There are those who would argue that neither Orwell nor Huxley can be pinned down so simply, but nevertheless this is a powerful and succinct piece. Well done. It made me feel more than a bit uneasy about my own state of distractednness.
Excellent comic, good to see that Huxley still has some traction.
A nit-picky note: you have Huxley on the left and Orwell on the right at the top of the comic; yet when you have side-by-side comparisons in the comic, Huxley’s vision is on the right and Orwell on the left (and when vertically compared, Orwell precedes Huxley). It caused a small amount of cognitive dissonance on the initial reading.
I see evidence of each one of those things today. Huxley wasn’t unequivocally right: the things he feared are just more prevalent than Orwell’s worries.
…except Brave New World DID feature book-banning and restrictions on the flow of information. 1984 also used pleasure/distraction as a meams of control. Either Neil Postman misremembers the original works, or is misrepresenting them with the intention of obfuscating the truth: These two works have far more in common with one another than either has with the world of today.
Being the only teacher at my high school who teaches 1984 instead of Animal Farm, and being the lone herald of the wonders of this novel….my thoughts are provoked by this comparison. Rethinking is in order.
I’m with Wayne on this – great bit of artwork and interesting thoughts, but ‘Orwell vs Huxley’ is a false opposition. Neil Postman seems to have skipped the commonalities between these authors. 1984, for instance, speaks of soft porn being produced en masse for the titillation and distraction of the ‘proles’. And anyone who thinks Huxley’s fears are more completely realised than Orwell’s has never lived under a dictatorship, still a thriving form of government worldwide. Love and hate, carrots and sticks. Clearly both dystopias can exist side by side.
Thanks for mirroring their disparate visions by opposing their views.
Must re-read both novels, four decades have passed since our summer of ’69 encounter to even understand what I just said. Learned how to ‘Grok it’ though being a ‘stranger in a strange land’ at the same time.
Excellent juxtapose of the two. Roger Waters brilliantly used Amusing ourselves to death as the basis of of his album “Amused to Death”, where society is basically dumbed down by TV.
Nice work. As someone who enjoys comics and was a student and friend of Postman’s I can really appreciate what you’ve done here, and I can tell you that Neil would indeed have been amused.
Aristotle spoke of both Orwell’s side and Huxley’s. He called them “deficiency” and “excess”. Aristotle stated that moderation was not mediocrity, but the achievement of excellence in all aspects of life.
While I enjoyed the graphic adaptation, and how it conveys the thought of both writers, I do not like how it creates a false opposition between the the two visions of reality. As another person has already keenly noted, both dystopias can exist side by side. In fact, for the majority of the planet’s inhabitants, the Orwellian vision of reality almost certainly holds more resonance.
Brilliant! When I discuss with my students the possible negative effects of our obsession with electronic entertainment technology, they almost always–even the very smart ones–react with hostile, instinctive xenophobia. After they rant, I ask if perhaps their blind but powerful emotional attachment to these toys says something about how I might be right. There’s always a long silence after that.
I thank you deeply for creating this and posting it.
It’s ironic that this message should be distributed on the Web and disseminated through the likes of LiveJournal and Facebook. Ironic and necessary and beautiful and delightful and hope-inspiring. If the link to this cartoon could keep circulating for a year, probably more people would have absorbed (consciously or unconsciously) the central message of Postman’s too-prescient work than have ever actually read the work itself.
The Huxleyan model’s strength — its ability to conceal vital ideas by fogging them out with trivialities and misdirection — is also its weakness, in that though the ideas are obscured by fog, they are still there. And it’s the ideas that _don’t_ get trumpeted that sometimes have the greatest effects on cultures.
But only over time.
I’m posting the link prominently on my LiveJournal and Facebook accounts.
Thanks for making this – will have to check out Postman’s stuff.
I didn’t see just the differences between Huxley and Orwell here, I also saw their commonalities: that one way or another, we’ll be unable to find the truth about the world. Maybe it’ll be taken away by force, maybe it’ll be hidden in the crapflood of the media – but if we don’t see it, we can’t do anything about it.
