The sociologist Postman confirmed that, between the dystopias of Orwell and Huxley, the latter had won. First TV, and now the digital world, are the vectors of the “great satiety” that has imprisoned us
In 1958 Aldous Huxley decided to return – in non-fiction form – to the “new world” he had imagined in 1931, when he wrote one of the most important and prescient dystopias in the history of literature. He wanted to compare himself with another immense colleague – George Orwell, the author of 1984 – but above all he wanted to force the two masterpieces to undergo the test of time. He crowned himself the winner, albeit with a hint and perhaps something more of melancholy. His conclusion, which was more than acceptable, was that, according to the context created after the Second World War, “we must consider something similar to Brave New World more probable and not something similar to 1984”.
Nothing more true. The Orwellian dystopia was suited to twentieth-century totalitarian monsters in their most brutal and police form. He only briefly took into consideration the idea that democracies could also be heading down a terrible path. «In light of the latest discoveries on animal behavior in general, and human behavior in particular, it is clear that, in the long term, control is less effective if it resorts to punishing unwanted conduct, rather than inducing desired conduct through rewards; it is clear that a government of terror works overall less well than a government that, by non-violent means, manipulates the environment and the thoughts and feelings of individuals, men, women and children”, wrote Huxley. «Punishment puts a temporary halt to unwanted conduct, but does not permanently contain the victim’s tendency to such conduct. Not only that: the psychophysical by-products of punishment can prove to be as undesirable as the undesirable behavior for which the individual was punished. In fact, psychotherapy addresses the debilitating or antisocial consequences of punishments in the individual’s past.”
According to Aldous, «the society described in 1984 is a society controlled almost exclusively by punishment and the fear of it. In the imaginary world of my fairy tale, punishment is rare and usually mild. The government achieves its almost perfect control by systematically inducing the desired conduct, and to do this it resorts to various forms of almost non-violent physical and psychological manipulation and genetic standardization. Perhaps in vitro gestation is not impossible,” he continued, “just as centralized control of reproduction is not impossible; but it is clear that for many years to come ours will remain a viviparous species that reproduces haphazardly. It may be that for practical reasons genetic standardization is excluded. Control over societies will continue to be exercised after man came into the world; through punishment, as happened in the past, and increasingly through more efficient methods of reward and scientific manipulation.”
Huxley did not imagine that, in fact, in vitro fertilization would soon become a reality and that upon closer inspection the control of reproduction would also somehow occur. His dystopia, year after year, has become very similar to reality.
With a suggestive game – not random, but significant – we move from 1958 to 1985, and it is still Orwell against Huxley. An American sociologist who would soon become very famous dealt with the topic, writing in some of the main magazines of his time. Neil Postman was a student of the great media theorist Marshall McLuhan, teaching at New York University where he founded the media ecology course. He published profound and sharp essays, including Fun to Die for, which is now reprinted by Luiss University Press and which remains dramatically relevant.
«We were all waiting for 1984. It came, but the prophecy did not come true; the more thoughtful Americans breathed a sigh of relief, congratulating themselves on the escape from danger. Democracy had resisted. Elsewhere in the world there may have been terror; we were spared Orwell’s nightmares,” Postman wrote. «We had forgotten that, in addition to Orwell’s infernal vision, a few years earlier there had been another, perhaps less well-known although equally chilling: that of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Contrary to widespread opinion even among educated people, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same things. Orwell imagines that we will be overtaken by a dictator. In Huxley’s vision it will not be Big Brother who will take away our autonomy, culture and history. People will be happy to be oppressed and will love technology that frees them from the effort of thinking. Orwell feared that the books would be banned; Huxley, not that the books were banned, but that there was no longer anyone who wanted to read them. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information; Huxley, those who would have given us too much, to the point of reducing us to passivity and selfishness. Orwell feared that ours would be a civilization of slaves; Huxley feared the advent of a vulgar culture, interested only in frivolous things. In Brave New World, the libertarians and rationalists – always ready to oppose the tyrant – “did not take into account that men have an almost insatiable appetite for distractions”. In 1984, Huxley adds, people are kept under control with punishments; in the new world, with pleasures. In short, Orwell feared that we would be destroyed by what we hate, Huxley, by what we love. My book is based on the probability that Huxley is right, not Orwell.”
Postman’s essay described the world shaped by television, and did not foresee – indeed underestimated – the rise of computers, although it nevertheless captured its similarity to the television screen. But, equally, he was able to glimpse the West of the new millennium, the decadence of a wealthy civilization founded on advertising, forgetful of the past and nestled in the comforts offered by technology. “There are two ways to extinguish the spirit of a civilization,” Postman wrote. «In the first, the Orwellian one, culture becomes a prison. In the second, the Huxleian one, it becomes a farce.” It’s hard to say he was wrong.
It is a truth captured by two great Soviet science fiction authors, Arkadij and Boris Strugackij, in a beautiful novel (just translated by Marcos y Marcos) dated 1968, The Second Invasion of the Martians: «The history of humanity will not end with the roar of a cosmic catastrophe, of an atomic conflict or in the grip of overpopulation, but due to a peaceful, terminal form of satiety». Satiety and distraction allow conformity to spread. The uniformity imposed by screens levels cultures, trivializes them.
“What Huxley teaches is that, in the age of advanced technology, spiritual devastation is more likely to come from an enemy with a smile on his face than from one whose behavior inspires suspicion and hatred,” Postman explains. «In Huxley’s prophecy, there is no Big Brother who, by his choice, looks towards us. It is we, by our choice, who look towards him. There is no need for jailers, gates, ministries of Truth. When a population is distracted by superficial things, when cultural life has become an eternal circus of entertainment, when every serious public discourse turns into childish babble, when, in short, an entire people turns into spectators and every public affair into vaudeville, then the nation is in danger; the death of culture is clearly a possibility.”
We have the result before our eyes. A civilization suffering from attention deficit disorder that fears any type of fatigue. Not just the physical one, but rather above all the spiritual and intellectual one. The effort of listening to different ideas, of relating to others and their asperities, the effort of producing thought. We don’t have all that much fun, but maybe it’s true that we are dying, at least culturally. We have become, surpassing even the imagination of Huxley and Postman, the smiling jailers of ourselves, prisoners in a sweet and terrible prison.
