Revisiting Neil Postman's bet on Huxley over Orwell.

My old friend John Campbell posted on Facebook: "Aldous Huxley was right, not George Orwell."

Before repeating John's quoted passage from Neil Postman's 1985 book, here is Postman's son Andrew to explain it, courtesy of The Guardian in 2017.

My dad predicted Trump in 1985 – it's not Orwell, he warned, it's Brave New World

...The central argument of Amusing Ourselves is simple: there were two landmark dystopian novels written by brilliant British cultural critics – Brave New World by Aldous Huxley and Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell – and we Americans had mistakenly feared and obsessed over the vision portrayed in the latter book (an information-censoring, movement-restricting, individuality-emaciating state) rather than the former (a technology-sedating, consumption-engorging, instant-gratifying bubble).

Neil Postman, from Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business:

We were keeping our eye on 1984. When the year came and the prophecy didn't, thoughtful Americans sang softly in praise of themselves. The roots of liberal democracy had held. Wherever else the terror had happened, we, at least, had not been visited by Orwellian nightmares.

But we had forgotten that alongside Orwell's dark vision, there was another - slightly older, slightly less well known, equally chilling: Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley's vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions." In 1984, Orwell added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we fear will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we desire will ruin us.

"Nineteen Eighty-Four remains the book we turn to when truth is mutilated, when language is distorted, when power is abused, when we want to know how bad things can get."

The book is The Ministry of Truth: A Biography of George Orwell’s 1984, and The Guardian offers a preview.

Nothing but the truth: the legacy of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, by Dorian Lynskey

Every generation turns to it in times of political turmoil, and this extract from a new book about the novel examines its relevance in the age of fake news and Trump

Orwell’s fear, incubated during the months he spent fighting in the Spanish civil war, that “the very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world” is the dark heart of Nineteen Eighty-Four. It gripped him long before he came up with Big Brother, Oceania, newspeak or the telescreen, and it’s more important than any of them. In its original 1949 review, Life correctly identified the essence of Orwell’s message: “If men continue to believe in such facts as can be tested and to reverence the spirit of truth in seeking greater knowledge, they can never be fully enslaved.” Seventy years later, that feels like a very large if.

Previous mentions:

Amid the vapid intellectual carnage inflicted by pay-to-play Gahanism, it's worth thinking about George Orwell's fundamental truthfulness.

Gahan Doublespeak Blues (Husqvarna Mix): Say goodbye to your trees, Mt. Tabor Road residents, because it's time again to "improve the tree canopy" by flattening a few hundred of them.

THE BEER BEAT: The Moon Under Water -- so, how does Orwell's perfect pub look today?

Sunday morning coffee reading: "Why Orwell was a literary mediocrity."

Aldous Huxley, George Orwell and right about now.

Amid the vapid intellectual carnage inflicted by pay-to-play Gahanism, it's worth thinking about George Orwell's fundamental truthfulness.

(adapted from a 2016 post)

The embedded video above, complete with photo of George Orwell wearing a bizarrely uncharacteristic Hitler mustache, features Christopher Hitchens and George Packer (circa 2009).

George Packer and Christopher Hitchens talked about George Orwell and his work. Mr. Packer selected the pieces that appear in two recently published volumes of George Orwell’s work: Facing Unpleasant Facts and All Art Is Propaganda. Mr. Hitchens, essayist for The Atlantic Monthly, is the author of Why Orwell Matters.

Hitchens and Packer manage to stay on task for most of the program, though things start coming off the rails near the end, when Hitchens indulges in Iraq War apologetics. Overall, it's a thought-provoking hour with two erudite men.

At YouTube, there is a five-part BBC Arena series on Orwell's life. The segments are just shy of an hour, each. It's a bit dated, but invaluable for the testimony of interviewees now long dead.

Part 1 - Such, Such Were the Joys

Part 2 - Road to Wigan Pier

Part 3 Homage to Catalonia

Part 4 The Lion and the Unicorn

Part 5 Nineteen Eighty Four

Finally, here's something I wrote back in February, 2010: New York Times: "Why Orwell Endures." 

It strikes me as the stuff of wretched cosmic injustice that Orwell and Hitchens died far too young, while Franklin Graham will remain to torment us with drivel for so many years to come.

---

A collection of George Orwell’s essays proved to be the surprise reading hit of my Christmas vacation. I picked it up at the library book sale, and tossed in the carry-on bag as an afterthought. It's a good thing I did, seeing as the remainder of my magazines and books were stowed in delayed luggage.

