farm.. The exploiters who seek to represent us in our fight for freedoms, but end up becoming the new elite. Its that group, who see opposition to the revolution as criminal and the ones we should be very careful with, as they're are on the rise now.

Yes, To a point I'd agree, although the aim of the Pigs from the outset is to become the new elite. What they are very good at is hanging onto the coat-tails of a successful disruptor to get themselves close to the new seat of power before finally emerging as the elite.

In some cases they will wait for the death of the disruptor, in others they will overthrow him (in Animal Farm, the other pigs either drove Snowball away or killed him). This is one of the reasons why clever disruptors always keep their followers in a state of permanent fear and at each other's throats.

A policy which can of course backfire, or leave no succession at all....
 
Yes, To a point I'd agree, although the aim of the Pigs from the outset is to become the new elite. What they are very good at is hanging onto the coat-tails of a successful disruptor to get themselves close to the new seat of power before finally emerging as the elite.

In some cases they will wait for the death of the disruptor, in others they will overthrow him (in Animal Farm, the other pigs either drove Snowball away or killed him). This is one of the reasons why clever disruptors always keep their followers in a state of permanent fear and at each other's throats.

A policy which can of course backfire, or leave no succession at all....
History is replete with examples and I think Orwell, saw Stalin and his coterie as no different to the evolution of the French Terror. So its no coincidence, he named the leading pig as napoleon.

To translate that today, I suppose you can see the same approach embedded less at the national level and very much so at the international level. Everytime I listen to a UN Representative or other notable for some world entity, it puts me in mind of the pigs, as they're are no longer ordinary humans and transcended the nation.
 
They were selling liquid ammonia to the USA in 1981.
They were buying wheat as well if I recall correctly. There also were some Westerner's studying and working there, such as Peter Hitchens for example but it wasn't a "free" and open country. The PRC tolerates commercial enterprise and consumerism now because it brings them capital. I think Georgia was the first to embrace capitalism, while the USSR was in it's final years.
 
I'd say that as people far more intelligent than us are still arguing as to whether or not any of us even have free will, let alone control and freedom of our own societies, then it will always ebb and flow between many states and types of 'control'.

It's been one of the reasons why I'm an advocate for an understanding and return to Classical Liberalism and how it interprets property of oneself as a fundamental.

Then again, I think it'll all be short lived anyway as AI will render us subjects of one of two scenarios.

The Matrix or The Culture.
 
I'd say that as people far more intelligent than us are still arguing as to whether or not any of us even have free will, let alone control and freedom of our own societies, then it will always ebb and flow between many states and types of 'control'.

It's been one of the reasons why I'm an advocate for an understanding and return to Classical Liberalism and how it interprets property of oneself as a fundamental.

Then again, I think it'll all be short lived anyway as AI will render us subjects of one of two scenarios.

The Matrix or The Culture.
We’ve never had control of our own societies, they are decided by proxy.
Artificial intelligence is like artificial grass. It looks like it, but you can tell the difference.
 
I'd say that as people far more intelligent than us are still arguing as to whether or not any of us even have free will, let alone control and freedom of our own societies, then it will always ebb and flow between many states and types of 'control'.

It's been one of the reasons why I'm an advocate for an understanding and return to Classical Liberalism and how it interprets property of oneself as a fundamental.

Then again, I think it'll all be short lived anyway as AI will render us subjects of one of two scenarios.

The Matrix or The Culture.
In some ways, both books are very prescient and science fiction has created the ideas of a Digital Ruling Inner Party living a Brave new world lifestyle, an outer party of managers who are constantly monitored in the style of 1984 and the winners join the inner and the losers join the masses slaving at the bottom and drugged to the eyeballs (see blakes 7).
 
I think that during lockdown, we're closer to 'The Machine Stops'.
We read that book when I was at school and it left a deep impression on me, particularly when you look around today and see how helpless so many people are now when it comes to self reliance. How often do you hear 'I've been down the council but they wont do nothing's. My answer well sort it out yourself. The more recent version being inane posts on facebook for the most simple things such as I kid you not 'any recommendations for where I can get a puncture on my bike fixed'.

Another book/ short story we studied was the Destructors by Graeme Green. It was about a group of kids who for absolutely no reason destroyed a beautiful old house that had survived the Blitz. Over the course of a weekend they reduced it to a pile of rubble. Again an author predicting in the future how society would use its energies to destroy itself rather than to improve.
 
Are we willingly walking into a world where the ruling classes control everything and we are happy to let them?



It sure does look that way. Apparently it's all about "Build back better"

As this Twitter wag says it's a big club and we ain't in it.



Other questions we might ask the ruling classes would be
  • How come the US election was stolen?
  • How did this come to pass? How did things ever reach this extraordinary point in a "free" country?
  • How come the Supreme Court did nothing at all about the multiple, documented injustices?
  • What happened to Mike Pence, Mitch McConnell and other so-called Republicans?
  • What happened to the mainstream media? And critical thinking? And honesty? And whatever anyone might think real patriotism might be?
  • What happened to so much of tech-giant controlled social media, such that legitimate questions, posed in perfectly civil ways, were censored, and accounts removed, including the President himself?
  • And even before all that, what was gradually, strategically, carefully, quietly taking place, in America and all over the world, such that Trump's removal from office by fair means or foul, was held to be a critical-path factor that absolutely had to happen?
 
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You called............

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It sure does look that way. Apparently it's all about "Build back better"

As this Twitter wag says it's a big club and we ain't in it.



Other questions we might ask the ruling classes would be
  • How come the US election was stolen?
  • How did this come to pass? How did things ever reach this extraordinary point in a "free" country?
  • How come the Supreme Court did nothing at all about the multiple, documented injustices?
  • What happened to Mike Pence, Mitch McConnell and other so-called Republicans?
  • What happened to the mainstream media? And critical thinking? And honesty? And whatever anyone might think real patriotism might be?
  • What happened to so much of tech-giant controlled social media, such that legitimate questions, posed in perfectly civil ways, were censored, and accounts removed, including the President himself?
  • And even before all that, what was gradually, strategically, carefully, quietly taking place, in America and all over the world, such that Trump's removal from office by fair means or foul, was held to be a critical-path factor that absolutely had to happen?

Its rather like the metaphor of a Lifeboat, with a capacity insufficient to take everybody on board and as such, the goal is to compartmentalise the danger, whilst an orderly exit can be arranged.

So the argument goes we live in a global world and the changes are such, that the competition and tension has ratched up to levels that used to lead to war. So to keep the peace and maintain control, we needed to make sacrifices to lift the world out of poverty and Western Democracy has been unwilling to level with the people about those sacrifices and within that contradiction you had mad people like Trump scaring the system, that control is about to be lost.

1984 had a perpetual low level conflict to channel aggression away from revolution and the BNWorld used drugs. I would be surprised if we didn't have legal drugs within a few years and a return to the forever wars of the middle east.
 
I'd say that as people far more intelligent than us are still arguing as to whether or not any of us even have free will, let alone control and freedom of our own societies, then it will always ebb and flow between many states and types of 'control'.

It's been one of the reasons why I'm an advocate for an understanding and return to Classical Liberalism and how it interprets property of oneself as a fundamental.

Then again, I think it'll all be short lived anyway as AI will render us subjects of one of two scenarios.

The Matrix or The Culture.
The former is more likely than the latter unfortunately.
Shame, as I love Banks' books... but they are just wish fulfilment sci fi at the end of the day much as I'd love them to be true.
Thing is that a lot of this totalitarianism we're chewing over here is perpetrated by people who think they are working towards a utopian Culturelike outcome. Of course it actually ends in the railhead at The Camps
 
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