Two defining books - masterpieces and bestsellers at the time and ever since: Aldous Huxley’s "Brave New World" and George Orwell’s "1984". Are you familiar with these books? They used to be part of the high-school curriculum. Two different lenses portraying the future for them, which is our present, today:
- Orwell feared that books would be banned; Huxley feared that
there would be no reason to ban books because no one would want to read them
anyway.
- Orwell feared those who want to ban the access to information;
Huxley feared those who give us access to so much information that we became
passive, bored and tired because of it.
- Orwell feared that the truth would be hidden from us, and
Huxley of the fact that the truth would be drowned in an ocean of irrelevance.
- Orwell feared that people would be controlled through the threat of increasing pain (physical and mental); Huxley that people will be controlled by the temptation of a increasing and addictive emotional pleasure (see also Neil Postman's essay "Amusing Ourselves to Death")
Concluding. Orwell feared that what we hate the most would lead us to doom, but Huxley was rightly afraid that what would cripple us as society and individuals is what we love the most.
I realized that we’ve got people around who are looking up seeing the reality through the lenses of either George Orwell or Aldous Huxley. Are you one of them?
Mark 4:9 - “Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear.”
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