Aldous Huxley vs George Orwell

I recently heard someone contrast Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (BNW) with George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984), arguing that in the build up to the year 1984 so much pressure was put on 1984 that everyone forgot about the alternative distopia: Brave New World.

Soma is the drug that everyone in Brave New World 

takes when they need to relax.

When I read 1984 I absolutely loved it. The bitter cynicism and alternate reality was a fantasy world, because the government in the UK was never as organised as the IngSoc party. Political softness and pandering to the general public for support has meant that I've never experienced the fear of the government that many had during the cold war. While the internet has surely made personal information more easily open to governmental abuse, so too the government has been forced to be more open, and scandal after scandal has shown that secrets rarely stay hidden. After all, it only ever takes one person to break a cartel! For a while 1984 was my favourite book (later replaced by Catch 22).

Yet when I read Brave New World something within me was deeply shaken and disturbed. I was absolutely horrified and it quite quickly became my most hated book. I frequently feel this when I watch and read things that I find are too real (the film 500 Days of Summer, for example). In one sense this shows a deep weakness of mine: that I have to live in a fantasy world to some extent, because reality is too shocking and disturbing for me a lot of the time. But I believe that this weakness can be a strength, as it lets me touch on what I feel is wrong with the world and in myself. Much like physical pain draws attention to something that needs fixing, so too emotional pain caused by media that 'hits a nerve' draws attention to things that need fixing in us and in our perception of the world.

The political ideology of IngSoc in 1984

While 1984 did not 'hit a nerve', BNW did, and it was only recently that someone articulated what disturbed me so much. They said that 1984 is a distopia where people are controlled by pain, but in BNW everyone is controlled through pleasure. Indeed, with the cold war and rise of communism, the fear and hype that surrounded the year 1984 was understandable. But with so much attention paid in that direction, few people asked whether the future would be as Huxley predicted.

In BNW people are subdued by the pleasure that they live for. Humans are no longer born but are made in labs, and are conditioned for the roles in life that they will lead. Menial workers, for example, are given a lower IQ and made physically stronger, to encourage job satisfaction, while scientists are given higher IQs. 

Everyone is encouraged to have sex with everyone else. Everyone belongs to everyone else in a physical sense, and therefore exercising this 'freedom' is encouraged as a source of pleasure. 

Everyone is also encouraged to take Soma holidays. Soma is a fictional drug that has no side effects or hangovers, and if life gets a bit stressful or tough you can change the dose depending on how long you need to go on holiday.

Thus the general population is kept placid and happy through amusing themselves. There is no end to the sources of pleasure and everyone is able to be as happy as they want. And yet there is nothing happy about the book at all. The characters themselves live in fantasy and life ultimately loses all meaning.

The irony here, of course, is that I find myself as one of these characters. While I don't identify with Winston Smith in 1984, I find BNW a painfully real account of life in Western culture, including myself. It is the very fact that we need to live in fantasy that makes us no different from the people in BNW. Our search for pleasure and satisfaction subdues us from doing difficult and challenging things. We end up self-medicating with 'Soma' or sex or work and ultimately only do what we feel comfortable doing.

While I won't suggest an answer here, I do thoroughly recommend the series Black Mirror, written by comedian Charlie Brooker, which tackles topics like this. The show works on many levels, and I suggest reading reviews and finding out a bit about Brooker's life and work to add to the experience.

An Inter-testamental History Lesson

Chapter two in my dissertation on 'The Conflict Between Obedience to God and Obedience to the State in the Book of Revelation' deals with second century Judaism as a backdrop for the political conflict of Christians vs Rome (which is essentially what Revelation is all about). I've found this absolutely fascinating, because as a Protestant my Bible wouldn't normally include deutero-cannonical literature (also known as the Apocrypha), yet a lot of it seems very relevant to understanding the type of attitude that Jesus argued against.

The Macabees by Wojciech Stattler

So here I would like to provide a brief introduction to the history between the OT and the NT for anyone who would like to know a bit about what happened between Ezra/Nehemiah and Jesus.

After the temple was rebuilt under Ezra and Nehemiah between 450 - 425BCE, the ruling Persian empire started to decline and became weaker and weaker. This is when the last books that we have in the Bible were written (1-2 Chronicles and Malachi were also written at this point).

Alexander the Great was born in 356BCE and very quickly expanded the Greek empire to all of Israel's neighbours and including Israel, easily taking over the weak Persian empire. After Alexander died in 323BCE, however, the Greek rule broke down quite quickly, and factions of Alexander's commanders split off in a large power struggle.

During this time the Egyptians (Ptolmaics) attacked and took over Israel from 315 - 198BCE. We don't know much about Israel's history at this point, but some of the Dead Sea Scrolls might have been written at this time.

After the Egyptians grew weak, the Syrians (Seleucids) attacked Israel, but they didn't get as far as Egypt. This happened in 198BCE and they stayed in Israel until 142BCE. During this time the Syrians tried to force the Jews into adopting Greek culture, which was very popular in the area after Alexander's conquests. Some of the Jews joined in whole-heartedly and actually tried hard to gain favour in the eyes of their Greek masters through building gymnasiums. Since the Greeks thought that circumcision was barbaric some Jewish men attempted to undo their circumcision through surgery in order to fit in at the public baths. Others, however, strongly opposed the Greek culture and everything that came with it.

A coin depicting Antiochus IV Epiphanes. The back shows Jupiter and reads, Basileos Antiochou Theou Epiphanous Niketorou, approximately meaning 'king Antiochus: god, revealed, victorious' (let me know if you think I've translated this wrong!).

This tension increased in 167BCE when the Syrians, under Antiochus IV Epiphanes, attacked and completely ransacked Jerusalem. Pigs were sacrificed on the altar to God in the temple, circumcision was made illegal and punishable by death, all copies of the Torah had to be burned and Jews were forced to sacrifice to Antiochus IV and eat pork or be executed. Some Jews followed along, others refused and paid with their lives. Finally, Antiochus set up a statue of Zeus in the Holy of Holies, which seems to be what Daniel described when he spoke of the "abomination that causes desolation" (Dan 9:27, 11:31, and 12:11).

In this context a man called Mattathias and his sons John, Simon, Judas, Eleazar and Jonathan strongly opposed the Syrians and formed a rebel army. They fought for years, and each time one brother died the next one took over the rebel movement. Eventually, through war and political turmoil, these rebels (also known as 'the Maccabees', which comes from the Aramaic word for 'hammer') set up Israel as a free kingdom. This kingdom lasted from 142 - 63BCE and was known as the Hasmonean Dynasty.

But this was not a time of peace, sadly. The most peace the Israelites got was when the last Hasmonean ruler took over from 76 - 67BCE, and she was known as Queen Salome.

In 63BCE the Romans invaded and took over right up to 400CE. During this time the Herodians took over ruling Jerusalem under Roman authority, and Jesus had his ministry in this context. When Herod Agrippa I died in 44CE, Israel was put under the governing of the prefect of Syria and thus ended the rulers of Israel until 1947.