For a period in my
life I was fascinated with science fiction novels. I've read the famous ones –
2001, Fahrenheit 451, Brave New World and 1984. In this article, I shall delve
into my memories of two of those novels, 1984 and Brave New World.
Huxleys vision.
Huxley published his
Brave New World in 1932. At the time he must have been inspired by the growing
health fad movement. He probably only saw communism as a Soviet side show, and
did not see fascism grow in Nazi Germany. So the health fad movement was the
basis for his science fiction universe.
Huxleys vision was
quelled by the rapid growth of european fascism with it's massiv war, resulting
in the growth of communism.
Orwells vision.
In 1948 George Orwell
published his sinister vision of the future, titled 1984. It was written under
the looming threat of communist authourity. Orwells universe was one that
employed good, old fashioned brute force, surveillance and constantly smoldering
war to strap in the rights of the individual.
For a good deal of
the latter half of the 20th century,
it would have seemed as though Orwells visions were the closest to come to
reality, in the form of growing numbers of communist autocracies, emplying
exactly the 1984 methods to denigrate and strap the rights of the individual.
Then, two years after
1984, in 1986, Mikael Gorbachov became leader of the Soviet union, and began
dismantling the autocratic empire. The Iron Curtain was withdrawn and the Berlin
Wall fell. We all uttered a deep sigh of relief. The worst was over. Orwells
world would not come to be. Never again would autocracy reign the world.
But in the wake of
that relief, greater threats began to take their first tentative steps. The
seeds of the health fad movement planted in the first half of the 20th century
began to spire.
Brave New World.
I was always more
fascinated with Brave New World than 1984. The methods employed in strapping the
individual are much more sophisticated in Huxleys universe where perverted
autocratic medical science rules. Every person in this conditioned society is
created by a planned process. Each individual hypnotized and conditioned
according to set schemes. Chemical and medicine corrections are available for
every trait that needs to be rectified. A medical and scientific elite runs the
world. All is set and planned. History is rewritten to accomodate the
appropriate behavioral conditioning.
Is not the Bokanovski
process of Huxleys world within reach through genetic engineering? Who will hold
the patents? Is youth and beauty not being promoted in the form of plastic
surgery? Is wrinkled skin not being denigrated? Is sex not being turned into a
substance of pleasure? Is Viagra not its promoter? When will the medical fascist
movement come up with its Soma, providing the basis for the expulsion of
alchohol? When will it figure out that the economically optimal age of humans is
sixty-three years? Huxley figured that out a long time ago!
If I am not much
mistaken, the world we are about to be herded into in these times, is an almost
exact replica of what Huxley had envisioned. Mass conditioning of the public is
taking place before our very eyes. Any form of individuality is being corrected.
Any form of deviation from the norm is being hammered back in place. Unhealthy
behaviour is condemned. Mass hysteria is induced over uncleanliness, age and
death!
The self appointed
health autocracy of the planet is in process of attempting to eliminate
undesired behaviors - the first target of this oligarchy being the smoking of
tobacco. Why? On the grounds that IT condemns it.
In order to prevail,
IT must win this first battle.
Therefore, the front
line of defence against the omnipotent medical oligarchy is the cigarette. If it
prevails, liberty stands. If the cigarette is defeated, liberty falls. That is
what is at stake – liberty itself.
The whiteshirts are
on the march. Can you hear the sexophones of their Brave New World? |