Essay topics in the ancient paperback, which became shredded into unbound pages soon after opening, ranged from memories of shooting a rampaging elephant while posted as a policeman in Burma to researching the origins of bawdy English postcards. Orwell wrote not only of lofty topics such as his service for the Republic during the Spanish Civil War, but also described in excruciating detail his recollections of boyhood boarding school days, experiences so quintessentially English that they might be lampooned by the likes of Monty Python without we Americans never really imagining the real-life sources.

As a piece in today’s New York Times by Geoffrey Wheatcroft makes clear, Orwell may not have been right 100% of the time, but his pursuit of truth and unwavering intellectual honesty remains noteworthy by comparison to many of his ideologically compromised peers. They are qualities worth cherishing.

As a postscript, this insightful passage from Wheatcroft's 2010 NYT article. Orwell glimpsed impossibly early that a culture of consumerism falls short of supplying certain basic human needs.

Whenever perplexed Americans fret over Osama bin Laden or suicide killings, and delude themselves that material progress will cure these ills, I think of what Orwell wrote in 1940 about another charismatic monster. “Hitler, because in his own joyless mind he feels it with exceptional strength, knows that human beings don’t only want comfort, safety, short working-hours, hygiene, birth control and, in general, common sense; they also, at least intermittently, want struggle and self-sacrifice. . . . However they may be as economic theories, Fascism and Nazism are psychologically far sounder than any hedonistic conception of life.”

Gahan Doublespeak Blues (Husqvarna Mix): Say goodbye to your trees, Mt. Tabor Road residents, because it's time again to "improve the tree canopy" by flattening a few hundred of them.

Develop New Albany welcomes Summit Springs
to the donor list.

Team Gahan has developed its own peculiar localized variant of Newspeak, with inflections borne of hunker-down-low bunker origins.

 ... George Orwell explains that Newspeak usage follows most of the English grammar, yet is a language characterised by a continually diminishing vocabulary; complete thoughts reduced to simple terms of simplistic meaning.

In Orwell's novel 1984, the term "doublethink" is introduced; when paired with Newspeak, the result is "doublespeak," defined here by political economist Edward S. Herman.

What is really important in the world of doublespeak is the ability to lie, whether knowingly or unconsciously, and to get away with it; and the ability to use lies and choose and shape facts selectively, blocking out those that don’t fit an agenda or program.

The drill has become familiar by now.

For instance, to "improve housing conditions and supportive services" means earmarking half of public housing units for demolition without a coherent plan for rehousing.

Tireless "efforts to improve the tree canopy" means flashing a nice stock photo like this ...

... as scrubbed-clean Disneyesque cover for lubing up the chainsaws to facilitate tree removal, clearcutting and deforestation. Perhaps the finest example of Gahan's skills at doublespeak occurred in 2016, when hundreds of trees were cleared to build a "greenway" safe for speeding motorists.

Residents of Mt. Tabor Road were informed yesterday (December 7) that lumbering begins on Monday, December 11.

Oddly, the fliers were stuck in mailboxes sans stamps, which I'd been told was strictly illegal during my run for mayor in 2016. The Board of Works already had picked and grinned its way through approval for the latest round of destroying the tree canopy to save it.

ASK THE BORED: It's Mt. Tabor Road's turn to be pillaged as our lumberjack fetishist mayor readies another round of clear-cutting -- for the sake of the cars, of course.

It's been four months since the mayor triumphantly announced what amounts to a survey of previously sawed stumps; having felled hundreds and perhaps thousands of trees during the course of his Ceausescu-esque TIF and Green(!)way projects, he'd now prove there was the beginning of the precursor to an embryonic "master" plan to reforest the city by 2065 or so ...

It can't be denied that Jeff Gahan is remaking the city in his own image. What could possibly go wrong when mendacity, narcissism and mediocrity are chief characteristics of the model?

THE BEER BEAT: The Moon Under Water -- so, how does Orwell's perfect pub look today?

In my view, George Orwell's description of his favorite pub is an English-language classic. It is a compelling, dreamy vision.

My favourite public-house, the Moon Under Water, is only two minutes from a bus stop, but it is on a side-street, and drunks and rowdies never seem to find their way there, even on Saturday nights.

Its clientele, though fairly large, consists mostly of ‘regulars’ who occupy the same chair every evening and go there for conversation as much as for the beer.

