A Brave New World

On reading a review copy of George Orwell’s 1984 (published in 1949) Aldous Huxley, author of the 1931 book Brave New World, wrote some thoughts to Orwell about the themes in each of their books. 

Within the next generation I believe that the world’s rulers will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging and kicking them into obedience.

Both Orwell and Huxley were very pessimistic about the future, the world we all now live in. But they each had a quite different view of the future. 

The website where I got the letter Huxley wrote to Orwell said this about the two approaches:

This 1949 letter from Aldous Huxley to George Orwell is from Letters of Note. While these two authors shared a dystopic view, they disagreed on how it would be realized. Not to put too fine a point on it, Huxley feared the carrot while Orwell feared the stick. 

I lean toward Huxley’s view of the future more than Orwell’s, but see trends toward both in our current society. If you get in the way of today’s society, you will be crushed, like in Orwell’s 1984. However the whole society is structured to keep us dumb and happy, as it was in Huxley’s novel Brave New World. 

One major way this works is by advertising—eighteen minutes of each hour of TV. How much do we watch?

The Nielsen Co.’s “Three Screen Report”—referring to televisions, computers and cellphones—for the fourth quarter said the average American now watches more than 151 hours of TV a month. That’s about five hours a day and an all-time high, up 3.6% from the 145 or so hours Americans reportedly watched in the same period last year. 

The data here is from 2009, but I doubt it has changed much. I find the figure of 5 hours a day incredible. Even including Internet resources like some the documentaries I have been sharing on the blog, I doubt I watch 10 hours a week. And when I watch, there are few or no commercials. My wife and daughter watch more, but since we do not have cable or broadcast TV what we watch is largely commercial free. 

If the 5 hour a day average is right, that means 90 minutes of ads every day. That is 32,850 minutes of ads in a year. How can we not be programmed? Children are particularly susceptible:

And according to Wright Institute child psychologist Dr. Allen Kanner, by the time an American child is three, they can recognize an average of 100 brand logos. By age 10, they remember between 300 to 400 brands, according to a Nickelodeon study.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/brandwashed-tricks-brands-use-kids-martin-lindstrom-2011-9?op=1#ixzz224EwRCNs

I urge you…no, that is not strong enough—I beg you to consider the brave new world we have entered. Is it the world you want to live in? 

If not, there are some things you can do. How about a walk in the cool of the summer evening? The town I live in, Idyllwild, has free weekly concerts. No doubt your town has something like this. We watch local baseball games. You can go to the movies… er… um… never mind about that. Have a game night. 

When you do watch TV, and I still do have some “guilty pleasures,” ask the right question. Instead of “What is best on tonight?” ask instead, “Is there anything worth watching on tonight.” If you are still watching cable, be sure to get a DVR and fast forward though all the commercials. If you set your DVR and start watching the show 15 minutes late, you will reach the end about the same time that the program ends. 

Babylon the Great wants you passive, fat, in front of the TV in a semi-mindless state. Do not be that person. Show initiative. You must be in the world, but Jesus said his followers would not be of the world. As the Philips translation of Romans 12 tells us. “Do not let this world squeeze you into its mold.” 

Leave Hollywood the Great.