Calgary, March 2020
Attempts to predict the future are as natural as recalling the past and living in the present. We all want to know what will happen to us, to our children and to our grandchildren. Literature reflects that desire in countless books, from Plato’s Republic, written in 375 BC, to Fahrenheit 451 by American writer Ray Bradbury, published in 1953. On the Beach by British author Nevil Shute published in 1957, and Vox by Christina Dalcher, published in 2018. In general, that type of fiction can be divided into two categories: Utopian (optimistic) and Dystopian (pessimistic). Since we live in an age of pessimism, I have selected two dystopian novels: 1984 by British author George Orwell, published in 1948, and Brave New World by another British author, Aldous Huxley, published in 1932. I want to compare these two books and examine how close their predictions correlate to our present life.
1984
The novel describes the world after a global nuclear war and prolonged fighting, when the Earth is divided into three super-states: Oceania, which includes England and both Americas; Eurasia, consisting of former Soviet Union and Soviet absorbed Europe; and Eastasia, once China. There are also disputed territories, over which the three super-states wage permanent warfare. Oceania is governed by a political party called Ingsoc, standing for English Socialism, but it has absolutely nothing to do with socialism. It is a brutal dictatorship headed by the mysterious figure of Big Brother, whom no one has ever seen; maybe he does not even exist. The main slogan of the Party is: War is peace; Freedom is slavery; Ignorance is strength. Those contradictions are explained by the concept of "doublethink," which is accepting that two contradictory facts could be both true at the same time. For example, the statement "War is peace" suggests that peace is to wage war. Another factor that maintains the Party’s power is the denial of objective reality. Towards the end of the novel the protagonist, after extensive torture, accepts that 2 + 2 = 5.
The Party governs Oceania through four ministries: the Ministry of Peace deals with war and defence; the Ministry of Plenty deals with economic affairs (starvation and rationing); the Ministry of Love deals with law and order (torture and brainwashing); the Ministry of Truth deals with news, entertainment, education, and art (propaganda).
The population is divided into three classes: The upper-class Inner Party, consisting of the elite ruling minority, who make up 2% of the population; the professional-managerial class Outer Party, the middle class who make up 13% of the population, and the lower-class Proletariat, who make up 85% of the population and represent the working class. The members of the two upper classes are constantly spied on by the agents of the Thought Police, who report to the Ministry of Love. Their job is to discover and eliminate the "thoughtcriminals," which are people suspected of having ideas unacceptable to the Party ideology. The main tool of surveillance is a "telescreen," a two-way device similar to our cell phone, only bigger. This enables the Thought Police to observe every move of each member of the Inner and Outer Party. The third class, the Proletariat, presents no danger. They are totally apolitical, absorbed in sports, games, beer, and most important, gambling. They also have to work hard and have no time for any thoughtcrime.
The novel begins by introducing Winston Smith, a member of the Outer Party, working at the Ministry of Truth in London, where he rewrites historical records to conform to the state's ever-changing version of history. Those who fall out of favour become "unpersons," disappearing with all evidence of their existence removed. Winston secretly opposes the Party's rule and dreams of rebellion, despite knowing he is a "thoughtcriminal" and likely to be caught one day. The plot continues with a secret love affair between Winston and Julia, another worker in the Ministry of Truth. Relations like that are prohibited, because love belongs only to Big Brother, and any other devotion is considered a thoughtcrime. When Winston and Julia are arrested, they are tortured to the point that all of their "criminal" thoughts are eliminated. The novel ends with Winston Smith loving Big Brother.