I like it! I think we all are guilty of both sides. Especially how I realized I was being distracted as I am told humans search for distractions. Great work
This seems like a waste of time to me. Why on earth should one oppose these two novels to each other in such a manner? The way the books are portrayed here is so black and white. (Yes, in more than one way.) There are so many more shades to the books, especially 1984, that are left out for some reason. If you think that Orwell had it all wrong and if you don’t see how 1984 is relevant today, I think you missed a point or two.
this isn’t a contest at all. You see it as some kind of criticism of Orwell, when it’s just not. Orwell aptly described the world as it was and is in many places… and some of it applies in the USA I suppose.
But this book is an argument that something more fundamental and sinister is wrong with the Western culture. It’s juxtaposing the two ideas of public control because it makes so much horrible sense to do so.
Interesting premise, but sadly, I’d say it’s pretty clear BOTH visions have come to pass. Between the PATRIOT Act, the Federal Reserve System, and the two-party political system pimped, enshrined, and enforced by the American media, there is literally nowhere to turn. I’m rooting for the asteroids, a truly democratic solution.
I like this little comic, good food for thought. Interesting and at first its hard to argue with what is presented, before considering the other commenter’s’ mentions of omissions. But I thought that Huxley’s fears are the fears that we are presented with when we [and i'm speaking in context of America] look at the rest of the world. Orwell’s vision is well suited to our own concerns of our own society, while Huxley’s in contrast looks much like how we view the outside world and what we fear happening to it.
While this is well done, could it not be that the conflation of the two views is actually what has occurred; rather than separate orwell’s and huxley’s visions into competing visions one could easily construct the argument that orwell’s big brother society noticed the truth behind huxley’s hedonistic distracted boobish society and decided to manufacture a way to control the masses while suppressing the minority of intellectuals from whom arises the threat of revolution and rebellion. I do enjoy the comic though, and unfortunately fear it is a scathingly unsaccharined view.
Fantastic cartoon –fantastic and necessary. I truly hope that this will affect many people that just haven’t cracked open a book in a while that makes them re-evaluate the way they think and live. I guess my only problem with it is what can the solution be? Clearly it can’t be legislated into a course correction. I believe that it must simply be permeated into the consciousness of those under the influence of these media bombardments…
You have brilliantly contributed to Huxley’s worst fear. I find myself amused to death. Thanks for the amusement, …..or should I simply say, thanks for the memories.
Ani
I have read both. A very, very long time ago. This was a very illuminating and though provoking article. Thank you. Now I have to re-read the books. Sigh… another distraction…. )
Thanks very much for this. I haven’t thought about Neil Postman’s critique for years. The more time passes, the more amazing it is how much he got dead right, although the forces are now a conjunction of ad culture, technology, and “social media” technology and not just show business culture.
P.S. I’m finding it oddly warming that there are other people that find Huxley and Postman poignant for today’s culture. I thought my kind had died out or turned into techno tweets.
Very effective simplification/cartoon to provoke thought.
I find both trends true, and that nature will balance the excesses. But our technology keeps nature’s helpful limits ever-more distant, allowing us to become more radically imbalanced.
I don’t have the time to respond to this in quite as much detail as I would like, but an inadequate response is better than no response at all. This comic seriously misrepresents Orwell’s mature understanding of the way the media works in liberal societies, which receives its clearest articulation in his preface to Animal Farm (http://home.iprimus.com.au/korob/Orwell.html), which went unpublished in his lifetime. In it, he says that
“The sinister fact about literary censorship in England is that it is largely voluntary. Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban. Anyone who has lived long in a foreign country will know of instances of sensational items of news – things which on their own merits would get the big headlines – being kept right out of the British press, not because the Government intervened but because of a general tacit agreement that ‘it wouldn’t do’ to mention that particular fact. So far as the daily newspapers go, this is easy to understand. The British press is extremely centralized, and most of it is owned by wealthy men who have every motive to be dishonest on certain important topics. But the same kind of veiled censorship also operates in books and periodicals, as well as in plays, films and radio. At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is ‘not done’ to say it, just as in mid-Victorian times it was ‘not done’ to mention trousers in the presence of a lady. Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals.”
