Brave New World vs Nineteen Eighty-Four featuring Adam Gopnik and Will Self
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 11 ก.พ. 2018
- The battle between two of the greatest dystopian novels Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four is strikingly urgent in our world of Donald Trump, 'fake news', and technological advances. On the Intelligence Squared stage, we have Will Self arguing for Brave New World and Adam Gopnik arguing for Nineteen Eighty-Four. The debate was chaired by Jonathan Freedland.
Dystopian books and films are in the zeitgeist. Reflecting the often dark mood of our times, Intelligence Squared are staging a contest between two of the greatest dystopian novels, 'Brave New World' and 'Nineteen Eighty-Four'. Each book captured the nightmares of the 1930s and 40s. But which vision looks more prescient to us now in the 21st century? Are we living in George Orwell’s sinister surveillance state? Or in Aldous Huxley’s vapid consumerist culture? To battle it out, we brought two celebrated writers, Adam Gopnik and Will Self, to our stage.
After Donald Trump was elected, it seemed as if 'Nineteen Eighty-Four' had clinched it. The book shot to the top of the bestseller charts. It felt so ominously familiar. In Orwell’s dystopia, the corporate state controls the news, insisting that ‘whatever the Party holds to be truth is truth’. That sounds very like Trump’s ‘alternative facts’, and the war he is waging on the ‘fake news’ media. Orwell imagined two-way telescreens spying on every citizen’s home. Today we have Amazon’s ‘always listening’ Alexa device, while Google, Facebook and the security agencies hoover up our personal data for their own ends. Orwell also described an Inner Party - two percent of the population - enjoying all the privileges and political control. Isn’t that scarily close to the ‘one percent’, reviled for their wealth and influence by anti-capitalists today? No wonder everyone rushed out to buy the book.
But Orwell’s critics say 'Nineteen Eighty-Four' is a dated dystopia, a vision that died along with communism. The novel that better resonates with our present, they say, is 'Brave New World'. Here Aldous Huxley imagined a plastic techno-society where sex is casual, entertainment light and consumerism rampant. There are pills to make people happy, virtual reality shows to distract the masses from actual reality, and hook-ups to take the place of love and commitment. Isn’t that all a bit close to home? Huxley even imagined a caste system created by genetic engineering, from alpha and beta types right down to a slave underclass. We may not have gone down that road, but gene-editing might soon enable Silicon Valley’s super-rich to extend their lifespans and enhance the looks and intelligence of their offspring. Will we soon witness the birth of a new genetic super-class?
Both these novels imagined extraordinary futures, but which better captures our present and offers the keener warning about where we may be heading?
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When i'm at work its like "1984", when i'm at home its "Brave New World".
only without the sex
Do you work in a call centre by any chance?
It sounds like your bragging about how much of a 'freak' for sex you have for a wife.
You lucky devil :-)
www.amazon.com/Are-American-Zombies-Max-Meeks/dp/1519437412/ref=sr_1_2?crid=123X4ASMDVLA0&keywords=we+are+the+american+zombies&qid=1564177159&s=gateway&sprefix=we+are+the+ameri%2Caps%2C160&sr=8-2
A member of my family always told me years ago "it won't be long until the government wants to put cameras in your home" They did not need to, we put them there ourselves
We put them in our pockets
What?? lol
Yes. So Huxley got it right. We've been groomed to love our slavery.
I don't know why they are arguing ..they are both correct if you emerge the two books together
@@fortiond3830 --Precisely... Humans are so easily molded.
“Maybe this world is another planet’s hell.”
― Aldous Huxley
Its definitely beginning to feel that way.
To me it definitely is
It only takes a few powerful demons to make a hell.
Something like that for sure !
A subset of it is. C.S. Lewis wrote a book about it. That subset of this world finally left on a bus.
“We were keeping our eye on 1984. When the year came and the prophecy didn’t, thoughtful Americans sang softly in praise of themselves. The roots of liberal democracy had held. Wherever else the terror had happened, we, at least, had not been visited by Orwellian nightmares.
But we had forgotten that alongside Orwell’s dark vision, there was another-slightly older, slightly less well known, equally chilling: Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley’s vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.
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.
This book is about the possibility that Huxley, not Orwell, was right.”
from the introduction to ‘Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business’, Neil Postman (1985)
Huxley, sees the velvet glove.
Orwell, The iron fist!
The latter has been employed to initiate the former as we are now seeing in the united states. We have awoken from our pop culture,electronically induced fantasies to a horrific reality of Tolkien-esque proportions.
claudia xander щ
Леша Егоров, in Xanadu did Kublai Khan a stately pleasure dome decree, where Alph the sacred river ran through caverns measureless to man down to a sunless sea.
@@azimovist What do you think of the quote by (the monstrous) Churchill: The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter..?
One hand for loving my girl. One for keeping her secure
Huxley and Orwell are both correct.
Derek Fuller Agree, and so was Ray Bradbury with Fahrenheit 451.
THANK YOU!!
With a dash of Kafka mixed in.
Exactly
I’ve often thought that both these novels compliment rather than conflict with each other.
Perhaps this is mentioned in the discussion, but I will copy it here. This hangs on my wall, because it perfectly describes our world.
.
What Orwell feared, what Huxley feared...
.
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 an infinite diarrhea of empty distractions.
In Orwell's 1984 people are controlled by inflicting pain.
In Huxley's 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.
This is the opening from the book Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman, just incase anyone was wondering.
@@Thesappysongwriter thank u.
@@Thesappysongwriter guess i have the name of my next book
And both are being used against us all
I've only read brave new world and I think that that's the direction it's going more than 1984.
Man, that guy is trying way too hard to tie 1984 to Trump. He has missed what is happening around him. Amazing.
Brave New World vs Nineteen Eighty-Four featuring Adam Gopnik and Will Self 5.12.23 1104am speaking as a moron... i was so looking forward to his nob and fart gags. which never manifested. as for trump - "news on a stick" or no it's as though he was manufactured to take the flack for a heap load of b.s which has been doing the rounds since the founding fathers.
The problem about this discussion is that they work so hard to deny one another while they should be working together bringing the similarities and differences.
You must not understand the concept of a "debate". Here is a little hint about life. You will always learn more discussing a topic with someone who disagrees then by surrounding yourself with sycophants. Seek out those to challenge your preconceived notions; not those who reinforce it.
@@TheFeyd I do understand the concept very much, thanks. I'm a conversation teacher and I promote debates in class all the time. And while the "traditional" form of debate is seen as the only, or more efficient way to use in order to learn about a topic, by contrasting and attacking each other, in my experience, I've noticed that a less "I'm supposed to defend my side only, regardless of what I actually think" and more collaborative approach is way more fruitful in the results in the end, not only for the learning of the topic, but also for developing social skills. I do see that the point of THIS debate is not this one, granted, and that's what I am saying; I posted because I wished it HAD been more focused on the actual similarities and differences, and less on "I'm right and you're wrong". But if you like this style, it's totally fine.
@@TheFeyd Don't make a habit of thoughtlessly dismissing those you disagree with. It will never impress anybody
That's the problem with these combative set-ups. The format places performance before insight. Winner takes all; while the loser is literary education. First and probably the last programme of this kind I will watch.
Agreed, modern day China is literally both books fused together and somewhere the rest of the world is headed.
War is Peace
Freedom is Slavery
Ignorance is Strength
- George Orwell, 1984
For those interested, I'd recommend The Iron Heel by Jack London, first published in 1907. London had a vision of the future much like Huxley and Orwell. Good read.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Iron_Heel
London was a genius.
THANKS, I had never heard of him, it looks to be very interesting! :D
Also Evgeny Zamyatin's "We" that influenced Orwell's 1984
@@MariaM-ki9ei Thanks, I have read "We", I thought it was interesting but it also felt a bit hard to relate to the characters, I think it was the writing style maybe, I will probably try and read it again soon, along with The Foundation series which is great as well, and also written by a Russian :)
Huxley resonates with me most because his strength is in describing a seductive secure world where we are gently & subtly throttled by a gentleman’s “velvet glove” ...
You must have white privilege or you're on welfare. The people bin the middle are living in 1984.
How ironic it is that the host is someone from the Guardian, the newspaper that has been smearing Julian Assange for years.
Julie Ashton - Thought Police?!
Imagine my shock. He actually mirrors the
Totalitarian world he argues against.
