The Future of 1984 - PsyWar

[RascalPuff]

http://forums.delphiforums.com/molly...sages/?msg=2.1

[Graybeard]

Dear Rascal ..... rather than just a link .... you should include a summary ... posters on the forum should be given some idea of what they are being asked to visit. Otherwise it can be considered spam.

Graybeard (mod)

[RascalPuff]

http://forums.delphiforums.com/molly...sages/?msg=2.1

Excerpts from the proffered link, follow:

“When you tell the truth, be sure you have one foot in the stirrup.” - An old Mongolian proverb

"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.”
- Niel Postman, AMUSING OURSELVES TO DEATH.

"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 eternally imposed oppression. But in Huxley's vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy. 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 (The most - by far - widely read printed material in the U.S. is TV GUIDE. Draw your own autonomously channel-changing and freely choosing conclusions. All those corporate state controlled channels. All those corporate state selected choices).

"Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much (trivial, vain, useless, and/or destructively influential information) that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism.

"Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley, that truth would be drowned in a sea of (’feel good meal’, violence drenched) irrelevance.

"Orwell feared that 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 ís almost infinite appetite for distractions .”

(THAT'S ENTERTAINMENT. Show business. The NATURAL BORN KILLERS-creating corporate state designed and commercially sponsored conquest of the United States, in THE INVISIBLE <What?> WAR. A - JUST SHOOT ME - Entertainment Industry spear-headed War Of Perception...).

"In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In BRAVE NEW WORLD, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure (at someone else's randomly determined, painful expense: the mass production of victims; the practiced art forms of creating victims for empowerment of self and others, while simultaneously denying and/or blaming the targeted victims - who are systematically converted into Fascist ‘feel good’ fodder).

"In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us (Nation of the 2 dimensional TV and video cultivated, 2 second attention span. Then projected on and in 3 and more dimensional reality and people, as though reality and people are 2 dimensional )." - Niel Postman, AMUSING OURSELVES TO DEATH
(parentheses denote additions by K.B. Robertson, RascalPuff, Kaidu, etceteras.)

[Cainnne]

Well...most of it flapped over my head.. but I had to read 1984 because it was part of the curriculum. Good story! Well, we have no Big Brother now... but honestly.. do we really have control over anything in this world except the thoughts inside our heads?