Banned Books Week Post
My dear SL friend Paypabak Writer put up a challenge to create a post about one or more banned books this week, as it's Banned Books Week, a week to recognize the dangers of censorship.
The two works I have selected are George Orwell's 1984 and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World.
George Orwell (born Eric Blair) was an English writer who was vehemently opposed to any form of totatlitarianism or government that worked to squash the human spirit. I always find it amusing that he is routinely accused of being a communist, as he was radically opposed to communism, and his book Animal Farm specificly ridiculed the Soviet state under Josef Stalin.
1984 is a chronicle of the fictional character Winston Smith, who lives in a nightmare world of totalitarianism. The world has been divided into three super-nations: Oceania which compirses the Americas, the British Isles, Australia, and South Africa, Eurasia which was apparently created when the Soviets overran Europe and assimilated it into the Soviet sphere (the book, published in 1949 takes place in 1984), and Eastasia, which comprises China, Southeast Asia, and much of Polynesia.
These three super-states are at constant war with each other, two against one, which can flip at any time to one of the two aggressors suddenly siding with the current "victim" and then fighting against its former ally. The idea is to maintain war on a permanent basis, consuming goods, and keeping the population of each super nation in a state of continual privation of basic necessities.
Each state has a totalitarian social system which monitors each member constantly via a telescreen which is a transciever, sending images to the screen and back to remote monitors who look for the slightest slip that might show rebellion. People who refuse to wilfully accept the nightmare system, via doublthink -- knowing what the State is in truth but accepting it as perfect -- are routinely rounded up, tortured and executed, their very lives eradicated from the social system as if they had never existed. They become what is described in the text as an unperson -- they never had any existence.
Smith is a thoughtcriminal, a person who refuses to accept the State and the social system, but feigns acceptance to stay alive. Through the course of the text we see his insights into the State, and through his eyes Orwell's bleak prognostication to what a totalitarian state would eventually lead. Through the book he muses on the nature of the State and looks to try to reconstuct the past (which is futile, as the State controls history via a massive rewriting job that allows it to recreate the past as it sees fit). Smith falls in love, is finally captured, tortured, and reprogrammed to love the State and its personification, "Big Brother."
At the end of the book, Smith is released, a shell of a man, and sees his former life of thoughtcrime as a ridiculous way to live. As the telescreen pumps out propaganda of a great victory over the current enemy (who had been the ally just a few weeks before), Smith cries and realizes he does ineed love "Big Brother." And there the book ends.
1984 was Orwell's musings on where a totalitarian state such as the German Nazis or Soviet Union would lead were it allowed to go to its ultimate conclusion: total control of every aspect of a person's life, demands for fanatical love of the State and utter hatred of its enemies, and unlimited use of torture and reprogramming to make people into the perfect specimens of orthodox politcal thought. The most chilling part of the story is the realization that the ruling party knows that utopia is not the desire, but rather desires power for the sake of power itself. As Smith's torturer explains to him, they are not ruling people to make their lives better or reach a goal of social perfection, but simply to rule them, crush their spirits, and drink the wine of power.
Brave New World, on the other hand, was written my one of my favorite authors, Aldous Huxley, and while also a story of a dystopian future, has a very different feel to it. Taking place in 2540AD, the world is under the care of "World Controllers" who artificially plan all aspects of society.
Natural childbirth has been done away with, and a permament population of 2 billion people are carefully created in "decanting centers" which uses artificial reporductive technology to make members of necessary castes. "Alphas" are the intellectual caste and are allowed to develop naturally in the decanting centers, while "Betas" (higher level workers), "Gammas" (lower level workers), "Deltas" (very low level workers) and "Epsilons" (semi-moronic workers that do all the really dirty jobs of society") all work together in their particular caste for the betterment of society.
No one wants to change their caste because starting from "decanting" there is a contant stream of hypno-learning: during sleep, a voice continually tells each member that they are happy being in their caste, they don't wish to be a member of any other caste, and they love their life very much. Growing up with the contant hypno-learning while sleeping,and learning slogans and one's place in society while away, the population largely leads content lives.