Did you not see the perversion in this? To subvert the meaning of the books. This is one of the most intelectual criminal things i ever seen, to turn the obvious object of the books which wass Globalism and say its Trump and Putin that are the threats of authoritarianism in the books, agree with them or not, is just evil. These people are pushing their luck.
@@kylewhite2985 amen brother
I would point out that he is more of a Winston Smith than a government man. The true thought police are much higher up than the shills.
If you placed them both on the same timeline 1984 would be at an earlier point and Brave New World a later one, but both ultimately correct.
Funny, I was thinking the same thing myself...
Well yeah, 1984 was set in, well, 1984 while Brave New World was set in the 2500s.
Doesn't Mustapha Mond mention the 9-year-war at some point at the end of _Brave New World_ ?
@@piratewhoisquiet _1984_ is set in 2019. The global elites are deep into numerology. Orwell had a family member who was part of the Trilateral Commission or the Club of Rome or the Round the Table Society or some shit like that. Through that family member, Orwell obtained inside-information about their spiderweb-pyramid-scheme plans for the world. The maths is as follows: Orwell wrote _1984_ in 1948, and published it in 1949. 1984 - 1948 = 36 and 1984 - 1949 = 35. 1984 + 35 = 2019 and 1984 + 36 = 2020.
From a Shannon in Shasta Co. California, I salute and appreciate You, cousin. Slainte! Tir Na Saor! Ireland is a place, not a race, with many lessons to share with All Humanity. Never stop using your mind to produce the beauty we find in your voice, Sir, even if, and because, the words you form, WERE forced onto us by Godless Bigots and Tyrants, whilst stealing our food, charging us rent for the blessing and curse of birth, and making us support Their church. Never accept the title of "racist" for your pride in the Green, Gold and White, na Eire is a place, NOT a race. Eff Cromwell, may he be well roasted in Hell, eff the Queen, eff the King, eff the President. God Bless and keep you, praise Him for the unfathomable gift of His Son, Christ Jesus, and the knowledge that that gift means that You are already FREE!!! I Love You ALL. OnceHeaven.
The fact that both and such different books have amazing similarities to today's world is more terrifying than just one of them being 'right'.And maybe what both miss is the apparent subtlety of how this world could slip so apparently fast...
I've learned much more with the comparison of these novels. I am so thankful for the discusion done in this style. Reading scences and passages of both books(so enriched with real actors) too! This has expanded the veiws of bth novels.
The discusions , lecturers are very valuable in explaining ...so interesting. I loved the presentation.
Second guy is literally someone that believes the screens in 1984
Yeah I was watching this like “no mention of sjw newspeak, etc.”?
This is great toward your point: 1:00:56
Throughout his debate, I thought that every point he makes for Orwell, is a point against his own view of the world. The authoritarianism springs from the very people that impose it in the name of freedom. This is a clear case of newspeak. The mass media, publications, hollywood, big pharma; all willing to impose an inverted truth, all willing to adhere to globalism and the means by which it's imposed, "the good of your health" and "the good of the planet". Trump, the very man he argues embodies authoritarianism, was the man shut down from debate by the establishment, almost in its entirety. Words are twisted; people loosing their freedom to move, to associate with their peers, even to think differently, all spring from people so desperately trying to convince us that they are against censorship, against authoritarianism. Summarized, you couldn't have said it better.
I did enjoy this. Yes, it's not a case of 1984 or Brave New World; somehow we've got both at once.
Not really. BNW is far more prescient.
I agree we have both, especially because the novels are allegories and hyperboles, not meant to be taken literally. Because of a mixture like this, I find Fahrenheit 451 the most accurate.
i dont know how old you are, but i an a senior.
I went through my whole life not paying attention until things got so bad that now we have an outright fight between the darkness and the light.played out right in fron of our faces.
Dark forces are pretending to be good and denigating the fighters for the light.
Like him or not, DJT is an able leader to re establish our rights, keep these demons from robbing us and harming our children.
And over time we see the results of working in the light.
Good trees produce good fruit. Conservatives are flourishing in every way possible.
New businesses, new partnerships. New creative projects.
Great youtube networks, short and long form. Magnificent investigators and journalists.
Fun, funny, appreciative.
Looking good, too. Not pasty and haunted like the emissaries of the Deep State, the Enemedia, rotten celebs and corrupt politicians.
Truth based and loving the USA.
Nothing like this on the left.
Almost as if the two distinct views are being deliberately merged...
Yes 100% definitely we have both.
Will Self is absolutely HILARIOUS in his mannerisms. He is almost a caricature of reclusive artsy brilliant author. I love how he flexes his neck before answering his first question as if he is about to go into an MMA fight
He is a pompous phony. No wonder he was a heroin addict.
@@RkristinaTay THANK YOU!
It was pretty cringe actually.
Will: *Gives thoughtful, reasoned, and provoking reasons behind Brave New World*
Adam: "Yeah, but Orange Man Bad."
I'd love to hear this debate now, a year into Covid 19.
Or 2
1:27:29 I've long thought that the ironic difference between 1984 and today is this: Orwell envisioned a situation where people were compelled by law to leave their telescreens on, to ensure constant monitoring by authorities. These days people "voluntarily" allow the same result by having home computers on line constantly, and carrying cell phones which track their movements and online activity 24/7.
Tom Ripsin - Don’t worry, it won’t be long before people are required to carry their phones at all times for ID purposes. As it is I would guess 95% of adults have mobile phones and 90% of them carry them at all times. That’s over 85% covered right there, and most of the exceptions will be in their 70s or older, so hardly a threat to notional security.
i recently realised that the pseudonym "George Orwell" is a very clever pun, sounding like "Jaw Jaw Well", and after looking it up i was unsurprised to discover that almost nobody makes this connection, the reason being that according to their fear they are deeply resistant to what the connection implies. i found one or two people on obscure forums pointing it out, who associated it with the common phrase in Orwell's lifetime "Jaw-Jaw", meaning "talk", suggesting that the pseudonym meant "talk well." but i think "Jaw-Jaw-Well" goes much deeper than simply playing with the parlance of his times. i see the phrase "Jaw-Jaw" in this context as signifying herbivores and carnivores, prey and predators: the first Jaw eats the plants, the second Jaw eats the first Jaw. when in the wild, this dynamic is balanced, both prey and predator are fully aware of their relative roles and thus the resultant suffering is minimal (though the phenomenon was effectively the driver of suffering and especially of fear in the evolution of life), however within humanity it took a much darker turn. the evidence suggests (though no one else seems to be willing to say it out loud) that this dynamic exists within the human species: there is a vast majority of human prey (neurotypical and autistic, the first/passive Jaw) and a small minority of human predators (psychopaths, the second, dominant Jaw). this predator/prey dynamic developed with complex communication (and thus the expanded role of empathy) such that those genetically predisposed to deception and predation would prey not on the bodies of the honest and expressive majority (which served no purpose) but instead on their minds, which they exploited at first using their empathy and their attachment to being accepted by the majority, later forming civilisations whereby fear became the dominant tool for maintainence of the Natural Order. what resulted from this was a society built around the phenomenon of the majority being kept in ignorance and denied recognition of the truth of their existence while a tiny minority held all the knowledge and doled it out to a corrupted small portion of the prey to be used as gatekeepers of the Natural Order. the majority of people, especially since civilisation, were raised into a programmed existence whereby the underlying reality of their situation is buried deep in their minds under socially/emotionally enforced psychological lock-and-key (i.e. metaphorically pushed into the earth down a Well, or a Rabbit Hole as Lewis Carrol put it). hence: the Jaw-Jaw-Well. if you really think about it, it fits in to the running themes of Orwell's final two books perfectly, as his mission seemed to be to deconstruct the lies that our societies feed us in order to maintain top-down control. it also fits in soundly with the idea of "2+2=5" (i.e. it's a fair game of chess even when you don't have thumbs, and a fair game of poker even when you don't have a head) that Winston Smith is forced to accept when he finally realises that he is alone in his understanding and can not undo the Natural Order. don't let this get you down though, 1984 was not a prediction, it was just a very dark exaggeration representing the world that the psychopaths Want, in reality the tide is turning and people are waking up fast.
@@sirrathersplendid4825 wow talk about predicting the Covid-19 campus passes required to be shown on compus in American colleges
I don't have cell phone. A few months ago I had to give a routine blood sample and while waiting for this in the waiting room there were six or seven people including myself. I was the only person there not glued to the screen of a cell phone.
