Tuesday, January 15, 2008

FFT

The end cannot justify the means by the simple and obvious reason that the means employed determine the nature of the ends obtained.
-Aldous Huxley

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I like this one! :)

I know so little about Aldous Huxley, but enough to know that he wrote about a nightmarish future scenario for society that conrasted with the Orwelian proposition. Orwel wrote of a society where everything became tightly controlled, and there would be little to no freedoms. Huxley, as I understand it, wrote of a society where there would be so much freedom, that things of value get drowned out by the trash that appeal most to people's baser instincts.

So in Orwel's society, they burned books. In Huxley's society, either there was nothing worth reading or nobody could be bothered to read.

The irony is I've read neither, and only heard of them in review. I'd consequently have to agree with the person who suggests that Huxley was more right than Orwel.

Anonymous said...

That must be the second time I spoke in ignorance on Huxley's Brave New World.

I was wrong saying that Huxley's "dystopia" involved people possessing many freedoms. In fact, they were prisoners also, only not by the use of force as Orwel proposed. Instead, it was by encouraging passivity of the mind and body and by encouraging people to partake in acitivities that deprive life of meaning, so that they would be more willing to perform their given roles.

I should really read these books instead of just comment on them.