I haven’t read Postman, so I don’t know whether this is a fair portrayal of his ideas. If so, I think he’s off the mark. While it’s true that we are inundated with 24h news coverage, that fact does not preclude the grave omission by the media of information vital to the public interest. Both the quality and the quantity of foreign news coverage, for example, has declined appallingly in recent years, while other news stands as ignored as it has always been. When did you last see news coverage about factory takeovers in Korea or Argentina, or about the way the government colludes with corporations in the United States, etc.? Don’t forget that most Americans don’t know about alternative media, again with good reason. Of the people I know that do know what is going on, few are complacent; most are absolutely incensed.
Zelak, thanks very much for posting this! You’re right, there are important differences worth keeping in mind. From what I recall of Postman, his thrust was not so much an intentional witholding of information by authority but literally “amusing ourselves” meaning that by allowing ourselves to pursue pleasant superficial interests so freely, we would deteriorate our understanding of the world and then potentially make ourselves vulnerable to something more malicious.
I think an update to Postman and Huxley might argue that we’ve harnessed our exploratory drive to floods of information rather than fewer structured sources, changing the way we understand the world and thinking about it in a different, perhaps less deep way.
Think of the cognitive differences between reading a book and surfing the web or texting. The structure of information is very different, and I think a modern culture critic might argue that it is a potentially lamentable and even serious trend, if thinking is structured largely by cognitive environment.
I was just wondering… isn’t your cartoon a little bit ironic? I mean, the whole point of amusing ourselves to death is that can’t tolerate anything intellectual and requires everything to come in a short, entertaining format.
Doesn’t reducing Postman’s book to a short, amusing comic feed the disease? Haven’t you missed the entire point of the work?
Great point, although I doubt the irony was lost on most. I’m constantly aware of it as I use Twitter largely with other people interested in books and educational theory. I think realistically, you can use superficial information channels to help reference more substantial information sources. Simiarly, we can use entertainment judiciously to help point people to more serious content. At least I hope that’s what’s going on in at least some cases! To me it seems that the critique is really about entertainment taking over for thinking, not about entertainment being useless to facilitate thinking.
I’ve always liked Huxley better than Orwell, although they’re both geniuses. I think “Ape and Essence” never got the attention it deserves. Maybe you can give it a little cartoonish push! =oD
Fine work. Some have commented on the accuracy of a cartoon representation of the two authors, but in the end, the point made by the use of the basic themes is absolutely brilliant.
Have not read either book, but I can look around most any day and see authors’ thoughts in fact and intact… Woe be unto us, our eyes and ears be closed.
Re asteroids – I prefer a republic vice democratic approach… let’s see how our electeds handle that scenario. (:))
Old [Orwellian] system or ‘New’ [Huxleyian] system
Most of people have their lives ruled, depending on where they live [a ditactorship, a formal democracy, a region controlled by war and/or drug lord] by one, another or …both.
It is significant, I believe to the two novels’ warnings that Orwell’s was written in bombed-out London in 1948 and Huxley’s was written in California during the 1920s when the film industry was maturing.
I invite all to get the latest word on the subject by reading two recent works: Christopher Hitchens’ “Why Orwell Matters” and Christopher Hedges’ “Empire of Illusion.”
Orwell was right too. Both books, Brave New World and Nineteen Eight-Four was great and adressed diferent aspects of people domination. I dont think that Huxley or Orwell was wrong or less right. Both was actually genial.
This is a great rendition of two books I feared and loved. I’ll definitely read the Postman text now. Mind if I translate your cartoon version into Hebrew and spread it via email?
Of course I’ll keep all the credits and add a link to your site.
On one hand, we have the Patriot Act, the War on Terror(TM)(R), extra judicial execution by our executive branch, an Tewwowists.
One the other hand, we have American Idol, “debates” between whoever the media deems credible candidates both of which do the same thing when elected and Rush Limbaugh/The Daily Show.
I really don’t see how you can say decisively who was right, both approaches are being taken but there is no reason to complain, people aren’t forced into it, they readily accept it.
And really, just what difference does it make how the population at large is controlled? It’s controlled, that’s all that matters.