Why did George Orwell have such a dark view about the future? He started as a left-wing reporter and writer, but after volunteering to fight on the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War, he was exposed to Stalin’s type of Soviet communism and was disgusted. He went to Spain to fight against the fascist dictatorship of Franco, but soon he realised that he was only helping to replace it with Stalin’s type of communist dictatorship. Since then, Orwell’s writing focussed on opposing any totalitarian state, and 1984 acts as a warning of what could happen. It is a fiction, but the scary thing is that much of what the author wrote actually happened. Orwell’s vision of the world being divided into three super-states was inspired by the Tehran Conference in 1943, where Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill, those three Big Brothers, met to discuss the world after the war. The novel mentions nuclear war. In 1945, Americans used nuclear weapons in Japan. The book describes the bombing of London, which is pretty similar to the German blitz in WWII. Thoughtcrime, doublethink, falsifying history, the disappearance of people, and denying reality are obvious references to the Soviet Union and its secret service. The slogan 2 + 2 = 5 was an official Soviet propaganda tool indicating that the five-year plan of the economy growth, as meaningless as those described in the book, can be completed in four years.
The other question is: How close does Orwell’s 1984 correlate with our current world? Fortunately, we did not have a global nuclear war and we do not live in a society of German-like Nazism or Soviet-like communism. Nazism was defeated in WWII and Soviet Union succumbed to its own internal problems. Nonetheless, there are similarities. For example, the current world powers are always trying to extend their spheres of influence, causing conflicts that result in various proxy wars in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, similar to the wars between Oceania, Eurasia, and Eastasia. Denying reality continues now in the same way as described in the novel. In the current terminology, the lies of politicians are called "alternative facts." Donald Trump used this exact expression when he justified the false crowd estimate at his inauguration. Additionally, in 2004 U.S. vice president Dick Cheney, while talking to journalists, declared:
"We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality – judiciously, as you will – we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors, and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do." (Ron Suskind, NYTimes Magazine, Oct. 17, 2004).
This statement could be taken directly from the Inner Party manual of 1984. It is almost word by word repetition of what O’Brian, a high ranking official of the Thought Police, told Winston Smith when he was forcing him to accept that 2 + 2 = 5. Later on in the book, the same official told Winston Smith: "There is no way in which the Party can be overthrown. The rule of the Party is forever." As it happens, American political scientist, Francis Fukuyama, in his book The End of History and the Last Man, written in 1992 after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, declared that humanity had reached "not just the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such: That is, the end-point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government." To me this idea is pretty similar to what O’Brian told Winston Smith about the Party rule which is forever. Fortunately, both were wrong.
Orwell’s concept of "doublethink," that is, accepting that two contradictory facts could be both true, is an important aspect of politics, in the past and the present. For example, during the Soviet era, Russia’s statement "Fight for peace" is similar to Orwell’s statement "War is peace." It implies that peace is good, but fight is also good. When I was a child in the 1950s, I remember seeing that exact slogan posted on all of the public buildings. The simple idea that if we stopped fighting, we would have peace would be a "thoughtcrime" in my country at that time, as well as in the novel. Presently, in Trump’s America, people are encouraged to believe that immigrants are "lazy scroungers who simultaneously steal our jobs." In Europe, the majority of the population agree that emigrants from war-torn countries need help to find a new home, but do not want to let them in because that would weaken the national identity of the host country. Some people swear that they are not racist, but they dislike Jews and black people. There are countless examples of this kind of doublethink. But the strongest analogy between our world and what is happening in the book is the case of surveillance. Here is what George Parker, a staff writer at The Atlantic, wrote in the article "Doublethink Is Stronger Than Orwell Imagined," published in July 2019:
"We pass our days under the nonstop surveillance of a telescreen that we bought at the Apple Store, carry with us everywhere, and tell everything, without any coercion by the state. The Ministry of Truth is Facebook, Google, and cable news. We have met Big Brother and he is us."
In other words, we have happily traded our privacy for the convenience of easy shopping and fto have access to all kinds of mostly useless information. Not that governments are out of this game, as Edward Snowden convincingly demonstrated, but losing privacy came not from the tyranny of the ruling oligarchy as in 1984. It came from us.