If you are asked why you favour a particular public-house, it would seem natural to put the beer first, but the thing that most appeals to me about the Moon Under Water is what people call its ‘atmosphere’.

Of course, we're adults, and we understand that perfection is unattainable, even if misguided restaurateurs continue to insist that their meat is grilled "to perfection."

No, it isn't, because perfection does not exist. Rather, success accrues from the pursuit of perfection. As Ian Gillan once observed, "It's not the kill -- it's the thrill of the chase."

A survey in the United Kingdom has undertaken to compare Orwell's angle with the rigors of modernity, and to update it. I think the 1940s ideal remains valid in a number of core objectives, which might be summarized by ambiguity: a "perfect" pub has to be a special one.

The process of identifying and delivering "special" is extremely difficult. If it were easy, everyone would be doing it.

And they're not, are they?

Forget live music and real ale – pubs need lipstick-proof glasses and non-sticky carpets, by Rebecca Nicholson (The Guardian)

George Orwell’s vision of the perfect boozer would be recognisable to many drinkers today, a survey has revealed. But what else might we find in a modern Moon Under Water?

What does Britain’s ideal pub look like? A YouGov Omnibus survey aims to assess which of George Orwell’s perfect-pub attributes, as immortalised in his 1946 essay The Moon Under Water, have stood the test of time. While some of Orwell’s stipulations have aged less well, such as the notions that stamps and aspirin should be available behind the bar, beer tastes better out of pink china cups, and liver sausage sandwiches and mussels make the best bar snacks, the picture of his fantasy drinking den would, on the whole, be familiar to us today.

Mr. Disney's club has a laser focus, which may even have to do with a minor issue or two.

Oceania was at war with Eurasia: therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia. The enemy of the moment always represented absolute evil, and it followed that any past or future agreement with him was impossible.
-- George Orwell, 1984

The Democrats got together, the newspaper sent the Clark ...

Wait -- what was that?

How can I begin a post about the DemoDixieDisneycrats with a quote from an actual work of literature?

Beats me. A momentary lapse of reason? Let's try to get through this, shall we?

The Democrats got together, the newspaper sent the Clark County reporter because we no longer have one, and oceans of Bud Light were consumed by all.

Democrats talk pivotal election cycle at New Albany event,by Elizabeth Beilman (We Got Cooking School)

NEW ALBANY — The Floyd County Jefferson-Jackson Dinner on Thursday evening captured the momentous election cycle that Democrats in Southern Indiana are feeling at every level.

"We've just got a lot of tremendous energy, and I think we're more laser-focused than we've ever been this year," Floyd County Democratic Party Chairman Adam Dickey said. "I think it's in part because of the issues and concerns."

Amid the local intellectual carnage, it's worth thinking about George Orwell's fundamental truthfulness.

The embedded video, complete with photo of George Orwell wearing a bizarre Hitler mustache, features Christopher Hitchens and George Packer, circa 2009.

George Packer and Christopher Hitchens talked about George Orwell and his work. Mr. Packer selected the pieces that appear in two recently published volumes of George Orwell’s work: Facing Unpleasant Facts and All Art Is Propaganda. Mr. Hitchens, essayist for The Atlantic Monthly, is the author of Why Orwell Matters.

Hitchens and Packer manage to stay on task for most of the program, though things start coming off the rails near the end, when Hitchens indulges in Iraq War apologetics. Overall, it's a thought-provoking hour with two erudite men.

At YouTube, there is a five-part BBC Arena series on Orwell's life. The segments are just shy of an hour, each. It's a bit dated, but invaluable for the testimony of interviewees now long dead.

Part 1 - Such, Such Were the Joys

Part 2 - Road to Wigan Pier

Part 3 Homage to Catalonia

Part 4 The Lion and the Unicorn

Part 5 Nineteen Eighty Four

Finally, here's something I wrote back in February, 2010: New York Times: "Why Orwell Endures." 

It strikes me as the stuff of wretched cosmic injustice that while Orwell and Hitchens died far too young, Sarah Palin remains a recurring part of our lives.

Thanks, Donald.

---

A collection of George Orwell’s essays proved to be the surprise reading hit of my Christmas vacation. I picked it up at the library book sale, and tossed in the carry-on bag as an afterthought. It's a good thing I did, seeing as the remainder of my magazines and books were stowed in delayed luggage.

