2008 Election: 1984 vs. Brave New World

As I reflect upon the past election, I'm really beginning to get concerned about the direction of American society.  I appears more and more that Americans aren't offered freedom, but instead offered two terrible choices.  The Republicans, contrary to their party platform, are offering safety and security through military and a strong central government.  Democrats are offering happiness and security by offering to turn the reigns of the country over to the liberal elite who feel that they can make better choices than the majority.  We get a choice between the cold, militant society guided by rumors of violence foretold by George Orwell in 1984 or we get the calm, drug-addicted, sexually-liberated society prophesized by Aldous Huxley in Brave New World. I don't feel the need to illustrate the freedom suffocating, fear tactics of the Republicans, and the Democrat plan is easily understood by realizing how many marijuana and gay rights initiatives have been on the ballots in the fifty states.

The pieces of the puzzle began to come together for me, when I saw this 1957 video with Mike Wallace interviewing Aldous Huxley.  In the first part, Aldous warns against the use of technology and criticizes the electorate for voting for a personality more than a statesmen.  In my lifetime, I have seen the tendency of people to do this increase without limit.  In the second video, he discussses how dictatorships in the future won't emerge by using techniques of violences, but by obtaining the consent of the governed by making people happy in situations that they ought not be happy.  In the third video he talks about how Madison Avenue is influencing the thoughts of children in the same way that Communists influence the thoughts of those they govern.

Granted, these videos are a bit dated.  There is some inaccuarate analysis of overpopulation, and some may be quick to discount his discussion of Communism.  Please remember, in this video it is not specifically Communism that he is discussing, but the techniques that Communists effectively used to influence and drive people.

As a side note, Huxley mentions that, at least in 1957, some Catholic churches were quick to side with Communists because the Communist party was against birth control.  It really bothers me to think that many Christian pro-lifers today may be picking the wrong side because a politician claims to be pro-life.

Huxley-Wallace Interview Part 1

Huxley-Wallace Interview Part 2

Huxley-Wallace Interview Part 3

"That if you want to preserve your power indefinitely, you have to get the consent of the ruled, and this they will do partly by drugs as I foresaw in "Brave New World," partly by these new techniques of propaganda. They will do it by bypassing the sort of rational side of man and appealing to his subconscious and his deeper emotions, and his physiology even, and so making him actually love his slavery. I mean, I think, this is the danger that actually people may be, in some ways, happy under the new regime, but that they will be happy in situations where they oughtn't to be happy."

-Aldous Huxley (1957)