Foreword from Neil Postman's "Amusing Ourselves to Death"
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.
A whole new meaning to The Shining.
Photographer Robbie Cooper shows just how focused young video-game players can be.
(P.S. Fuck The New York Times and their unresizable, non-embedding/auto-starting video. It’s 2008, brah.)
(P.P.S. I’m allowed to say that because I am a shareholder, which was arguably not the smartest thing in the world to do.)
She’s like a cotton candy Cadillac driven by Abraham Lincoln with a beard made out of diamonds, so fuck you. —Get Your War On: The Day Traitors
Can’t touch this.
Apparently the overprotective mothers of today are not only having their kids take shots of epinephrine after every potentially threatening meal, but also creating such things as a weiner dog fannypack to carry them in.
This map of the map of number of residents per Waffle House laid over the map of America’s racist belt laid over the map of 1860 cotton production laid over the map of 2008 election results clearly proves that either Waffle House is ground zero for racism in America, or people like making shit up to gullible people. Don’t even make me plot Walmart store locations, people.
