Comment by irishcoffee
9 hours ago
Brave New World always gets overlooked. I understand why we gravitate towards 1984, however it sure seems like we are much closer to BNW. What is TikTok (read: all of the addictive parts of the internet/smartphones) if not a gramme?
BNW has proven to be far more prescient, and insidiously so, than 1984
Yeah, that and Atlas Shrugged, but mentioning that book is a magnet for dissention.
Edit: I was correct, and I don't understand why. Was AS somehow twisted for political reasons? It's a great book.
Atlas Shrugged (and the fountainhead) is like a superhero comic book where the almighty good guys fight the flat, faceless "bad guys" with pure and fully justified moral righteousness. The "bad guys" are a slobbering caricature of a boogeyman that everyone can easily despise - wanting to do nothing except take from others like a bridge troll or a grey goo disaster scenario.
Nothing wrong with that I suppose but the second someone implies it has something to say about real life capitalists or social welfare or anything else then it gets weird; that makes as much sense as any of the marvel movies helping you decide how to vote for exactly the same reason.
I expect it's for this reason you're being downvoted - these books are often used as a motte and baily to imply something about real life (or often to ironically excuse their own selfish/bad behavior) and they just don't hold up for that in my opinion.
I always thought if Orwell was quite prescient of the eastern block than surely Huxley was even more so about the western.
Huxley was plenty prescient. Soma is basically scrolling for dopamine hits and distraction.