Brave New World
The novel describes a different kind of hierarchical, totalitarian society than the one in Orwell’s 1984. There is no Big Brother, no Thought Police, and no brutality. The whole population of the Earth, except for a few remote areas, is governed by one World State whose motto is: Community, Identity, and Stability, meaning: Everyone belongs to a community and that community represents his/her own personal identity. In other words, everybody feels that they are a part of a group of like-minded people. Since everybody is content, the system is stable and requires no changes. Communities are implemented by an intelligence-based caste structure consisting of five levels called Alphas, Betas, Gammas, Deltas, and Epsilons. Each caste has a plus and minus sub-caste. Therefore, the most intelligent caste is Alpha+, and the opposite is Epsilon-. The caste to which a person will belong is predetermined, and the aim is that everyone will be happy having the choice made for them. This seemingly impossible goal is achieved by redesigning human nature. People are not born, but grown in huge industrial incubators called Hatcheries. The process involves fertilising the egg in such a way that it forms identical embryos, which are then conditioned to belong to the specific caste. This facilitates social stability because the clones produced are predestined to perform identical tasks within the caste they belong to. Since people are mass produced, the concept of a family disappears and "everybody belongs to everybody else." Promiscuous sex is encouraged, and pregnancy is shameful. The word "mother" or "father" is considered to be an insult. There are no wars, therefore there is plenty of consumer goods and the standard of living is high. If, for some reason, somebody feels depressed, there is a drug called Soma which will erase any melancholy. The World State government wants its population to be happy. They want them to be involved in sports, entertainment, shopping, sex, but they do not want them to think. That could upset the stability of the system.
The territory of the World State is divided into ten zones, each is headed by the Resident World Controller. Some remote islands, plus part of New Mexico, are designated as "Savage Reservations," where people still live a primitive, natural life. The plot of the novel takes place in the zone of Western Europe whose Resident World Controller is Mustapha Mond. Unlike Big Brother in 1984, Mond is sophisticated and good-natured, an intelligent advocate of the World State and its ethos of "Community, Identity, Stability." He is aware of the lack of personal freedom in the World State, but he considers it a price worth paying for achieving social stability, because it leads to lasting happiness.
The novel opens in the Central London Hatching and Conditioning Centre, where the Director of the Hatchery gives a tour to a group of students and explains the process of growing and conditioning the embryos to develop them into the predetermined caste. He then takes them outside where they see hundreds of naked children engaged in sexual play and games. This is to prepare them for the casual sex which is an important part of entertainment for the World State population. After that, World Controller Mustapha Mond describes to the students (and to the reader) the history of the World State, focusing on the State’s successful efforts to remove strong emotions, desires, and human relationships from society.
Following this introduction, the novel centers around four characters: Lenina Crowne, Bernard Marx, John the Savage, and Linda. Those four characters present a contrast between two worlds, neither of them appealing. One represents the shallow happiness of the World State population and the other the primitive and backward society of the Savage Reservation of New Mexico.
Lenina Crowne is a typical citizen of the World State. She is young, pretty, happy and shallow; her only deviation from the established norms is that she sometimes spends more time than society approves dating one man exclusively. Bernard Marx is also a citizen of the World State, but unlike Lenina, he is not happy. He is an Alpha of high intelligence and therefore a member of the elite, but he is small and regarded as deformed. He dislikes sports and likes to be alone, a trait contrary to the expected behaviour. He seems to dislike casual sex, another departure from the norm. He is unhappy in a world where everyone else is happy. Linda and her son John the Salvage represent the world of the Savage Reservation. A long time ago Linda, who was pregnant by the Director of the Hatchery, went with him for an excursion to the Savage Reservation in New Mexico. They became lost and she was rescued by a local tribe. There she gave birth to her son John. The plot of the novel starts 20 years later, when John is an adult man.