Good, but to be fair in 1984 the Proles were controlled, not by violence, but by banality, much like the case he is making for Huxley. It was the relatively-educated party members that were controlled by the party authoritarian apparatus, while the Proles were left mostly to their own devices and distracted with party produced pornography (PornoSec), pulp-fiction (FicDep), films, and lotteries.
I think think this was because Proles were too numerous to be dealt with through repression, or perhaps given their stupidity the party thought repression was unnecessary, or a waste of effort.
Furthermore, you could also have included Fahrenheit 451 in the strip, as there are a lot of similarities with a society utterly distracted by vapid video-walls and shows along the lines of “Cops”. Sure the Firemen come and burn the books, but no one cares anyway. At least, no one but the protagonist.
And in H.G Wells’ “The Time Machine”, for that matter…. or Mike Judge’s “Idiocracy”… It seems the impending dumbing down of society is a popular topic. Maybe it was always thus?
it is pretty sad.I just want to live the right way.getting my license to drive real soon with the breathahliar.I will never risk someones life or mine again!!
In his famous ‘Amusing Ourselves to Death‘, written in pre-internet times (1985), Neil Postman wrote down his fascinating fear that reality might be reflected more by Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, where the public is oppressed by p…
Stuart McMillen has created a nice graphic adaptation of Neil Postman’s comparison of Orwell vs. Huxley in his book Amusing Ourselves To Death. Link to comic: Amusing Ourselves To Death. (via Josh Sowin)…
[...] Saltar a Comentarios A través del Blog de un otario me encontré con una genial viñeta de Stuart McMillen en la que compara la distopiía creada por Orwell en su libro 1984, con la creada en Un mundo feliz [...]
[...] di Huxley 8 Gennaio 2010 Lascia un commento Passa ai commenti Ho tradotto una vignetta trovata in rete che spiega meglio di mille libri i problemi della nostra società, confrontando le visioni [...]
[...] is well worth a few minutes of your time to read, click here> Amusing Ourselves to Death < Recombinant Records. to go to Stuart’s blog and see the full [...]
[...] trying harder to set a sustained tone with my strips. ‘Amusing Ourselves to Death‘ gave me a peek at what can be achieved, but I can envision something far greater than that [...]
Comments (75)
Outstanding, Stu.
Though i am unfamiliar with Huxley and his work this Cartoon certainly speaks volumes about society and it’s future. Nice one
thumbs up
There are those who would argue that neither Orwell nor Huxley can be pinned down so simply, but nevertheless this is a powerful and succinct piece. Well done. It made me feel more than a bit uneasy about my own state of distractednness.
That is one awesome cartoon! I’ll def be reading Postman’s book soon, great cartoon blog!
great stuff. you are approaching genius.
Excellent comic, good to see that Huxley still has some traction.
A nit-picky note: you have Huxley on the left and Orwell on the right at the top of the comic; yet when you have side-by-side comparisons in the comic, Huxley’s vision is on the right and Orwell on the left (and when vertically compared, Orwell precedes Huxley). It caused a small amount of cognitive dissonance on the initial reading.
I see evidence of each one of those things today. Huxley wasn’t unequivocally right: the things he feared are just more prevalent than Orwell’s worries.
…except Brave New World DID feature book-banning and restrictions on the flow of information. 1984 also used pleasure/distraction as a meams of control. Either Neil Postman misremembers the original works, or is misrepresenting them with the intention of obfuscating the truth: These two works have far more in common with one another than either has with the world of today.
I was unaware of the original premise until this, but I love how you brought it up to date. Definitely drives it home…
i .. am .. just floored. i love this so much.
this comic has changed my life. my first step into a larger world.
thank you, with more sincerity than a comment on an article can successfully convey.
Being the only teacher at my high school who teaches 1984 instead of Animal Farm, and being the lone herald of the wonders of this novel….my thoughts are provoked by this comparison. Rethinking is in order.
I’m with Wayne on this – great bit of artwork and interesting thoughts, but ‘Orwell vs Huxley’ is a false opposition. Neil Postman seems to have skipped the commonalities between these authors. 1984, for instance, speaks of soft porn being produced en masse for the titillation and distraction of the ‘proles’. And anyone who thinks Huxley’s fears are more completely realised than Orwell’s has never lived under a dictatorship, still a thriving form of government worldwide. Love and hate, carrots and sticks. Clearly both dystopias can exist side by side.
