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“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. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance.”
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/feb/02/amusing-ourselves-to-death-neil-postman-trump-orwell-huxley
@andrewg "don’t expect “the media” to do this job for you. Some of its practitioners do, brilliantly and at times heroically. But most of the media exists to sell you things."
got reminded recently, when the "giant musk face on afd rally" sure had a strong "recordings of henry ford used as crowd control weapon" vibe
otoh the yesterday's wh press conference was way more orwellian then huxleyan ("orangeania has always been at war with eurasia"?)
they are nothing if not inconsistent in their torment nexus choices
@andrewg
Very good comment and sad that nobody listened to your father.
I predicted / feared this outcome and gave an alternative dynamic solution to it in 1991. unifiedscience.blogspot.com
At the time I thought that giving a straight forward logical explanation was enough. Since then I have learned 4 hard lessons from that. 1. People prefer something that give a new twist to their present understanding. 2. People have a natural conservative reaction to all radically new, which in most cases is good. 3. new understanding give you difficulties with your social group. 4. scientists have been learned a specific way of thinking and understanding and have built their social position on that - don't rock the boat!
@SHBasse to clarify, it wasn’t my dad, it was the dad of the person who wrote the article I quote.
Honestly it's looking like a mixture of both. If you want a preview of the future in store for humanity, you look to China. They have have learned that distraction is necessary like Huxley described, but under the hood of the autocracy they have the Orwellian infrastructure of "re-education" camps, mass surveillance, brutal militarized police etc.
The fascists of the world have learned from China's hybrid approach. The brutilization of Hong Kong was a model of "how it's done".
I see both methods in play. But the Orwellian idea of rewriting history works better when the people have their minds full of inconsequential junk.
The “Ukraine invaded Russia” and the “Zelenskyy is a dictator” re-write was terrible to behold. On the other hand, I could go to a public place and rant about it, and most people would probably say, “Who’s Zelenskyy?”