literary dystopias and current politics
On the Pete Hegseth thread, @Jane R wrote about George Orwell and 1984...
Actually, in Oceania, the vast majority of people, ie. the proles, are mostly just bought off with cheap entertainment like lotteries and pornosec literature, with it being stated by the narrator that political propaganda, mostly about the ongoing pseudo-war, kicks in only occasionally in regards to the masses.
So, yeah, "a bunch of cat videos" would seem to fit the bill for the kinda methods envisioned by Orwell for pacifying the majority. I believe in The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism Goldstein, ventriloquizing Orwell, argues that ruling classes have historically been overthrown by the class directly below them, thus explaining why the Inner Party is so preoccupied with propagandizing and terrorizing the Outer Party, but more or less leaves the proles to themselves.
Brave New World, published 18 years before 1984, portrays a society where people are kept in line almost entirely via pleasurable sensory bombardment, with state repression kept to a minimum(and people actually have the option of self-exile to the
@Nick Tamen wrote...
I agree. Though the difference with Oceania is that the vast majority of those true believers are located among the prole-equivalent population, who, also unlike the Oceanians, have the right to vote, which, in combination with apathetic-but-leaning-R voters, is ultimately what could keep MAGA in power for a longer period.
I don't think this is the future he was expecting: who could have predicted in 1948 that we would sell our souls to Big Brother in exchange for a bunch of cat videos?
Actually, in Oceania, the vast majority of people, ie. the proles, are mostly just bought off with cheap entertainment like lotteries and pornosec literature, with it being stated by the narrator that political propaganda, mostly about the ongoing pseudo-war, kicks in only occasionally in regards to the masses.
So, yeah, "a bunch of cat videos" would seem to fit the bill for the kinda methods envisioned by Orwell for pacifying the majority. I believe in The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism Goldstein, ventriloquizing Orwell, argues that ruling classes have historically been overthrown by the class directly below them, thus explaining why the Inner Party is so preoccupied with propagandizing and terrorizing the Outer Party, but more or less leaves the proles to themselves.
Brave New World, published 18 years before 1984, portrays a society where people are kept in line almost entirely via pleasurable sensory bombardment, with state repression kept to a minimum(and people actually have the option of self-exile to the
savage
territories). Fahrenheit 451, published a few years after 1984, combines the two, though somewhat incongruously, since the population seems sufficiently zonked out on mindless entertainment that they wouldn't wanna read books anyway.@Nick Tamen wrote...
I don't see anyone but the true believers and politicians worried about their own futures and fortunes staying loyal, at least loyal to Trump.
I agree. Though the difference with Oceania is that the vast majority of those true believers are located among the prole-equivalent population, who, also unlike the Oceanians, have the right to vote, which, in combination with apathetic-but-leaning-R voters, is ultimately what could keep MAGA in power for a longer period.
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I prefer 1984, because it's more reflective of real-world partisan politics(an interest of mine), whereas Brave New World is just a general cautionary tale about becoming overbeholden to science and technology at the expense of the spiritual. "All the advantages of alcohol and Christianity; none of their defects."
Also, I think many of the people who nod assent to Huxley's condemnation of assembly-line gestation and mass soma dosings would nevertheless approve of numerous technological and pharmaceutical interventions in the areas of reproduction and psychology, respectively. So, it's kinda the old dilemma of anti-modernity: okay, we can all agree that technology is draining us of our humanity, but how many of its benefits can we accept and still seriously claim to believe that?
I'll look it up. Not likely to read it, since I don't generally do fiction, but I'll check out the premise.
But I really like the Urras-Anarres political contrasts in Ursula K le Guin’s masterpiece “The Dispossessed” (subtitled An Ambiguous Utopia). And you can draw some political parallels. As you can with the political conflicts in her other great masterpiece “The Left Hand of Darkness”.
Basically I just like the wonderful imaginative storytelling gifts of the late, great Ursula K le Guin. Much, much, better than either Huxley or Orwell IMO.
Another surprisingly relevant writer at the moment (considering he was writing in the 1950s) is Asimov. He explored in detail many of the issues we’re currently experiencing with developing AI, robotic assistants and self driving cars, including the inherent problem that any form of artificial intelligence programmed not to harm humans may decide it should not offend them and therefore will start to give them incorrect answers to satisfy their wish for palatable information.
He also wrote one novel (The Naked Sun) which I happened to read in 2020 and found he’d accurately depicted many of the social changes occurring during lockdown, though for different reasons.
I've only skimmed it and read some summaries. My summation has always been that portraying Christ and Marx together as dystopian figures was an attack on hippies.
TPD is also one of the rare Levin novels not made into a movie. Maybe because the basic premise was made redundant by Logan's Run.
Consciously hating both Christianity and Marxism is NOT a common overlap on the binary political spectrum, but it IS a posture associated with Ayn Rand. On a lark, I googled "Ira Levin and Ira Levin", and found this letter dated from 1950...
No context given for the prefered gratitude, but I'm guessing(or possibly remembering) he had sent some of his early writings to AR for critique.
Also found another right-wing libertarian site with an article specifically about Ayn Rand in relation to This Perfect Day. Haven't read it yet.
Overall, I think I'd consider TPD as in the same subgenre of dystopia as Brave New World, ie. science run amuck, with portrayed societies bearing minimal connection to real-life politics(*). Levin's yarn has greater emphasis on the regulation of death rather than reproduction, and(based on surface perceptions) a more commercially sensationalist presentation of sex.
(*) I seriously doubt there have been any political movements whose members venerate both Henry Ford and Vladimir Lenin, but both men would probably strike a sensitive aesthete as the kinda chaps who are building an inhuman, soul-crushing world in the name of material progress.
Read it. It actually contains probably the most detailed biography of Levin I've ever seen on-line. Apparently, Levin hung out in Objective circles for a while in his young adulthood, but was never part of AR's inner circle.
The author of the piece puts forth the expected agreement with Levin on individualistic grounds, but criticizes him for implying that a "command economy" like the Unification could ever be economically prosperous.