Rob Shvern on Politics

On October 21, 1949 Huxley wrote to George Orwell, author of Nineteen Eighty-Four, congratulating Orwell on “how fine and how profoundly important the book is”. His letter to Orwell contained the prediction that: “Within the next generation I believe that the world’s leaders will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience”.

As the American author Neil Postman wrote in his book, Amusing Ourselves to Death, whereas “Orwell feared the truth would be concealed from us, Huxley feared the truth would be droned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture” consumed by “an almost infinite appetite for distractions”.

In a way they were both right. Unless we tear ourselves away from our pretty toys and distractions just long enough to remove our rose-coloured specs, freedom will be obsolete except as a slogan above the gate of the Ministry of Truth.

http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_2998.shtml