| Revisited.
Were he alive today, I am sure he would write yet another estimation of
his 1932 novel. It remains relevant today because so many of its
predictions of life in the 26th century have been realized already in our
21st century: the implications of human cloning, propaganda, brain washing,
chemical persuasion, over-population,subliminal advertising, hypnopaedia
(conditioned sleep-learning), consumerism and, most importantly, his answer
to Eric Fromm's question about whether it is possible that we can forget
that we are human.
Basic questions: Why is science
and technology a public danger as well as the foundation of happiness in
the brave new world? Why does Mustapha Mond's experiment to assimilate
John the Savage into the brave new world fail? Why does Huxley make
numerous references to Shakespeare? Why does Huxley have John counter
Mustapha Mond's defense of the brave new world with many references to
Shakespeare?
The 1980 and 1998 made for TV
movie versions of the novel raises another basic question: Would Huxley
reject the 1998 film but approve the 1980 interpretation of his story?
Unlike Huxley, his mentor, George
Orwell was not concerned with self destruction but with an external threat--totalitarianism.
According to Erich Fromm, "George Orwell's 1984 is the expression of a
mood, and it is a warning. The mood it expresses is that of near
despair about the future of man, and the warning is that unless the course
of history changes, men all over the world will lose their most human qualities,
will become soulless automatons, and will not even be aware of it.
Perhaps the basic question of the entire novel is its focus on the human
condition: Can human nature be changed in such a way that mankind will
forget its longing for freedom of choice and conscience, for dignity, for
integrity, for love? In short, can we forget that we are human?
Whose vision of the future, Orwell's
or Huxley's, is more relevant today? Should our greatest concern
be from without (Orwell) that we would be overcome by tyranny or from within
(Huxley) that we done in by our trivial culture and its infinite capacity
of distraction?
Additional basic questions: Why
do Winston and Julia continue to rebel against the Party even though they
both know that in the end they will be defeated? Why is Winston Smith
so confident that hope for the future (the overthrow of the Party) must
lie with the Proletariat? |
