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Orwell, Huxley and Versions of Dystopia

by prabhupant on 11/27/22, 6:42 AM with 2 comments

• by ZeroGravitas on 11/27/22, 9:20 AM

  If you're interested in these books, it's worth reading "We" by Yevgeny Zamyatin as I think it clearly inspired both:

  https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/yevgeny-zamyatin/we/gregor...

  A slightly different direction is take by Katherine Burdekin's Swastika Night, simultaneously more realistic and more fantastic, which is well worth checking out if 1930's dystopias are your thing.

  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swastika_Night

• by SCUSKU on 11/27/22, 7:24 AM

  As a middle class citizen of the US, I certainly find myself worried about how things seem to be in a state of Huxleyian dystopia. So much so that I read the Unabomber Manifesto and found myself profoundly agreeing with many (though certainly not all) aspects of it.

  For example:

     - some of my friends are more occupied with "bullshit" media like the bachelor(ette) or the NFL than the news
  
     - my life is materially comfortable, but only because people in far away lands are having their labor and resources exploited for my gain (more Orwellian really). Specifically thinking about cobalt mining in the DRC or factory workers at FoxConn
  
     - earlier this year, I was suffering from burnout, and depression. I sought therapy and medication. I could not help but feel that taking Prozac was any different that taking Soma in BNW. But I still did it, and I did feel better. I am no longer taking it, and that comparison is one of the reasons why
  

  Still I am not sure the solution, other than to think critically about each and every decision I make, as opposed to blindly following some ideology or falling prey to groupthink. We'll see.