Jaw Jaw Well = George Orwell, I like it. Although I have heard a more reasonable explanation for his name. The river Orwell was near where he was living at the time he came up with this name.
@@kiwitrainguy last Christmas eve, after dinner, we (family and some guestes) were sitting at the table. I was the only one not glued to a cellphone, sending and receiving messages. I felt alone.
When the TYRANNT's boot is stamping down on your throat, it's of NO consequence whether it's on the "LEFT" or "RIGHT" foot. #WPRPN
But, the fact is, it's almost always been on the *right.* And this is important to note if you wish to know which is better and which may help us have any kind of future. You only need to study history to see this as a fact... yet, the rightists and Christians come running, 'The left is evil and look how righteous we are!'
that is poignant and I agree ...
@@TheClassicWorld Sorry, but if you stack the number of hundreds of millions of deaths by left wingers, the measly 6 million or so the Nazi's caused look minuscule. Furthermore, it is actually debatable whether or not they were right wing at all, given that they were Socialist.. and if you want to try the argument that they used a misnomer, I will direct you to the fact that Socialists today may actually be fascist monopolists trying to use the state to crush family businesses.
@@terrythompson7535 There IS a video opposing the claim that the National Socialists were socialists and (claims) that they were Socialist only in name. The video was by three arrows ( /watch?v=hUFvG4RpwJI ). To oversimplify, the policies and values of the members of the party are very different from Socialist ideals.
@@plussum3255 That's interesting. While the policies may be slightly different, the end result is the same: Hidden banking oligarchy.. fiat currency..and scale. The financiers and shareholders of stock don't really care what race of people produce their income, so long as they can enslave all races of people indiscriminately, worldwide. Any combination of nations and people are fine until they can complete world domination.
The future is a hybrid of the past and the present
Huxley and Orwell were both right.
i recently realised that the pseudonym "George Orwell" is a very clever pun, sounding like "Jaw Jaw Well", and after looking it up i was unsurprised to discover that almost nobody makes this connection, the reason being that according to their fear they are deeply resistant to what the connection implies. i found one or two people on obscure forums pointing it out, who associated it with the common phrase in Orwell's lifetime "Jaw-Jaw", meaning "talk", suggesting that the pseudonym meant "talk well." but i think "Jaw-Jaw-Well" goes much deeper than simply playing with the parlance of his times. i see the phrase "Jaw-Jaw" in this context as signifying herbivores and carnivores, prey and predators: the first Jaw eats the plants, the second Jaw eats the first Jaw. when in the wild, this dynamic is balanced, both prey and predator are fully aware of their relative roles and thus the resultant suffering is minimal (though the phenomenon was effectively the driver of suffering and especially of fear in the evolution of life), however within humanity it took a much darker turn. the evidence suggests (though no one else seems to be willing to say it out loud) that this dynamic exists within the human species: there is a vast majority of human prey (neurotypical and autistic, the first/passive Jaw) and a small minority of human predators (psychopaths, the second, dominant Jaw). this predator/prey dynamic developed with complex communication (and thus the expanded role of empathy) such that those genetically predisposed to deception and predation would prey not on the bodies of the honest and expressive majority (which served no purpose) but instead on their minds, which they exploited at first using their empathy and their attachment to being accepted by the majority, later forming civilisations whereby fear became the dominant tool for maintainence of the Natural Order. what resulted from this was a society built around the phenomenon of the majority being kept in ignorance and denied recognition of the truth of their existence while a tiny minority held all the knowledge and doled it out to a corrupted small portion of the prey to be used as gatekeepers of the Natural Order. the majority of people, especially since civilisation, were raised into a programmed existence whereby the underlying reality of their situation is buried deep in their minds under socially/emotionally enforced psychological lock-and-key (i.e. metaphorically pushed into the earth down a Well, or a Rabbit Hole as Lewis Carrol put it). hence: the Jaw-Jaw-Well. if you really think about it, it fits in to the running themes of Orwell's final two books perfectly, as his mission seemed to be to deconstruct the lies that our societies feed us in order to maintain top-down control. it also fits in soundly with the idea of "2+2=5" (i.e. it's a fair game of chess even when you don't have thumbs, and a fair game of poker even when you don't have a head) that Winston Smith is forced to accept when he finally realises that he is alone in his understanding and can not undo the Natural Order. don't let this get you down though, 1984 was not a prediction, it was just a very dark exaggeration representing the world that the psychopaths Want, in reality the tide is turning and people are waking up fast.
Arthur C. Clarke & others
Gotta hand it to Self. He really sweeped the field with this one. Incredibly on point. He was careful to emphasis that while this isn't the experience of most of the world, it is the experience dominating the West and especially the influential classes therein. The only fair point made by his opponent was about the manipulation of language. He could have argued that point a lot further and brought in issues of political correctness and and censorship but he didn't -- probably because it doesn't fit with his personal political preferences which are (by his own admissions) clearly left-leaning
Indeed, the debate was severely hamstringed by incorporating "Trumpism" into the argument.
I was also thouroughly surprised that political correctness, including the doublethink required to participate in (gender) identity politics, was not mentioned at all.
It really does seems like there is a dived between left and right
Yes; performance triumphed over relevance. Self read the room and the audience were obviously appreciative of his colourful, risqué comments in their self- [sic] congratulatory middle class way
Very pleasant discussion. I read both books long ago and it is clear both books are quite prophetic. Not sure why so many shrill comments about the speakers. The speakers seem very reasonable in their points of view. And the readings from the books are quite apt. I think arguing which book represents Today is silly since both are happening simultaneously, though 1984 is more obvious to people who don't know much science or history. Both books have a happy ending - the State wins. We let this happen to ourselves because we prefer not to think. We can blame parents, churches, advertising, and schools but at some point we should realize it is up to individuals to choose to think and to teach our offspring to think.
A lot of the negativity comes from people that feel personally attacked by the second speakers Trump remarks. While I dont have much of an affinity for trump myself, I can understand why some feel a need to fight back. Personally I felt like the first speaker had a better idea of what a dystopian future might be. Is a life of accumulation, instant gratification, and materialism all this world has to offer. Is virtue and chivalry a dying concept in today's society, no longer necessary for the people of the future.
I love the bitterness in your "happy ending"-remark :))
And agree with teh other points you make, but I would add that, for many parents, what they teach their children is subverted by churches/advertising/regime propaganda..
Yeah, the word seems so binary these days. Discussing these (and other) books is great, but I didn't see the need to push for a winner. It's like debating if doctors are better than nurses; they're both necessary and helpful in their own way while, taken together, aid us even more.
They don't have happy endings if the state wins.
@@bicyclist2 it's not "if the state wins," but "when the state wins."
Surely mobile phones are the true soma.
Everyone has different vices, but yes for the healthy non drug induced "normalite". The cell phone is the soma, the gov't even hands them out to the poor "obama phones" to keep them plugged in, occupied and sedated.
Pot, TV, the internet. Here's a censored book that Amazon refuses to advertise for
www.amazon.com/Are-American-Zombies-Max-Meeks/dp/1519437412/ref=sr_1_2?crid=123X4ASMDVLA0&keywords=we+are+the+american+zombies&qid=1564177159&s=gateway&sprefix=we+are+the+ameri%2Caps%2C160&sr=8-2
I think phones and credit cards are the surveillance cameras in 1984
Smartphones and social media are a plague on this world. People can't put the phone down long enough to do their jobs, it's a very real problem.