Thanks for mirroring their disparate visions by opposing their views.
Must re-read both novels, four decades have passed since our summer of ’69 encounter to even understand what I just said. Learned how to ‘Grok it’ though being a ‘stranger in a strange land’ at the same time.
Peace!
Excellent juxtapose of the two. Roger Waters brilliantly used Amusing ourselves to death as the basis of of his album “Amused to Death”, where society is basically dumbed down by TV.
Nice work. As someone who enjoys comics and was a student and friend of Postman’s I can really appreciate what you’ve done here, and I can tell you that Neil would indeed have been amused.
Aristotle spoke of both Orwell’s side and Huxley’s. He called them “deficiency” and “excess”. Aristotle stated that moderation was not mediocrity, but the achievement of excellence in all aspects of life.
While I enjoyed the graphic adaptation, and how it conveys the thought of both writers, I do not like how it creates a false opposition between the the two visions of reality. As another person has already keenly noted, both dystopias can exist side by side. In fact, for the majority of the planet’s inhabitants, the Orwellian vision of reality almost certainly holds more resonance.
Brilliant! When I discuss with my students the possible negative effects of our obsession with electronic entertainment technology, they almost always–even the very smart ones–react with hostile, instinctive xenophobia. After they rant, I ask if perhaps their blind but powerful emotional attachment to these toys says something about how I might be right. There’s always a long silence after that.
I thank you deeply for creating this and posting it.
It’s ironic that this message should be distributed on the Web and disseminated through the likes of LiveJournal and Facebook. Ironic and necessary and beautiful and delightful and hope-inspiring. If the link to this cartoon could keep circulating for a year, probably more people would have absorbed (consciously or unconsciously) the central message of Postman’s too-prescient work than have ever actually read the work itself.
The Huxleyan model’s strength — its ability to conceal vital ideas by fogging them out with trivialities and misdirection — is also its weakness, in that though the ideas are obscured by fog, they are still there. And it’s the ideas that _don’t_ get trumpeted that sometimes have the greatest effects on cultures.
But only over time.
I’m posting the link prominently on my LiveJournal and Facebook accounts.
Thank you.
Thanks for making this – will have to check out Postman’s stuff.
I didn’t see just the differences between Huxley and Orwell here, I also saw their commonalities: that one way or another, we’ll be unable to find the truth about the world. Maybe it’ll be taken away by force, maybe it’ll be hidden in the crapflood of the media – but if we don’t see it, we can’t do anything about it.
I like it! I think we all are guilty of both sides. Especially how I realized I was being distracted as I am told humans search for distractions. Great work
I’m unfamiliar with the “big brother” concept of pleasure, anyone?
no one every believes me about huxley
If you look at Venezuela, it fits Orwell perfectly. Nothing to do with Huxley. Thanks to Hugo Chavez of course!
This seems like a waste of time to me. Why on earth should one oppose these two novels to each other in such a manner? The way the books are portrayed here is so black and white. (Yes, in more than one way.) There are so many more shades to the books, especially 1984, that are left out for some reason. If you think that Orwell had it all wrong and if you don’t see how 1984 is relevant today, I think you missed a point or two.
This is simply stunning, thanks so much for sharing something actually provocative and challenging!
Areman,
this isn’t a contest at all. You see it as some kind of criticism of Orwell, when it’s just not. Orwell aptly described the world as it was and is in many places… and some of it applies in the USA I suppose.
But this book is an argument that something more fundamental and sinister is wrong with the Western culture. It’s juxtaposing the two ideas of public control because it makes so much horrible sense to do so.
Interesting premise, but sadly, I’d say it’s pretty clear BOTH visions have come to pass. Between the PATRIOT Act, the Federal Reserve System, and the two-party political system pimped, enshrined, and enforced by the American media, there is literally nowhere to turn. I’m rooting for the asteroids, a truly democratic solution.
