Orwell vs Huxley

Ross Schonberg

Ms. Gubanich

English

January 29, 2016

Captive Culture (Orwell) vs. Trivial Culture (Huxley)

In our society, there are two kinds of people, those who think that the government is controlling us and our every move by constantly watching us, and there are those who do not really care, as long as they are kept happy. In our culture, there are two very famous books that reflect these ideas. The first is 1984 written by George Orwell, and the other is Brave New World written by Aldous Huxley. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture, controlled by the government. Huxley feared that we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. Today we live in a world that may or may not be so different from either of these visions.

I think that our world has pieces of both worlds, First Orwell talks about the government controlling us and he is not entirely wrong. In today's world of technology, the government has drones over our heads and security cameras almost on every street, monitoring us and the rest of the world, in order to watch out for nefarious activities. An example of this is the National Security Agency (NSA), which monitors, collects, and processes information. This is very parallel to Big Brother or the Thought Police, because if you are acting out of the ordinary, you might be targeted (that is kind of an extreme example).

On the other hand, there was Huxley’s vision, in which he talks about how if we are always happy and satisfied then we will never question our government and conflicts within the world. In BNW, the people are preoccupied with Feelies, the orgy porgy, and the bumblepuppy. In today’s world the equivalence of the feelies would probably be seeing a 3D movie, with surround sound and fully encapsulates them, because when people (including myself) are watching a movie, in the theatre, they’re not really thinking of anything else happening besides what’s happening in the movie. No one ever gets up from watching a movie, leaves, and starts to question our government. Also, there is the Orgy Porgy, which is basically just group sex, and that is usually a big distraction in today’s society. Then there is the Centrifugal bumblepuppy, which is a sport in BNW and even sports in our world distract us from important issues.

In conclusion, I would say that our world is a little more like Huxley's version, because if there is something that concerns us we will usually try to make ourselves happy and try not to concern ourselves with it and live in fear think.