Of course, this contentment is largely artificial. Beyond the hypno-learning, the population is given a free drug called soma, which is a type of hallucinogen that provides a perfect escape with no side effects. Small doses simply makes one feel happy, while large doses allow "soma holidays" that can last a few days to months, allowing the person to have pleasent hallcuinations with no side effects when the drug wears off.
Also, the population is psychlogically programmed to not want to be members of family (mother, father, son, daughter are all words that provoke disgust thanks to the hypno-learning), and the slogan "everyone belongs to everyone else" means the population of the Brave New World is free to have as much sex as they want, using the proper contraception (called a Malthusian Belt in the book). Abortions are immediately sought out for anyone that has an "accident", as the idea of being a "Mother" is considered utterly obscene, much as we might view incest.
Rather than the Nazi/Communist totalitarian end game of brutal torture that Orwell foresaw in 1984, Huxley's work rather accurately foresaw the freesex and drug cultures that started springing up in the 1960s, along with the mass consumerism and values of materialism of the West that are brought to their logical conclusion in the book. The Brave New World is a dystopia of drugs, sex, lack of ambition than maximizing pleasure, and the utter destruction of human instutions in favor of planned control.
As in 1984, we find two characters, Bernard Marx and Helmhotz Watson, who are much like Winston Smith in being outcasts from this society. As they both attempt to flex their individuality, like Smith they also fail, but instead of being brutally tortured and murdered by the State, they are simply exiled to an island away from the rest of society where they can continue their own lives, and society will remain free of their individualist distractions.
Both of these books have been banned many times, mostly for their "lurid sex," drug use, violence, and anti-government posturing. Orwell has often been mischaracterized as a Communist (he was certainly socialist, but he despised the Communists), and Huxley was usually seen as a drug using bohemian who wanted to replace the moral society of his late Victorian day with a counter-cultural set of values. Yet, both of these gentlemen foresaw many things that have come to pass in our present day: from Orwell, we see endless war, streams of government propaganda via media control, torture (Gitmo, rendition of political prisoners to such lovely places as Libya for "interrogation"), and an over-arching state that wants to control every aspect of its people's lives.
From Huxley, we see the values of materialism and consumerism pushed to the point of absurdity (indeed, in the Brave New World, everything is disposable, and the saying "Ending is better than mending" is constantly repeated when something wears out.) We also see the dissolution of the family, the replacement of sexual norms with a freesex society that makes caring and love nearly impossible, replacement of thinking with drugs, sex, and mindless sayings, and an over-arching government that does not torture its subjects into subjection, but instead gives them a lowest-common-denominator "happiness" that is incredibly superficial. Essentially, the Brave New World is what would happen were the coporate world we see in the 21st Century West to take over completely.
As these two gentlement gave us insights into the socio-political system of their day and of the future, it's hardly surprising that their works are met with ferocious hatred by some. Anything that speaks clearly is despised by those in power, and those that can't think for themselves, and so such works have often found their way to the banned book list, or even the firepit. Yet the very ill treatment of such books, and delusional hatred by certain parts of society, speak volumes of the necessity of such works. They act as the Socratic gadfly, the buzzing pest that circles the forces of darkness and despair, and allows those that read them the ability to question their very socio-political surroundings. Such literature is the fodder of revolution, and for every banned copy, one more mind may be set afire with the yearning for liberty.
"A little attention however to the nature of the human mind evinces that the entertainments of fiction are useful as well as pleasant. That they are pleasant when well written every person feels who reads. But wherein is its utility asks the reverend sage, big with the notion that nothing can be useful but the learned lumber of Greek and Roman reading with which his head is stored? I answer, everything is useful which contributes to fix in the principles and practices of virtue." -- Thomas Jefferson to Robert Skpworth, letter dated August 3, 1771