I like this little comic, good food for thought. Interesting and at first its hard to argue with what is presented, before considering the other commenter’s’ mentions of omissions. But I thought that Huxley’s fears are the fears that we are presented with when we [and i'm speaking in context of America] look at the rest of the world. Orwell’s vision is well suited to our own concerns of our own society, while Huxley’s in contrast looks much like how we view the outside world and what we fear happening to it.
While this is well done, could it not be that the conflation of the two views is actually what has occurred; rather than separate orwell’s and huxley’s visions into competing visions one could easily construct the argument that orwell’s big brother society noticed the truth behind huxley’s hedonistic distracted boobish society and decided to manufacture a way to control the masses while suppressing the minority of intellectuals from whom arises the threat of revolution and rebellion. I do enjoy the comic though, and unfortunately fear it is a scathingly unsaccharined view.
Fantastic cartoon –fantastic and necessary. I truly hope that this will affect many people that just haven’t cracked open a book in a while that makes them re-evaluate the way they think and live. I guess my only problem with it is what can the solution be? Clearly it can’t be legislated into a course correction. I believe that it must simply be permeated into the consciousness of those under the influence of these media bombardments…
Hmmm… So, I take it that you’re NOT on Twitter! :-p
Brilliant cartoon!
You have brilliantly contributed to Huxley’s worst fear. I find myself amused to death. Thanks for the amusement, …..or should I simply say, thanks for the memories.
Ani
This is a recent lecture by Michael Wesch that makes reference to Amusing Ourselves to Death:
The Machine is (Changing) Us: YouTube and the Politics of Authenticity
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09gR6VPVrpw)
Working link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09gR6VPVrpw
I have read both. A very, very long time ago. This was a very illuminating and though provoking article. Thank you. Now I have to re-read the books. Sigh… another distraction….
)
Oh my goodness. This is amazing!
Thanks very much for this. I haven’t thought about Neil Postman’s critique for years. The more time passes, the more amazing it is how much he got dead right, although the forces are now a conjunction of ad culture, technology, and “social media” technology and not just show business culture.
P.S. I’m finding it oddly warming that there are other people that find Huxley and Postman poignant for today’s culture. I thought my kind had died out or turned into techno tweets.
Very effective simplification/cartoon to provoke thought.
I find both trends true, and that nature will balance the excesses. But our technology keeps nature’s helpful limits ever-more distant, allowing us to become more radically imbalanced.
So instead of reading Amusing Ourselves to Death, you can fit this simplified form of the introduction in-between television commercials.
I don’t have the time to respond to this in quite as much detail as I would like, but an inadequate response is better than no response at all. This comic seriously misrepresents Orwell’s mature understanding of the way the media works in liberal societies, which receives its clearest articulation in his preface to Animal Farm (http://home.iprimus.com.au/korob/Orwell.html), which went unpublished in his lifetime. In it, he says that
“The sinister fact about literary censorship in England is that it is largely voluntary. Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban. Anyone who has lived long in a foreign country will know of instances of sensational items of news – things which on their own merits would get the big headlines – being kept right out of the British press, not because the Government intervened but because of a general tacit agreement that ‘it wouldn’t do’ to mention that particular fact. So far as the daily newspapers go, this is easy to understand. The British press is extremely centralized, and most of it is owned by wealthy men who have every motive to be dishonest on certain important topics. But the same kind of veiled censorship also operates in books and periodicals, as well as in plays, films and radio. At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is ‘not done’ to say it, just as in mid-Victorian times it was ‘not done’ to mention trousers in the presence of a lady. Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals.”
I haven’t read Postman, so I don’t know whether this is a fair portrayal of his ideas. If so, I think he’s off the mark. While it’s true that we are inundated with 24h news coverage, that fact does not preclude the grave omission by the media of information vital to the public interest. Both the quality and the quantity of foreign news coverage, for example, has declined appallingly in recent years, while other news stands as ignored as it has always been. When did you last see news coverage about factory takeovers in Korea or Argentina, or about the way the government colludes with corporations in the United States, etc.? Don’t forget that most Americans don’t know about alternative media, again with good reason. Of the people I know that do know what is going on, few are complacent; most are absolutely incensed.
