In the foreword to his 1985 book, Amusing Ourselves to Death, author Neil Postman notes that the
year 1984 had come and gone without a fulfillment of George Orwell’s dark, dystopian vision and that
Americans felt satisfied that the “roots of liberal democracy had held.” Big Brother was not watching,
and Americans retained their autonomy, freedom, and history. The nightmare world of Big Brother
was just that: a nightmare.
However, he reminds us that alongside Orwell’s dark vision there was another— “slightly less well
known, equally chilling: Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.” In Huxley’s vision, no force would be
required to deprive people of their freedom. Instead, as Huxley saw it, “people will come to love their
oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.” Postman follows these
observations with a series of further oppositions comparing the two visions:
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. Orwell
feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture,
preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal
bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and
rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take into account man’s
almost infinite appetite for distractions.” In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by
inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short,
Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.
(xix-xx)
Postman makes it clear that he thinks Huxley’s vision is coming true. Postman, however, blames
television for most of the problem. Today, over thirty years later, the Internet has more influence than
television, and Postman’s arguments appear a bit dated. Have we avoided Huxley’s vision too? Or has
Brave New World 6
the Internet made Huxley’s and Postman’s vision even more likely? This question will be one of the
central issues in this module.



Quickwrite: Take one of the oppositions that Postman describes in the paragraph quoted above write down the sentence or sentences that describe this opposition.
Then think about connections with our own world. What is your gut feeling about it? Is Orwell’s vision or Huxley’s vision more accurate? What kind of evidence would you need to convince someone one way or the other? How would you investigate it? To what extent are people’s experiences of
freedom and oppression impacted by race, ethnicity, sexuality, and class?