Comparisons are often made between Orwell's 1984 and Huxley's Brave New World because they both depict a dystopia where the individual is subjugated utterly and have certain similarities as a result. But one contrast is that Orwell's vision is of a society where the individual is actively oppressed and brainwashed against doing the things that the State forbids, whereas in Huxley's vision it is more of a society where the individual is perpetually intoxicated by feel-goodism and platitudes. In Orwell's world, an individual couldn't read a book because it was banned. In Huxley's, an individual couldn't read a book because no one cared about reading one. That is an almost more sickening vision IMO, and I think a bit closer to the mark on what we have unfolding around us now. We just have a deliberate production of dumb, incurious beings simply looking for their next sensory indulgence and their overlords are happy to oblige.
Huxley is by far the most frightening. Probably because it doesn't rely on hyperbole or exaggeration in any way. Just a few modest scientific advances in pharmacology and embryonics..
Soma- Xanex combined with Birth Control with no side effects and everyone is addicted. Babies grown and intellectually maimed by the state as a fetus so everyone would be happy with their work because they were given work appropriate to their intelligence. If I remember the main character decides to stop taking his Soma and wake up - take the red pill so to speak, and also if I recollect, the regime doesn't kill him.. they send him to an island somewhere populated with people of his kind.
Quite frankly at this point, I would be happy to move to an island with my kind on it.
Its interesting to note that Timothy Leary was good friends with Huxley - both shared an interest in the "increased awareness" that could be brought on by various drugs. Also Timothy Leary's famous statement "Turn on, tune in, drop out" was
widely misinterpreted(or he revisionist-ed a new meaning) :
""Turn on" meant go within to activate your neural and genetic equipment. Become sensitive to the many and various levels of consciousness and the specific triggers that engage them. Drugs were one way to accomplish this end. "Tune in" meant interact harmoniously with the world around you - externalize, materialize, express your new internal perspectives. "Drop out" suggested an active, selective, graceful process of detachment from involuntary or unconscious commitments. "Drop Out" meant self-reliance, a discovery of one's singularity, a commitment to mobility, choice, and change. Unhappily my explanations of this sequence of personal development were often misinterpreted to mean "Get stoned and abandon all constructive activity".[3]"
In reality, Leary was advocating going Galt from the society that he knew.
