In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. 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. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. 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. What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think. But in Huxley’s vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. “Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. A provocative quote from the introduction to Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, ht VH:

Huxley and orwell