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notes from a small vicar
from a parish
in Liverpool, UK
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Thursday, November 06, 2003
Giving in to the orgy porgy
posted by John Davies at 7:34 PM
Oh. Another good man passes. Neil Postman has died, I was told today. One of technology's greatest critics, whose Amusing Ourselves to Death deeply influenced me as a doleite studying for A-levels in 1985. We'd just been through the year of Orwell; a much anticipated year ("We were keeping our eye on 1984," Postman's Foreword began), but a year which disappointed because the jackboots of Big Brother hadn't descended. The book's doomy scenario of a totalitarian future wasn't fulfilled. Postman continued:When the year came and the prophecy didn't, thoughtful Americans sang softly in praise of themselves. The roots of liberal democracy had held. Wherever else the terror had happened, we, at least, had not been visited by Orwellian nightmares.
But we had forgotten that alongside Orwell's dark vision, there was another - slightly older, slightly less well known, equally chilling: Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley's vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.
What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. 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. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. 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. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us. Postman's book was about the possibility that Huxley, not Orwell, was right. And what a prophet he has proven. Only last night I was reading another intelligent American observer, Benjamin DeMott, in this month’s Harper's magazine. On 'Junk Politics'.
Benjamin DeMott defines the junk politics of our current crop of leaders, evident in the speeches of the men seeking to be the next president. With words that offer no more than heartwarming trivialities intended to stir emotions, they avoid discussion of real issues. "What's needed for civil security is a new kind of primer - call it a tropological guide, call it a twenty-first-century political shit detector - aimed at fostering recognition of and effective contention against the stories threatening to undo us." Using quotes from the politicians, DeMott analyzes the "tropes" that demonstrate the current showmanship of politics. They are powerful; the only comfort his analysis offers is that Postman's perspectives survive after the man himself. DeMott's doing his work now:"The American democratic ideal called for universal, informed participation in the public square: acquaintance with the skills of argument, familiarity with standards of coherence, brains. The embrace by those in high office of dim-bulb diffidence tropes - macho brandishing of ignorance - trashes that ideal and draws down added contempt on political vocation.
"Junk politics redefines qualifications for high political office; the chosen tropes celebrate pugnacity and eagerness to take on bullies. By any measure the most popular current political gesture is that of defiance. Defiance of what? Excessive specificity not required."
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john davies
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