I do agree with the fact that we all our different some, however, I'd say that technology overall (mobile phones, video games or TV) is everyone's soma
We've pretty much achieved the 1984 state of paranoia and now we're living in a Scared New World. Bravo to us all.
i recently realised that the pseudonym "George Orwell" is a very clever pun, sounding like "Jaw Jaw Well", and after looking it up i was unsurprised to discover that almost nobody makes this connection, the reason being that according to their fear they are deeply resistant to what the connection implies. i found one or two people on obscure forums pointing it out, who associated it with the common phrase in Orwell's lifetime "Jaw-Jaw", meaning "talk", suggesting that the pseudonym meant "talk well." but i think "Jaw-Jaw-Well" goes much deeper than simply playing with the parlance of his times. i see the phrase "Jaw-Jaw" in this context as signifying herbivores and carnivores, prey and predators: the first Jaw eats the plants, the second Jaw eats the first Jaw. when in the wild, this dynamic is balanced, both prey and predator are fully aware of their relative roles and thus the resultant suffering is minimal (though the phenomenon was effectively the driver of suffering and especially of fear in the evolution of life), however within humanity it took a much darker turn. the evidence suggests (though no one else seems to be willing to say it out loud) that this dynamic exists within the human species: there is a vast majority of human prey (neurotypical and autistic, the first/passive Jaw) and a small minority of human predators (psychopaths, the second, dominant Jaw). this predator/prey dynamic developed with complex communication (and thus the expanded role of empathy) such that those genetically predisposed to deception and predation would prey not on the bodies of the honest and expressive majority (which served no purpose) but instead on their minds, which they exploited at first using their empathy and their attachment to being accepted by the majority, later forming civilisations whereby fear became the dominant tool for maintainence of the Natural Order. what resulted from this was a society built around the phenomenon of the majority being kept in ignorance and denied recognition of the truth of their existence while a tiny minority held all the knowledge and doled it out to a corrupted small portion of the prey to be used as gatekeepers of the Natural Order. the majority of people, especially since civilisation, were raised into a programmed existence whereby the underlying reality of their situation is buried deep in their minds under socially/emotionally enforced psychological lock-and-key (i.e. metaphorically pushed into the earth down a Well, or a Rabbit Hole as Lewis Carrol put it). hence: the Jaw-Jaw-Well. if you really think about it, it fits in to the running themes of Orwell's final two books perfectly, as his mission seemed to be to deconstruct the lies that our societies feed us in order to maintain top-down control. it also fits in soundly with the idea of "2+2=5" (i.e. it's a fair game of chess even when you don't have thumbs, and a fair game of poker even when you don't have a head) that Winston Smith is forced to accept when he finally realises that he is alone in his understanding and can not undo the Natural Order. don't let this get you down though, 1984 was not a prediction, it was just a very dark exaggeration representing the world that the psychopaths Want, in reality the tide is turning and people are waking up fast.
And it hasn't improved at all in two years, in fact, it has degraded.
@@edenwylie8917😂😂😂
@@yoyorocknroll32 😂glad to have made your day
First guy crushed it, second guy follows it up with "orange man bad", such a disappointment
I strive to find some meaning in this debate...
I mean, it's nice to hear about both works being analysed..... but a debate about which is the "best for our times"??? Why?
Read both, you'll be better off for it.
I agree, this could have been produce by either dystopia!
@@GuirriGandul and AXZ1974 you have completely missed the point.
It's simply a device for examining the books more closely.
David Icke warns that dystopian novels and films also serve to normalise and acquaint us with the world totalitarians want to summon in, so we'll passively accept its gradual fruition because it's already familiar
just read. ON F"NG PAPER!
An intriguing subject, alas, vandalized by ideologues.
That's what happens when you ask people to vote. Debate turns into competition.
totally!! why must everything be about ‘orange man bad’. grow up already. life is not all about him!
I haven't watched the debate yet - but from the introduction of the speakers and celebritwits I assumed this was going to be a leftist nutter conspiracy-fest centered around Trumpler . . . . FFS . . . I'd like to see a panel or discussion that hashes out the similarities between the authoritarian leftist and the tyrannical governments of Orwell's and Huxley dystopic visions - because that is far more relevant than any threat of authoritarianism from the right, at the moment at least.
Orwell was a socialist you bloody moron, and so was Huxley
A disillusioned socialist. They know the score the disillusioned ones. Listen to Peter Hitchens to hear what disillusioned socialists think. The disillusioned one's know how serious these ideologies are.
It seems we are experiencing both scenarios played out in coordination, and excellently portrayed by both these great thinkers.
But would either of the debaters call out the puppet masters or power crazed or would they go on about the orange man?
Great thinkers? 😂They were no different than Hugh Hefner. Thinking they could mold a woman's mind into a aggressive or passive aggressive play thing. I like what Elizabeth the first says, "There will be only one mistress here, and NO MASTER!"
Elizabeth also referred to Robert Dudley as her little dog. For wherever she went, her little dog followed.
This is the best debate I've ever seen. The addition of the dramatisation was incredibly helpful in making the arguments. I was on the side of Nineteen Eighty-Four going into the debate, but would've voted for Brave New World by the end. I think what's most pressing is the relevance of both though, and in particular the mesh of both dystopian visions coming together to craft our present. Captivating stuff!
If you're accused of being right wing you get cancelled, locked up as an insurrectionist, lose your job. If you lean to the left you go to psych professionals and get prescriptions on your insurance, work from home, accept experimental vaccines to feel safe, are pro legalization of marijuana and abortion, practice scientism as your religion and believe hate speech should be banned. So if you're on the right you are living in 1984. If you're on the left you're living in Brave New World.
@@nnovo3122 - And the whole time, through the years of indoctrination, no one ever tells you about the other option... freedom. To reclaim your sovereignty, the first step is to know those chains are all in our minds.
De Tocqueville warned of “soft despotism” in his great work “Democracy In America.”
He was a great man
Almost like Daniel Hannan or Montesquieu or something
It’s a shame that 1984 has mostly been reduced to a cliché, because it's a tremendously powerful book with a lot more to say that just “authoritarianism bad!”.
Also, I don’t think either book was meant to be a prophetic warning; I see them as thought experiments that take social and political ideas to their extremes.
M4ruta Yes. Huxley was wrong about a lot of things if his book is read as pure prophecy but in principle he may well end up being correct. I think it’s possible that Huxley didn’t go far enough. It’s entirely possible that we will voluntarily accept our servitude. What happens in a post scarcity society when we have nothing to do but amuse ourselves and limitless capacity to do so?
M4ruta who says it’s a cliche?
Frаnк
Orwell projected his present into the future, as did Huxley.
Feminism and transgender ism erasing family and both masculinity and feminity, left pushing for abortion and hormonal treatment for prepubescents. China trading prisoners organs. Its happening. Tech giants digitizing and censoring everything. Too many examples. Its a shame this debate was leftist literature people and not with more right wing types. That would be a different debate though.
@@MarlboroughBlenheim1 I think a lot of people. Hear it too often.
1984 presents tyranny motivated by evil, whereas Brave New World presents the tyranny of those only wanting what’s best’ for people - both books suggest governments just can’t leave people alone!
We've arrived there.
'Government' today is corporate business, setting itself up as being on the side of 'freedom' and 'the people'.
And that is not “with liberty and freedom for all”!
1984's concepts of newspeak/doublespeak, and thought crimes, as well as the fabrication of history are all shockingly relevant and recognizable today.
from the Left as always
Can't both be seen as equally true in this day? We live in A Brave New World until we question that world, and we are then placed into 1984 if we shout loud enough and create a "disturbance of the peace" that others start to notice...
Exactly!
+++++
i recently realised that the pseudonym "George Orwell" is a very clever pun, sounding like "Jaw Jaw Well", and after looking it up i was unsurprised to discover that almost nobody makes this connection, the reason being that according to their fear they are deeply resistant to what the connection implies. i found one or two people on obscure forums pointing it out, who associated it with the common phrase in Orwell's lifetime "Jaw-Jaw", meaning "talk", suggesting that the pseudonym meant "talk well." but i think "Jaw-Jaw-Well" goes much deeper than simply playing with the parlance of his times. i see the phrase "Jaw-Jaw" in this context as signifying herbivores and carnivores, prey and predators: the first Jaw eats the plants, the second Jaw eats the first Jaw. when in the wild, this dynamic is balanced, both prey and predator are fully aware of their relative roles and thus the resultant suffering is minimal (though the phenomenon was effectively the driver of suffering and especially of fear in the evolution of life), however within humanity it took a much darker turn. the evidence suggests (though no one else seems to be willing to say it out loud) that this dynamic exists within the human species: there is a vast majority of human prey (neurotypical and autistic, the first/passive Jaw) and a small minority of human predators (psychopaths, the second, dominant Jaw). this predator/prey dynamic developed with complex communication (and thus the expanded role of empathy) such that those genetically predisposed to deception and predation would prey not on the bodies of the honest and expressive majority (which served no purpose) but instead on their minds, which they exploited at first using their empathy and their attachment to being accepted by the majority, later forming civilisations whereby fear became the dominant tool for maintainence of the Natural Order. what resulted from this was a society built around the phenomenon of the majority being kept in ignorance and denied recognition of the truth of their existence while a tiny minority held all the knowledge and doled it out to a corrupted small portion of the prey to be used as gatekeepers of the Natural Order. the majority of people, especially since civilisation, were raised into a programmed existence whereby the underlying reality of their situation is buried deep in their minds under socially/emotionally enforced psychological lock-and-key (i.e. metaphorically pushed into the earth down a Well, or a Rabbit Hole as Lewis Carrol put it). hence: the Jaw-Jaw-Well. if you really think about it, it fits in to the running themes of Orwell's final two books perfectly, as his mission seemed to be to deconstruct the lies that our societies feed us in order to maintain top-down control. it also fits in soundly with the idea of "2+2=5" (i.e. it's a fair game of chess even when you don't have thumbs, and a fair game of poker even when you don't have a head) that Winston Smith is forced to accept when he finally realises that he is alone in his understanding and can not undo the Natural Order. don't let this get you down though, 1984 was not a prediction, it was just a very dark exaggeration representing the world that the psychopaths Want, in reality the tide is turning and people are waking up fast.