Zelak, thanks very much for posting this! You’re right, there are important differences worth keeping in mind. From what I recall of Postman, his thrust was not so much an intentional witholding of information by authority but literally “amusing ourselves” meaning that by allowing ourselves to pursue pleasant superficial interests so freely, we would deteriorate our understanding of the world and then potentially make ourselves vulnerable to something more malicious.
I think an update to Postman and Huxley might argue that we’ve harnessed our exploratory drive to floods of information rather than fewer structured sources, changing the way we understand the world and thinking about it in a different, perhaps less deep way.
Think of the cognitive differences between reading a book and surfing the web or texting. The structure of information is very different, and I think a modern culture critic might argue that it is a potentially lamentable and even serious trend, if thinking is structured largely by cognitive environment.
Hey,
I was just wondering… isn’t your cartoon a little bit ironic? I mean, the whole point of amusing ourselves to death is that can’t tolerate anything intellectual and requires everything to come in a short, entertaining format.
Doesn’t reducing Postman’s book to a short, amusing comic feed the disease? Haven’t you missed the entire point of the work?
-John
Great point, although I doubt the irony was lost on most. I’m constantly aware of it as I use Twitter largely with other people interested in books and educational theory. I think realistically, you can use superficial information channels to help reference more substantial information sources. Simiarly, we can use entertainment judiciously to help point people to more serious content. At least I hope that’s what’s going on in at least some cases! To me it seems that the critique is really about entertainment taking over for thinking, not about entertainment being useless to facilitate thinking.
Great job, man!
Very concise and right to the point.
I’ve always liked Huxley better than Orwell, although they’re both geniuses. I think “Ape and Essence” never got the attention it deserves. Maybe you can give it a little cartoonish push! =oD
Congrats from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil!
Voll cool!
Really great.
Great work man! Go on!
Love it!
After reading Amusing Ourselves to Death and How to Watch TV News, I created my senior project in Art around the concept.
The work is posted on my Flickr
http://www.flickr.com/photos/34368768@N06/sets/72157623002289604/
Keep up your work, it is some great stuff.
Fine work. Some have commented on the accuracy of a cartoon representation of the two authors, but in the end, the point made by the use of the basic themes is absolutely brilliant.
Great work!
I’ve made an italian version on my blog, as you can see from your #11 trackback
Have not read either book, but I can look around most any day and see authors’ thoughts in fact and intact… Woe be unto us, our eyes and ears be closed.
Re asteroids – I prefer a republic vice democratic approach… let’s see how our electeds handle that scenario. (:))
Old [Orwellian] system or ‘New’ [Huxleyian] system
Most of people have their lives ruled, depending on where they live [a ditactorship, a formal democracy, a region controlled by war and/or drug lord] by one, another or …both.
And in politics the difference could be subtle – http://www.politicalcompass.org
Thanks for taking the time to draw(?), compile, and make available these “cartoons”. Thought provoking.
IanM
It is significant, I believe to the two novels’ warnings that Orwell’s was written in bombed-out London in 1948 and Huxley’s was written in California during the 1920s when the film industry was maturing.
I invite all to get the latest word on the subject by reading two recent works: Christopher Hitchens’ “Why Orwell Matters” and Christopher Hedges’ “Empire of Illusion.”
Huxley: “The truth drowned in a sea of irrelevance,” I guess.
Great post.
You might be interested in this Graun article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/jan/31/ipad-review-comments-naughton
It reminded me of this strip.
Orwell was right too. Both books, Brave New World and Nineteen Eight-Four was great and adressed diferent aspects of people domination. I dont think that Huxley or Orwell was wrong or less right. Both was actually genial.
Very clever observation of western life
I was amused. And I read it with technology. And someday I will die. Dude, that’s like totally ironic, and stuff.
This is it
Both Orwell AND Huxley were right.
Masterful precis! Thanks
The author of the book never honestly considered that both Huxley and Orwell were right?
were fucked
Just when I was thinking that I have stopped thinking, I read this amazing discourse and well what else can I say now:’I have started to think!!!!’
Huxley was right. Orwell was right. We’re screwed.
Amazing. Straight to the point.