Bernard Marx, who is secretly in love with Lenina, invites her to go with him to visit the Savage Reservation in New Mexico, and she accepts happily. There they meet a strange woman who is obviously not a native of the local tribe. Soon it becomes obvious that she is Linda, the woman rescued by the natives 20 years ago. Also, there is a young man, John, who turns out to be her son. Linda was ostracized by the locals because of her willingness to sleep with all the men in the village, and as a result John was raised in isolation from the rest of the tribe. John explains that he learned to read using a book called The Chemical and Bacteriological Conditioning of the Embryo and The Complete Works of Shakespeare, the latter given to Linda by one of her lovers. Both Linda and John are keen to return to the comfort and easy life in the World State; therefore, after obtaining permission, the four of them fly back to London. John becomes a hit with London society because of his strange life on the Reservation; they call him John the Savage, but that is when the conflict between those two cultures really begins. Lenina and John are sexually attracted to each other, but for each of them this attraction means something very different. John, who was raised on a diet of Shakespeare, dreams of a pure, innocent love while Lenina cannot understand why John is rejecting her sexual advances because, as everybody knows, making love is fun. However, this conflict goes deeper than just sex. John is more and more disillusioned with the World State society, culminating in a clash with the police, followed by a debate about the value of the World State’s policies. John argues with Mond that those policies dehumanize the residents of the World State, while Mond responds that stability and happiness are more important than humanity. John protests, saying that without these values, human life is not worth living. The book ends on a pessimistic note. Linda dies of a Soma overdose, Bernard Marx is exiled to Island for his antisocial behaviour, and John, after an orgy of violence which includes Lenina, kills himself.
I can ask the same two questions that I asked about Orwell’s 1984: Why did Aldous Huxley have such a dark view about the future? How close does Brave New World correlate with our world? Referring to the first question, Aldous Huxley was born to the prominent Huxley family, of which several members have excelled in science, medicine, arts and literature. His brother, Sir Julian Huxley, was the first Director-General of UNESCO. Therefore, Aldous Huxley was familiar with the great advancements in natural sciences in the1930s and became afraid that world leaders would use those advances in destructive ways, leading to the future described in his novel.
Regarding the second question, we do not grow people in the industrial incubators and there is no World State government. What we do have is a shallow society that is interested in entertainment, consumerism, and not much else. We live in an era of computer games, pornography, professional sports, celebrity worship, shopping, and endless advertising for more and more consumption. Lenina Crowne would feel right at home.
It is interesting to compare these two novels and note the similarities and differences in the vision of the future by the two authors. In both cases they predicted some kind of a world government. In 1984 there were three super-states and in Brave New World there is one World State. The implication is that the world will be governed by a central power which deprives people of the freedom to think for themselves. In 1984 this was done by brute force; in Brave New World, human nature was changed by conditioning embryos in the incubators. In both novels this central power was implemented by a caste system where a small elite control the rest of the world population. There is little difference between Orwell’s Inner Party ruling minority and Huxley’s Alpha+ caste. The working class is also apolitical in both novels. In 1984, the lower-class Proletariat are poor, hungry, and oppressed, while in Brave New World the lower castes are happy; but in both cases, the working class is attracted to simpleminded entertainment which discourages any ideas dangerous to the established order. Fortunately for humanity, the current world isn’t like the grim societies described by Orwell and Huxley. This is not to say that they were wrong in all aspects of their view of the future. Orwell was right about the surveillance of the population, but it did not come from a brutal government, it was our choice to trade privacy for convenience. Also, Huxley is right in describing a shallow society interested in entertainment, consumerism, and little else. As I said before, Lenina Crowne would feel right at home.
Another interesting question is: Are we getting closer to or further away from worlds of Orwell and Huxley? Since it is easier to imagine Big Brother terrorising society than growing people in incubators, I would like to look at 1984 first. In my opinion, we are getting closer to Orwell’s prognosis. Today the trend in politics is leaning away from democracy and moving toward strong leaders. Putin of Russia, Xi Jinping of China, Brexit, various far-right parties in Europe are examples of that trend. In the USA, president Trump would dearly love to be a strong leader, but he does not seem to have the intellectual capacity to become one. The most dangerous part of this populist movement is the rise of intolerant nationalisms, which have always caused wars and suffering. There is no reason to assume this could not happen again.
Returning to Huxley’s vision of the shallow, instant gratification seeking society in Brave New World, we already have it. As I write this essay, I am constantly bombarded by endless advertisements, trying to sell me products I do not want. There must be a whole industry doing that sort of thing, making our shallow, consumer-oriented society even more wasteful. It appears that in many ways both Orwell and Huxley saw the future correctly.