Great debate I personally have always sided with “brave new world “ as being more relevant to the modern dystopian we are experiencing today ,but I feel there are lots in1984 that resonates today too
No notes, no teleprompter. Respect.
Two awesome books that changed my way of thinking, changed me, for life. I read them in my teens and 20s. Middle-aged now. Excited now to listen to this lecture...
Too bad Christopher Hitchens wasn't around for this one.
That would have been absolutely delicious.
AWS indeed. He would have done a great job for Orwell.
why would you want a communist around?
*Hitchens:* I would have liked to say Huxley, but you see I've been a contributing force to the neo-liberal expansionist machinery over the last 20 years, after dabbling in marxism inspired socialism for some 20 odd years before that, which uhh... also... failed on me. Anyhow, it's a good thing I cashed in my chips when I did a few years back and good night.
No doubt Hitchens would have been eloquent but as with Chomsky, his sincerity and good faith is brought into doubt by his proclamations on the two defining frauds of our time, the destruction of the World Trade Centre etal. and man-made planetary climate change.
Western civilization Brave new world, allmost rest of the world 1984. Both are true
@Eliass soderlund Finally! Someone with the same thought as me...
I agree, and since my country is geographically AND politically between the two, we have a weird mixture, like maybe in Fahrenheit 451. On TV, first a chase of the state enemy and then a shallow' humorous' show. War is a realistic danger and they're advertising toothpaste. Don't know if you've read it but these two hit pretty close for me. Although, that novel, as well as some other Bradburry's works, implies that authorities in US act as if that country was the world, making people believe it too, but the same can be said about my and other countries' authorities sometimes.
@@natalieanimal4063 _Fahrenheit 451_ by Ray Bradbury was pretty good. _V for Vendetta_ by Alan Moore was good too. So were _I, Robot_ by Isaac Asimov, _Animal Farm_ by George Orwell, _Soumission_ by Michel Houellebecq, and _The Trial_ by Franz Kafka, although the latter was poorly written/translated.
@@BJoinedBReality I love this genre and I'm glad you like some of the books. I've read Animal Farm and The Trial (that one was in school and I forgot the most though), I've heard of all but the last one, thanks for the suggestions.
Ooh, very insightful distinction.
"By alerting language we can reshape thought" Adam Gopnik
That is what is happening in this era.
Thanks for posting this video. It's great food for thought, and it's good of you to make it accessible to those who would otherwise be unable to access it.
This was riveting..thank you for posting, made me want to read these magnificent books again.
I feel that it is a question of degree as opposed to this false dichotomy. Brave New World mainly applies to 1st world countries, wheras 1984 mainly applies to the developing world. Another prescient book to read is Farenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, I feel that it's an amalgamation of both BNW and 1984.
i recently realised that the pseudonym "George Orwell" is a very clever pun, sounding like "Jaw Jaw Well", and after looking it up i was unsurprised to discover that almost nobody makes this connection, the reason being that according to their fear they are deeply resistant to what the connection implies. i found one or two people on obscure forums pointing it out, who associated it with the common phrase in Orwell's lifetime "Jaw-Jaw", meaning "talk", suggesting that the pseudonym meant "talk well." but i think "Jaw-Jaw-Well" goes much deeper than simply playing with the parlance of his times. i see the phrase "Jaw-Jaw" in this context as signifying herbivores and carnivores, prey and predators: the first Jaw eats the plants, the second Jaw eats the first Jaw. when in the wild, this dynamic is balanced, both prey and predator are fully aware of their relative roles and thus the resultant suffering is minimal (though the phenomenon was effectively the driver of suffering and especially of fear in the evolution of life), however within humanity it took a much darker turn. the evidence suggests (though no one else seems to be willing to say it out loud) that this dynamic exists within the human species: there is a vast majority of human prey (neurotypical and autistic, the first/passive Jaw) and a small minority of human predators (psychopaths, the second, dominant Jaw). this predator/prey dynamic developed with complex communication (and thus the expanded role of empathy) such that those genetically predisposed to deception and predation would prey not on the bodies of the honest and expressive majority (which served no purpose) but instead on their minds, which they exploited at first using their empathy and their attachment to being accepted by the majority, later forming civilisations whereby fear became the dominant tool for maintainence of the Natural Order. what resulted from this was a society built around the phenomenon of the majority being kept in ignorance and denied recognition of the truth of their existence while a tiny minority held all the knowledge and doled it out to a corrupted small portion of the prey to be used as gatekeepers of the Natural Order. the majority of people, especially since civilisation, were raised into a programmed existence whereby the underlying reality of their situation is buried deep in their minds under socially/emotionally enforced psychological lock-and-key (i.e. metaphorically pushed into the earth down a Well, or a Rabbit Hole as Lewis Carrol put it). hence: the Jaw-Jaw-Well. if you really think about it, it fits in to the running themes of Orwell's final two books perfectly, as his mission seemed to be to deconstruct the lies that our societies feed us in order to maintain top-down control. it also fits in soundly with the idea of "2+2=5" (i.e. it's a fair game of chess even when you don't have thumbs, and a fair game of poker even when you don't have a head) that Winston Smith is forced to accept when he finally realises that he is alone in his understanding and can not undo the Natural Order. don't let this get you down though, 1984 was not a prediction, it was just a very dark exaggeration representing the world that the psychopaths Want, in reality the tide is turning and people are waking up fast.
@@edenwylie8917 Why are you spamming this? Wow, you did a big brain, good for you, just mpost the one comment like everyone else, don't spam it around man... It's annoying asf
@@Garry_Combine i was psychotic when i was spamming. Psychotic people don't usually have such inhibitions, feeling like they're on some sort of an important mission, especially when paranoid schizophrenia is involved. We are completely out of touch with simple social realities in that state. Besides, if you take the reality of what i was doing into account, it was hardly a "big brain", quite the opposite. Give me a break, you may find it annoying, but what is the harm done to you, really?
@Kilo Mintoni what do you mean?
Two fantastic books, but we can't neglect the fact that without Yevgeny Zamyatin's We from 1921, we would have neither. He was light years ahead of his contemporaries and paid the price for it
Very very true .
A couple of decades, not light years. Which are distances.
@@granthurlburt4062 bet you're fun at parties
Can it be that we're too somatised to realize that we're in a 1984 world ?
i have 16 different whiskey bottles in my liquor cabinet and 3 vehicles in my driveway. i have a 65"tv in room filled with video game and movie collectables worth 10,000$ at least...much more than a crappy bottle of gin and a lump of bread..seems like a brave new world to me
Yes.
My God - both these speakers actually think Trump is the danger! 1984 is not just a vision - it's the reality.
Spot on. They're too busy looking at the shadows on the cave wall projected by the tainted sense making apparatus that is the Main Stream Media
there is a sad and very telling thing about some essential meta-message which is repeatedly communicated in this show: it is the terms putinism & trumpism. why did nobody pull some other cliches? how about bushism, obamaism or clintonism? by using the 2 supposedly special (in evil ways) pictures, they have successfully pasted these 2 weirdly problematic cliches into 150.000 brains. what a success?
@@Rhodiac Woosh..All going over your head.
Balla Services da sad one
The books melt into each other.