Stuart,
This is a great rendition of two books I feared and loved. I’ll definitely read the Postman text now. Mind if I translate your cartoon version into Hebrew and spread it via email?
Of course I’ll keep all the credits and add a link to your site.
A
Our society is controlled both ways.
On one hand, we have the Patriot Act, the War on Terror(TM)(R), extra judicial execution by our executive branch, an Tewwowists.
One the other hand, we have American Idol, “debates” between whoever the media deems credible candidates both of which do the same thing when elected and Rush Limbaugh/The Daily Show.
I really don’t see how you can say decisively who was right, both approaches are being taken but there is no reason to complain, people aren’t forced into it, they readily accept it.
And really, just what difference does it make how the population at large is controlled? It’s controlled, that’s all that matters.
Good, but to be fair in 1984 the Proles were controlled, not by violence, but by banality, much like the case he is making for Huxley. It was the relatively-educated party members that were controlled by the party authoritarian apparatus, while the Proles were left mostly to their own devices and distracted with party produced pornography (PornoSec), pulp-fiction (FicDep), films, and lotteries.
I think think this was because Proles were too numerous to be dealt with through repression, or perhaps given their stupidity the party thought repression was unnecessary, or a waste of effort.
Furthermore, you could also have included Fahrenheit 451 in the strip, as there are a lot of similarities with a society utterly distracted by vapid video-walls and shows along the lines of “Cops”. Sure the Firemen come and burn the books, but no one cares anyway. At least, no one but the protagonist.
And in H.G Wells’ “The Time Machine”, for that matter…. or Mike Judge’s “Idiocracy”… It seems the impending dumbing down of society is a popular topic. Maybe it was always thus?
it is pretty sad.I just want to live the right way.getting my license to drive real soon with the breathahliar.I will never risk someones life or mine again!!
Trackbacks/Pingbacks (18)
Amusing ourselves to death…
In his famous ‘Amusing Ourselves to Death‘, written in pre-internet times (1985), Neil Postman wrote down his fascinating fear that reality might be reflected more by Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, where the public is oppressed by p…
Amusing Ourselves to Death: The Comic…
Stuart McMillen has created a nice graphic adaptation of Neil Postman’s comparison of Orwell vs. Huxley in his book Amusing Ourselves To Death. Link to comic: Amusing Ourselves To Death. (via Josh Sowin)…
[...] foda. Via Stuart McMillen. « Obey Sarney | » Por Alexandre Matias às 10:26 | | Permalink Categorias: [...]
[...] Stuart McMillen (via Alexandre [...]
[...] Amusing Ourselves to Death < Recombinant Records. [...]
[...] http://www.recombinantrecords.net/2009/05/24/amusing-ourselves-to-death/ [...]
[...] digging around, I noticed a comment that was far to good to pass up: So instead of reading Amusing Ourselves to Death, you can fit this [...]
[...] Subscribe to the comments for this post? [...]
[...] Saltar a Comentarios A través del Blog de un otario me encontré con una genial viñeta de Stuart McMillen en la que compara la distopiía creada por Orwell en su libro 1984, con la creada en Un mundo feliz [...]
[...] pelo cartunista americano Stuart McMillen e adaptada para o português por Marcelo Del Debbio, uma interessante comparação feita em [...]
[...] di Huxley 8 Gennaio 2010 Lascia un commento Passa ai commenti Ho tradotto una vignetta trovata in rete che spiega meglio di mille libri i problemi della nostra società, confrontando le visioni [...]
[...] Source: Recombinant Records [...]
[...] enjoyed this great cartoon from Stuart McMillen (Recombinant records) presenting the introduction to Neil Postman’s [...]
[...] Recombinant Records [...]
[...] is well worth a few minutes of your time to read, click here> Amusing Ourselves to Death < Recombinant Records. to go to Stuart’s blog and see the full [...]
[...] tradotto una vignetta trovata in rete che spiega meglio di mille libri i problemi della nostra società, confrontando le visioni [...]
[...] Een van de reacties op McMillens cartoon: [...]
[...] trying harder to set a sustained tone with my strips. ‘Amusing Ourselves to Death‘ gave me a peek at what can be achieved, but I can envision something far greater than that [...]