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6bcee17
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"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 nightmares. But we had forgotten that alongside 's dark vision, there was another - slightly older, slightly less well known, equally chilling: 's Brave New World. Contrary to common belief even among the educated, and did not prophesy the same thing. warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in '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 feared were those who would ban books. What feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. feared those who would deprive us of information. feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. feared that the truth would be concealed from us. feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. feared we would become a captive culture. feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny " ." In 1984, added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, feared that what we fear will ruin us. feared that what we desire will ruin us. This book is about the possibility that , not , was right."
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aldous-huxley
fear
huxley
brave-new-world
orwell
george-orwell
desire
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Neil Postman |
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dd30055
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The trouble with fiction," said John Rivers, "is that it makes too much sense. Reality never makes sense.
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fiction
reality
inspirational
huxley
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Aldous Huxley |
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a0f44c1
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They knew how to live with nature and get along with nature. They didn't try too hard to be all men and no animal. That's the mistake we made when Darwin showed up. We embraced him and Huxley and Freud, all smiles. And then we discovered that Darwin and our religions didn't mix. Or at least we didn't think they did. We were fools. We tried to budge Darwin and Huxley and Freud. They wouldn't move very well. So, like idiots, we tried knocking down religion. We succeeded pretty well. We lost our faith and went around wondering what life was for. If art was no more than a frustrated outflinging of desire, if religion was no more than self-delusion, what good was life? Faith had always given us answer to all things. But it all went down the drain with Freud and Darwin. We were and still are lost people.
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nature
faith
religion
huxley
freud
darwin
lost
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Ray Bradbury |
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f8092af
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was born in a brick farmhouse in Lancaster Mass, he walked through the woods one winter crunching through the shinycrusted snow stumbling into a little dell where a warm spring was and found the grass green and weeds sprouting and skunk cabbage pushing up a potent thumb, He went home and sat by the stove and read Struggle for Existence Origin of Species Natural Selection that wasn't what they taught in church, so ceased to believe moved to Lunenburg, found a seedball in a potato plant sowed the seed and cashed in on 's Natural Selection on and with the Burbank potato. Young man go west; went to Santa Rosa full of his dream of green grass in winter ever- blooming flowers ever- bearing berries; could cash in on Natural Selection carried his apocalyptic dream of green grass in winter and seedless berries and stoneless plums and thornless roses brambles cactus-- winters were bleak in that bleak brick farmhouse in bleak Massachusetts-- out to sunny Santa Rosa; and he was a sunny old man where roses bloomed all year everblooming everbearing hybrids. America was hybrid America could cash in on Natural Selection. He was an infidel he believed in and Natural Selection and the influence of the mighty dead and a good firm shipper's fruit suitable for canning. He was one of the grand old men until the churches and the congregations got wind that he was an infidel and believed in . had never a thought of evil, selected improved hybrids for America those sunny years in Santa Rosa. But he brushed down a wasp's nest that time; he wouldn't give up and Natural Selection and they stung him and he died puzzled. They buried him under a cedartree. His favorite photograph was of a little tot standing beside a bed of hybrid everblooming double Shasta daisies with never a thought of evil And Mount Shasta in the background, used to be a volcano but they don't have volcanos any more.
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t-h-huxley
thomas-h-huxley
thomas-henry-huxley
thomas-huxley
huxley
herbert-spencer
spencer
luther-burbank
charles-darwin
darwin
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John Dos Passos |
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c17b32f
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"What we are confronted with now is the problem posed by the economic and symbolic structure of television. Those who run television do not limit our access to information but in fact widen it. Our Ministry of Culture is
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aldous-huxley
television
america
politics
huxley
brave-new-world
orwell
george-orwell
society
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Neil Postman |
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f7fd128
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We are all, as Huxley says someplace, Great Abbreviators, meaning that none of us has the wit to know the whole truth, the time to tell it if we believed we did, or an audience so gullible as to accept it.
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huxley
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Neil Postman |