That’s reductionist
This Will Self seemed odd at first but everything he has so eloquently voiced is what I have always deeply suspected.
Couldn't help noticing some people giving Will Self some hate for no reason other than writing for some admittedly pro-establishment outlets.
I had never heard of him until I cliked on this video and I must say, I thought his arguments were absolutely on point and poignant. Also, I just loved the way he kind of ripped this clearly liberal audience's comfort apart with glee, making his points true to his own perspective without trying to pander.
The other guy I could barely listen. The very few lines I heard sounded more like something more in tune with this audience's liking.
So yeah, I'm getting me some Will Self's books now. Got himself a new reader.
Wow... I wrote out a comment and then deleted it saying it's funny that this guy has no problems mentioning Trump and Putin, but avoids the topic of China and Xi. Then Will brings it up @1:30:36 after someone asks it in the audience. Definitely not a "slip of the mind."
The New York Times deleted a bunch of archive articles regarding China, not too long ago. This left wing New Yorker is afraid for his career, hence the "slip of mind". Most of the US media is receiving "big bucks" from China. It isn't a coincidence.
We're already dead if we're actually debating which life would be the best life between these two scenarios...
1:04:22
O'Brien: How many genders there are, Winston?
Winston: 2.
O'Brien: And if the party says that it is not 2 but 76, then how many?
...
As a University student studying both novels in my Utopoa module and having been sent a link by lecturer today called "Brave New World vs 1984", this is a godsend
Will Self says it best when he said Brave New World is ultimate peace and 1984 is ultimate war. I think that's the best way to compare and contrast the two.
Well as good as I heard Adam Introduced I was done!! You know it’s kinda funny we are over 2 years into the Trump presidency and it’s noting at all like 1984, in fact people question and criticize him and his administration non stop and nothing negative happens to them! 🤨
Out of that group the ones who broke laws are on tap to pay for their crimes.
And he does and will always call out liars who dupe the public.
But there's no effort to harm opposition just because they criticize.
And yet, nothing happens to people have been proven criminals in his administration (or were in his administration)...
Kate Cobb how were they proven criminals, also who? General Flynn? That came out as total entrapment. Cater Page? The one who an FBI lawyer just pled guilty for altering his information from a CIA asset to a Russian spy? Rodger Stone, for lying to Congress? Last I check he was convicted, he was screwed by a gag order from a judge during his trial forbidding him to speak of his trail to anyone outside of his council, that sounds legitimate! Steve Brannon and the other 2 yahoos charged with taking money from the build a wall charity, you should be happy about that! So who were these horrible criminals and if they are so bad and so dangerous what about all the criminals on the Democrats side who haven’t even been charged?
They criticize him because he's working against the transformation into totalitarianism
Trump has been a godsend if you can appreciate the sovreignty of the U. S. - the Constitution and the bill of rights
We live in a hybrid, approximating both Huxley and Orwell's visions.
This was a midwit debate: both are works of literature that accent and elevate social currents in order to make a point about things that aren't overt; both have become cultural touchstones that organize perception toward largely invisible machinations. The ideas of both are prescient and arguing that one mirrors the world more than the other is a disservice to both (and kind of a joke).
Literary technique actually works against Orwell in this discussion (i.e. his themes aren't dependant on the world outcome he uses to make his points). For example, Orwell used stark/horrific imagery to underscore his themes; 1984 is much more visceral than BNW (and that's probably by design on the part of both authors). Just because the world created by Orwell is overtly regimented doesn't mean that the world we live in is such in a clear/visible way (e.g. political gatekeepers are largely invisible--the head of the DNC was caught actively undermining the primary campaign of a popular candidate, only to resign and be hired into a top position by the candidate that person had been running against). BNW overtly makes the argument that people will blindly accept pacification whereas 1984 implies such. The point isn't about living in a duplicate of 1984 or BNW, but that both expose elements of social order that are dangerous and antithetical to values and ideas that are openly voiced (i.e. that these values are weaponized is in line with 1984 and that we actually don't really care enough to think deeply about them is in line with BNW--these aren't mutually exclusive lines of thought).
Further, the fact the guy arguing in favor of Orwell didn't bring up language like _alternative_ facts and _mostly peaceful_ protests, ironically, does a lot toward the idea that the manipulation of language (and thereby thought) is an insidious trend; one that largely goes unnoticed (no one is going to hook you up to a torture machine but you might have to attend _implicit bias training_ if you want to keep your job). The major commonality between both 1984 and BNW is pacification (and not the literal dystopias they use to explore that theme). The debate shouldn't be decided on the idea that we're living in one or the other because the whole point is we're always living through both.
The fact that party members/alphas are holding an extracurricular debate about dystopian pacification, finding that the norms they adhere to aren't as cruelly enforced as depicted by 1984, is unintentionally ironic.
This would have been a much more interesting and cogent debate if they had lost Gopnik and held the debate in 2021. If they had someone who actually understood 1984, and wasn’t an establishment shill like Gopnik. Post Covid lockdowns, and vaccine mania, this would be a hell of a debate. As it stands it’s extremely one sided, but held today would have so much more for both sides to argue for.
As a guy above mentioned, Gopnik is precisely the guy who believes the screen in 1984.
Ironically, it is the search engine in Google owned TH-cam, which brought me to this incredibly interesting discussion.
i recently realised that the pseudonym "George Orwell" is a very clever pun, sounding like "Jaw Jaw Well", and after looking it up i was unsurprised to discover that almost nobody makes this connection, the reason being that according to their fear they are deeply resistant to what the connection implies. i found one or two people on obscure forums pointing it out, who associated it with the common phrase in Orwell's lifetime "Jaw-Jaw", meaning "talk", suggesting that the pseudonym meant "talk well." but i think "Jaw-Jaw-Well" goes much deeper than simply playing with the parlance of his times. i see the phrase "Jaw-Jaw" in this context as signifying herbivores and carnivores, prey and predators: the first Jaw eats the plants, the second Jaw eats the first Jaw. when in the wild, this dynamic is balanced, both prey and predator are fully aware of their relative roles and thus the resultant suffering is minimal (though the phenomenon was effectively the driver of suffering and especially of fear in the evolution of life), however within humanity it took a much darker turn. the evidence suggests (though no one else seems to be willing to say it out loud) that this dynamic exists within the human species: there is a vast majority of human prey (neurotypical and autistic, the first/passive Jaw) and a small minority of human predators (psychopaths, the second, dominant Jaw). this predator/prey dynamic developed with complex communication (and thus the expanded role of empathy) such that those genetically predisposed to deception and predation would prey not on the bodies of the honest and expressive majority (which served no purpose) but instead on their minds, which they exploited at first using their empathy and their attachment to being accepted by the majority, later forming civilisations whereby fear became the dominant tool for maintainence of the Natural Order. what resulted from this was a society built around the phenomenon of the majority being kept in ignorance and denied recognition of the truth of their existence while a tiny minority held all the knowledge and doled it out to a corrupted small portion of the prey to be used as gatekeepers of the Natural Order. the majority of people, especially since civilisation, were raised into a programmed existence whereby the underlying reality of their situation is buried deep in their minds under socially/emotionally enforced psychological lock-and-key (i.e. metaphorically pushed into the earth down a Well, or a Rabbit Hole as Lewis Carrol put it). hence: the Jaw-Jaw-Well. if you really think about it, it fits in to the running themes of Orwell's final two books perfectly, as his mission seemed to be to deconstruct the lies that our societies feed us in order to maintain top-down control. it also fits in soundly with the idea of "2+2=5" (i.e. it's a fair game of chess even when you don't have thumbs, and a fair game of poker even when you don't have a head) that Winston Smith is forced to accept when he finally realises that he is alone in his understanding and can not undo the Natural Order. don't let this get you down though, 1984 was not a prediction, it was just a very dark exaggeration representing the world that the psychopaths Want, in reality the tide is turning and people are waking up fast.
What is up with the first guy asking a question? There was no claim whatsoever that you have to be famous to say something important o.O
Other than that I think Gopnik failed to mention quite a bit of what makes 1984 so important and missed a lot of rather stunning examples.
"Every statue has been removed."
Prescient.
"keep the statues!" Said no hero ever. They should be putting out books and statements instead of statues. Statues may be more useful for vague consensus of nothing than actual thoughts though.
@@letsomethingshine Sadly, I don't have the data on all heroes ever, so I cannot possibly hope to be able to respond.
