In both books they were not allowed to feel love.
I was feeling the angst this morning and wrote out why I didn’t agree with Neil Postman. Errors probably abound.
This doesn’t include a lot of important information, I think. These books are a bit more complex than “Hedonism will destroy the world!” or “Stoicism will destroy the world!”. It’s similar to saying that us as humans only have enough room in our lives for caring about one thing very specific mode of living, which isn’t true. Humans are crazy weird dynamic beings that change a considerably large amount over time. Either being incredibly stoic or so over the top hedonistic that we don’t care about anything else is a fairly silly concept. The fictional historical events that led to the problems in 1984 were well laid out. It was war, and a single power large enough to control war economy and information though a network of the “in-the-know” citizens wanting to believe their own lies. This analysis clearly overlooks the nature of the books push towards the power of the every-man being able to overcome larger powers because the every-man is ignored. By every-man I mean poor people who were being incredibly used, or in the case of 1984, ignored by Big Brother. This group known as the proles were living fairly normal lives inside of this dystopian nightmare, aside from the occasional bomb. Winston spends a large amount of time thinking about and trying to imagine life as if he were a part of the proles, he also frequently visits areas that he probably shouldn’t because he feels better there.
So sure, Brave New World has a lot of creepy hedon-like ideas about how people will live when the government controls our souls with their new capitalism-based religious wack-a-tudes, however it seems to me that the main characters insanity and displeasure with the environment he’s in is a larger step to be looking at, since it is the main structure the book focuses on. Most of the dystopian aspects the book focuses on elsewhere involve the abuse of disabled people, such that they are discriminated against, even though the system that hurts them forcefully creates and stifles them into their position and abuses it so that everyone else can live nice happy healthy lives. How doesn’t that look like the poor’s inability to create social mobility for themselves? Or the utter lack of attempt at understanding people with disabilities at the time.
The author may be right, but I don’t think that means they interpreted the book very well, just the parts people like to remember. It doesn't seem that people like to read dystopian novels to learn about problems that already exist, or characters and how they relate to their surroundings. People tend to read them to be afraid of the future, and as some sort of way to remind themselves that free speech is the standing ground of our way of life. The real standing ground is paying attention to our world, regardless of how we interact with it, and not allowing us or others to pull the wool over anyone else’s eyes so that we can gain good life standing. Not creating environments where people are used, regardless of how different they may seem.
Yeswowcats makes an excellent point, but I’d like to point out several things. The idea you’re talking about is, indeed, very complex, as are humans, and as such must be broken down into little bitty pieces in order to be thoroughly analysed. Keep in mind that psychology, the study of the human mind, is broken up into many disciplines, and men devote their lives to separate disciplines while sometimes remaining entirely ignorant of the others that study other parts of the mind. Yes, the point stated in the comic is very narrow, and only a small part of the ideas expressed in the two books. However, a) I doubt Huxley and Orwell wrote their books with a sole purpose in mind, for many of the purveyors of the written word have many ideas in mind when they write their words, and b) the comic states only one quote from the book. To say that the author “didn’t interpret the book very well” from one quote is quite a narrow judgement. (Note: if you have read the book then this stands invalid, and I apologize.)