Essay topics in the ancient paperback, which became shredded into unbound pages soon after opening, ranged from memories of shooting a rampaging elephant while posted as a policeman in Burma to researching the origins of bawdy English postcards. Orwell wrote not only of lofty topics such as his service for the Republic during the Spanish Civil War, but also described in excruciating detail his recollections of boyhood boarding school days, experiences so quintessentially English that they might be lampooned by the likes of Monty Python without we Americans never really imagining the real-life sources.

As a piece in today’s New York Times makes clear, Orwell may not have been right 100% of the time, but his pursuit of truth and unwavering intellectual honesty remains noteworthy by comparison to many of his ideologically compromised peers. As fairy tale life in Sarah Palin’s Amerika reminds us, they are qualities worth cherishing.

Sunday morning coffee reading: "Why Orwell was a literary mediocrity."

The author does not begrudge Orwell's talents. Rather, he feels "less well-disposed to those mediocrities who slavishly worship at the shrine of St George."

A Point of View: Why Orwell was a literary mediocrity, by Will Self.

... The trouble for the George Orwells of this world is that they don't like the ways in which our tongue is being shaped. In this respect they're indeed small "c" conservatives, who would rather peer at meaning by the guttering candlelight of a Standard English frozen in time, than have it brightly illumined by the high-wattage of the living, changing language.

Orwell and his supporters may say they're objecting to jargon and pretension, but underlying this are good old-fashioned prejudices against difference itself. Only homogenous groups of people all speak and write identically. People from different heritages, ethnicities, classes and regions speak the same language differently, duh!

Aldous Huxley, George Orwell and right about now.

An article quite good with coffee in front of the fire on a chilly November Sunday.

Aldous Huxley, CS Lewis and JFK all died on the same day in 1963, and amid the media fixation with the 50th anniversary of the assassination, I found myself thinking about Huxley and Soma. The craft beer movement currently is on a Soma-as-guiding-principle kick, isn't it?

Aldous Huxley: the prophet of our brave new digital dystopia ... CS Lewis may be getting a plaque. But Huxley, for his foretelling of a society that loves servitude, is the true visionary, by John Naughton (The Guardian)

... For one of the ironies of history is that visions of our networked future can be bracketed by the imaginative nightmares of Huxley and his fellow Etonian George Orwell. Orwell feared that we would be destroyed by the things we fear – the state surveillance apparatus so vividly evoked in Nineteen Eighty-Four. Huxley's nightmare, set out in Brave New World, his great dystopian novel, was that we would be undone by the things that delight us.

The Publican on megaswill and doublespeak, at LouisvilleBeer.com

When they talk smack, they need to be smacked down. It helps them learn.

Tom Long is Full of Something,
and it Ain’t Craft Beer

Years before most of us were born, there was an Englishman named Eric Blair, who is better known by his pen name, George Orwell.

During a lifetime cut regrettably short, Orwell spent much of his writing career pondering abuses and misuses of the English language. Orwell decried the mutability of language and words, particularly when these bastardized word meanings were deployed unnaturally, to become instruments of bad intent, or sometimes even de factoweapons against freedom itself.

Now, it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influence of this or that individual writer. But an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely. (Orwell)

In our day and age, we remember Orwell primarily for his anti-totalitarian novels, including “Animal Farm” and “1984,” the latter of which introduced the seminal concepts of “doublethink” and “newspeak.” Subsequently, another word was coined to meld these ideas into one enduringly disturbing tool for the use of dictators and advertising directors: Doublespeak.

New York Times: "Why Orwell Endures."

A collection of George Orwell’s essays proved to be the surprise reading hit of my Christmas vacation. I picked it up at the library book sale in December, and tossed in the carry-on bag as an afterthought. It's a good thing I did, seeing as the remainder of my magazines and books were stowed in delayed luggage.

Essay topics in the ancient paperback, which became shredded into unbound pages soon after opening, ranged from memories of shooting a rampaging elephant while posted as a policeman in Burma to researching the origins of bawdy English postcards. Orwell wrote not only of lofty topics such as his service for the Republic during the Spanish Civil War, but also described in excruciating detail his recollections of boyhood boarding school days, experiences so quintessentially English that they might be lampooned by the likes of Monty Python without we Americans never really imagining the real-life sources.

As a piece in today’s New York Times makes clear, Orwell may not have been right 100% of the time, but his pursuit of truth and unwavering intellectual honesty remains noteworthy by comparison to many of his ideologically compromised peers. As fairy tale life in Sarah Palin’s Amerika reminds us, they are qualities worth cherishing.