Nether of these novel should have similarities to our lives and remain the hysterical ravings of mad men, but yet here we are.
You won't owe anything but will be happy
KLAUS SCHWAB
Thoroughly enjoyed this presentation! Thanks.
This could have been such an interesting debate, but instead of Brave New World vs Nineteen Eighty-Four it was Brave New World vs I hate Trump, what a shame.
Excellent Debate. Thank you for this gem!
you know you're an English teacher when you have a strong opinion on this (it's Brave New World, people.) AND you're evaluating the rhetorical strategies of the speakers while you watch.
Orwell feared of books being banned, Huxley feared of people not being interested in books. Hey, what about Bradburry's Fahrenheit 451
I always viewed them in a timeline. The world of 1984 develops into the world of a brave new. I believe we are somewhere between 1984 and brave new world today.
i recently realised that the pseudonym "George Orwell" is a very clever pun, sounding like "Jaw Jaw Well", and after looking it up i was unsurprised to discover that almost nobody makes this connection, the reason being that according to their fear they are deeply resistant to what the connection implies. i found one or two people on obscure forums pointing it out, who associated it with the common phrase in Orwell's lifetime "Jaw-Jaw", meaning "talk", suggesting that the pseudonym meant "talk well." but i think "Jaw-Jaw-Well" goes much deeper than simply playing with the parlance of his times. i see the phrase "Jaw-Jaw" in this context as signifying herbivores and carnivores, prey and predators: the first Jaw eats the plants, the second Jaw eats the first Jaw. when in the wild, this dynamic is balanced, both prey and predator are fully aware of their relative roles and thus the resultant suffering is minimal (though the phenomenon was effectively the driver of suffering and especially of fear in the evolution of life), however within humanity it took a much darker turn. the evidence suggests (though no one else seems to be willing to say it out loud) that this dynamic exists within the human species: there is a vast majority of human prey (neurotypical and autistic, the first/passive Jaw) and a small minority of human predators (psychopaths, the second, dominant Jaw). this predator/prey dynamic developed with complex communication (and thus the expanded role of empathy) such that those genetically predisposed to deception and predation would prey not on the bodies of the honest and expressive majority (which served no purpose) but instead on their minds, which they exploited at first using their empathy and their attachment to being accepted by the majority, later forming civilisations whereby fear became the dominant tool for maintainence of the Natural Order. what resulted from this was a society built around the phenomenon of the majority being kept in ignorance and denied recognition of the truth of their existence while a tiny minority held all the knowledge and doled it out to a corrupted small portion of the prey to be used as gatekeepers of the Natural Order. the majority of people, especially since civilisation, were raised into a programmed existence whereby the underlying reality of their situation is buried deep in their minds under socially/emotionally enforced psychological lock-and-key (i.e. metaphorically pushed into the earth down a Well, or a Rabbit Hole as Lewis Carrol put it). hence: the Jaw-Jaw-Well. if you really think about it, it fits in to the running themes of Orwell's final two books perfectly, as his mission seemed to be to deconstruct the lies that our societies feed us in order to maintain top-down control. it also fits in soundly with the idea of "2+2=5" (i.e. it's a fair game of chess even when you don't have thumbs, and a fair game of poker even when you don't have a head) that Winston Smith is forced to accept when he finally realises that he is alone in his understanding and can not undo the Natural Order. don't let this get you down though, 1984 was not a prediction, it was just a very dark exaggeration representing the world that the psychopaths Want, in reality the tide is turning and people are waking up fast.
The juxtaposition I most wish they’d touched on is the way in which both novelists deal with the quelling of rebels, Winston and Julia in 1984 and Bernard and Helmholtz in Brave New World (I’ve left out John the Savage as he is quite the outlier in the World State, and not very comparable to these other character examples. No, he is not the true rebel, it is Bernard and Helmholtz who commit the BNW equivalent of an Orwellian thought crime) This concept of perma-peace v. perma-war certainly goes hand in hand with the depictions of rebels, and the debate between whether in our world we more often see rebels annihilated or co-opted.
Self: "Modern mass consumerism and corrupt corporations very much reflect Brave New World."
Gopnik: "pootin, drumpf, 1984"
Numbness for the rich and death to the poor.
i recently realised that the pseudonym "George Orwell" is a very clever pun, sounding like "Jaw Jaw Well", and after looking it up i was unsurprised to discover that almost nobody makes this connection, the reason being that according to their fear they are deeply resistant to what the connection implies. i found one or two people on obscure forums pointing it out, who associated it with the common phrase in Orwell's lifetime "Jaw-Jaw", meaning "talk", suggesting that the pseudonym meant "talk well." but i think "Jaw-Jaw-Well" goes much deeper than simply playing with the parlance of his times. i see the phrase "Jaw-Jaw" in this context as signifying herbivores and carnivores, prey and predators: the first Jaw eats the plants, the second Jaw eats the first Jaw. when in the wild, this dynamic is balanced, both prey and predator are fully aware of their relative roles and thus the resultant suffering is minimal (though the phenomenon was effectively the driver of suffering and especially of fear in the evolution of life), however within humanity it took a much darker turn. the evidence suggests (though no one else seems to be willing to say it out loud) that this dynamic exists within the human species: there is a vast majority of human prey (neurotypical and autistic, the first/passive Jaw) and a small minority of human predators (psychopaths, the second, dominant Jaw). this predator/prey dynamic developed with complex communication (and thus the expanded role of empathy) such that those genetically predisposed to deception and predation would prey not on the bodies of the honest and expressive majority (which served no purpose) but instead on their minds, which they exploited at first using their empathy and their attachment to being accepted by the majority, later forming civilisations whereby fear became the dominant tool for maintainence of the Natural Order. what resulted from this was a society built around the phenomenon of the majority being kept in ignorance and denied recognition of the truth of their existence while a tiny minority held all the knowledge and doled it out to a corrupted small portion of the prey to be used as gatekeepers of the Natural Order. the majority of people, especially since civilisation, were raised into a programmed existence whereby the underlying reality of their situation is buried deep in their minds under socially/emotionally enforced psychological lock-and-key (i.e. metaphorically pushed into the earth down a Well, or a Rabbit Hole as Lewis Carrol put it). hence: the Jaw-Jaw-Well. if you really think about it, it fits in to the running themes of Orwell's final two books perfectly, as his mission seemed to be to deconstruct the lies that our societies feed us in order to maintain top-down control. it also fits in soundly with the idea of "2+2=5" (i.e. it's a fair game of chess even when you don't have thumbs, and a fair game of poker even when you don't have a head) that Winston Smith is forced to accept when he finally realises that he is alone in his understanding and can not undo the Natural Order. don't let this get you down though, 1984 was not a prediction, it was just a very dark exaggeration representing the world that the psychopaths Want, in reality the tide is turning and people are waking up fast.
Very powerful reading from Callow
1984 is the world that we fear, A Brave New World is the world we won't believe is happening to us until it's over
In _Brave New World,_ your final realization when the day of your 60-and-out retirement comes is that there is not and never was a "you".
Everyone who thinks this was an actual “debate” is missing the point. Both sides actually advocate for the other in some way, shape, or form. Both books have their merit. Listening to the analysis and application of both sides broadens the collective knowledge of every single person in that room, and in the end, I believe that’s the real purpose of it. Knowledge. Broadening horizons. Being pedantic and brainy around other pedantic and brainy people. I loved it.
I read both books a long time ago and have always been surprised when the media referred to either as prescient. This debate confirmed my sentiment that both books are dated and were referring to some other evil in the disguise of a different time or world. The media and some people are easily trumped by picking some language in either books and pretending they were meant for this time. As far as the debate is concerned, I thought that the defender of Brave New World was extremely inspired and made a very great performance. The other guy looked like he was pitching a boardroom and selling something no one wants.
The guy advocating for Nineteen Eighty-Four dropped the ball when he failed to mention the surveillance of Big Brother. How could he have missed that point?
Trump's authoritarianism, how the hell did that idea formulate in the mind of the chair of this debate. If anything Biden and the corporate media are more appropriate bedfellows
And so it goes.
Trump was such an authoritarian he could not stop a Twitter & FB from deleting his account & banning him from using their services.
Antifa is behind the Jan. 6th riot, yet we don't want to investigate it - also the imprisoned are all innocent peaceful protesters.
