A Great Comparison

A person posted a comic on the website "Above Top Secret". I loved it, he was dead on. His point was that our world is more like "Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley than it is like "1984" by George Orwell. I will argue that we are a bit of both.

Orwell believed we would become controlled into slavery. Huxley believed we would walk to it for the cookies. I say a bit of both; but, the majority go where the cookies are. It is not one approach it is using both with the blessings of the majority. If you can lead the majority with bread and circus then you can restrain the vocal minority with ridicule and monitoring. The very few who can explain what needs to be done are killed. That is the law of totalitarianism.

The vast majority of the people who live in China and Cuba do not think they are enslaved by their governments. Sheep go where the grass is, that is why they need sheep dogs and Shepherds. The vast majority of people will respond as you want to promises of pleasure and demonstrations of pain. For them, for the sheep, you give them just enough cookies that they will come back in a week or two. They will never travel far. Train them to respond to cookies and they will perform whatever trick you want. Because they respond to pain and pleasure in a predictable manner they respond best to pleasure. Impulse driven.

We live in a world where we are bombarded by images. We become addicted to the sounds and sights, they are more addictive than cocaine. Even reading the news can become addictive when it ceases to serve a purpose. While I read numerous news sources each day, I never read the about the same event twice. I don't care about the opinions or the spin that the paper takes, I just look at the relevant parts.

Lose your electricity for a week and see what your kids do. One week without television, radio, computers. They will be on the cell phone non-stop. They are trained to have constant data input. Look what happened when Facebook went down for two stinking days. Few people can handle the amount of data that is presented to us, they shut down or only take in what they find pleasurable.

When the majority refuse to chase the cookie, they get to decide what the world will be. If they still chase the cookie but are allowed to decide what the world will be, they make things worse.