By the way, you can never know whether the election was stolen from him, even though the FBI, the OECD, the UN and every single court case, bipartisan election commision and Republican led election audit ALL said the results were legitimate.
Also liberals want to secretly install communism through schools. We invent nonsensical terms like critical race theory or bogeymen like Antifa and repeat them until every time we just utter the word, all Fox News viewer will foam at their mouths.
Larry Elder complains about election fraud before the votes were even cast.
George Floyd first was murdered. which was admitted by Republicans and Fox News and later the past was changed into him dying from a drug overdose. The court case was also fraudulent and Antifa supposedly intimidated the jury.
The speaker is absolutely right about Trump and 1984. In 2018 he just didn't have the worst examples ready yet.
Neurological studies have shown that the part in the brain, that is responsible for critical thinking is degenerated in the brains of Republicans, whereas it remains largely intact in the brains of Democrats. Republicans brains feature an extreme emotionality component, especially the parts responsible for fear and tribalism are highly developed.
Objective reality, truth itself has been destroyed by them. A funtioning democracy can not survive this. The future of America will be a tyranny unlike anything the world has ever seen before.
@@DGollp ?
@@kdegraa 😆 yea and he is so authoritarian that he went through the court systems to make sure the election was fair. Instead of just taking over without regard for the people’s concern. And so authoritarian that he allowed the news to misrepresent his words. And so authoritarian that he allowed for the states to decide how to carry out Covid protocols (from what I understand and remember) and made the vaccine available and left to people decide if that’s a correct medical decision for them. Etc.
Brave New World has been my favorite book since I was about 19 or 20. So glad the funny guy is arguing on its side, and I think it wins hands down. No bias at all =\
Amassing, i had just finished both book. This is a very, very well done debate. Both are greate and scary books worth checking out. I thinknthe answer truly is, that both books are a reflection of the world we live in today. More now during the pandemic of 2020
This is why is not quite good to make political connections. What few years ago seems to be something about Trump or Putin authority today seems to be about the opposite globalist mind control politics.
These are far and away my favorite dystopian novels, and I thoroughly enjoy these arguments from each side. The only critique I might offer is that inherent bias could be claimed in the use of specific references to Trump, and I would hope the point of this discourse is logical yet empathetic persuasion - we must take care to avoid the same polarizing pitfalls theorized by Huxley and Orwell.
Well said, Lisa. You put my thoughts into words.
Will Self - A truly incisive and mic dropping demonstration of Huxley's predictions.
Adam - Orange Man Bad.
What a truly phenomenal debate. Well done!
It would appear we are entering the age of Orwell clothed in the somatose sedatives of Huxley
Oh cwap, we're screwed
32:57
Anyone else feel like his presentation lost weight when he continued to insult working class people as morons?
But most of them are. The willing slaves. NPC's. I guess moron is the wrong word... that would mean they are stupid when really they are soul-less zombies, no real spirit in them. Supernatural.
He is talking like he's a character from the book, looking at our world from their perspective. It's quite effective.
He didn't, it's what they were called in Brave New World, which he was explaining, Will Self wouldn't be so ignorant as to express such a..eugenic opinion..
Opera for Life
He says effectively, If you don't believe epsilons exist, stay around and talk with the maintenance workers.
In the book, Epsilons were denied oxygen while in "utero" and given doses of alcohol to reduce brain function. He is effectively saying you are likely to find a person who has limited neurological development as a custodian.
As for the comment above about the majority of working class being soulless zombies, I disagree.
@@phannybrce Yes, when you put it like that it is a very unthinking comment, but I still think he didn't make that connection since he is not a man who considers himself as "better" than others, just by virtue of employment.
But in the context of the book, which he was discussing after all, it is kinda bad you're right.
I also disagree about the comment above, I have friends working as custodians and friends working in much better paid employment and It's usually the more money they earn the less time they spend thinking about serious things.. xD
There was an argument for 1984. But terminal trump derangement syndrome squandered that.
BOTH ARE TRUE ! This shouldn't even be a discussion !. Both these books complement each other.
They both are fantastic novels. I’d choose “1984”, but “Brave New World” is a masterpiece too.
this is why we doomed, why choose at all? to detract you that we lived in brave new world, and that some people had awaked so 1984 has had to kick in and a virus came along and now we live in both and the narrativ is to choose why not come up with something new
@@allegrasweet3272 You have identified the fundamental flaw in the programme format.
Comparing Trump, Hungarian, Italian right wing uprising to Orwell's vision of 1984 is a joke.
Indeed. It's the complete opposite. What they accuse others of being is actually them.
Correct
MOOSEDOWNUNDER, I’m still trying to figure out how the lefties don’t understand that the dystopia is come from them not the right.
@@sirrathersplendid4825 Worlds biggest problem at the moment.
So much this. He basically told us we are at word with East Asia the minute he spoke about Putin
The most disturbing thing about this is the ads disrupting the presentation on the platform and medium we have no other option from.
Wow I definitely wasnt expecting to find Athelstan in this debate
Evgeny Zamyatin's "We" wins. Orwell was heavily influenced by that novel while writing 1984 and borrowed many elements. Zamyatin is the founding father of dystopia
I didn't know about this book but will surely listen to the audiobook thanks to your comment, cheers!
'We' predates them both and should be read as it influenced both Huxley and Orwell. It is available freely from Gutenberg project and in Wikitext
why isn't Tuppence playing Lenina in the 2020 Brave New World live-action?
If I was in charge of casting, physicality and verisimilitude would be very important. I would want someone who matched Lenina in age, exact body mass and the ability to project that whiny temperament. There are many nuances in _Brave New World._ One of them was the strange indifference to the 60-and-out retirement program, meaning 60 and out the chimney. Another one was the unawareness of the people of the artificiality and purposelessness of their own existence.
Has anyone ever noticed, _Brave New World_ was subtly an extremely macho society. Lenina Crowne existed solely to provide sex to the Alpha males and her economic and productive function was strictly on the side. It was nothing but cover or plausible deniability. What characterized the Alphas more than anything was not their superiority but their utter mediocrity. They were Alpha only in the sense of the ranked order of their functions compared to others.
A huge oversight in the novel was that the Gammas never appeared as characters. Unlike the sterile and cloned Deltas and Epsilons, the Gamma were real boys and girls who must have been living lusty lives the Alphas and Betas had some envy of, or would have had, had not the Gammas been bred to be physically unappealing to the higher orders, as I assume they were.
Huxley missed a lot in this novel. I would like to see the same story in the hands of a greater novelist than Huxley was. A more driving cinematic treatment would be interesting too. The upper class types, especially the British, see too much of a reflection of their own lives in the story to treat it properly. _Brave New World_ is one story that cannot be analyzed in terms of personality dynamics and the simple matter of how people feel. You have to first acknowledge that people in the story are not people as we understand the term, and go from there.
This debate should be held NOW... that would be even better.
I’m surprised nobody mentioned the great inspiration Orwell took from Yevgen Zamyatins We. He borrowed many of his visual tropes from that novel.
I think that’s just less well known in the UK. Funnily enough, the copy I have had an introduction by Will Self
Will Self's face at 1:01:21 !
They both did a wonderful job. They are both great novels.
Dr Richard Day’s off the record talk in 1969 was ridiculously accurate. It’s actually frightening
This was ABSOLUTELY BRILLIANT! I LOVED IT! I've read both books and BNW recently as well. Though I prefer Orwell's story I voted for Huxley before and after. AMAZING, LOVED IT, THANK YOU.
I would love to ask them both for their opinion on Covid19 and how does it change their argument for each author. I really enjoyed watching this. The actors did a fine job also.
I think it only pushes the argument further towards brave new world - a hermetically sealed society which governening body just wants the best for its people, therefore feeding them selected information, making them believe what is best for them. At the same time, we can see that in less "developped" countries, its more about tyranny and forcing people to obey the restrictions. But I think if we look at the data and specific country developments, we can see that the more "advanced" a culture is, the more it resembles BNW. Or on other words, unless all of Maslows needs are fulfilled, the system becomes tyrannical, but slowly more and more peoples needs are fulfilled - in that case, a velvet glove kind of dystopia is prevalent, as opposed to the iron fist. So to conclude, brave new world, a sort of evolution of 1984 is only possible if the advancement continues on, but it seems it will - if advancement stops, for example because of global warming causing shortage of recources, we will see more tyrannical society seen in 1984.