From: mabjo@pacbell.net   
      
   Rachel wrote:   
      
   > "Charles Young"  wrote in message news:<   
   PednRE1MpSEMl3dRVn-gQ@pghconnect.com>...   
   > > There are many who think that Huxley was the better predictor.  Looking   
   > > at the crap taking place today it is easy to agree.  Orwell's 'big brother'   
   > > bunch has been defeated, but out country has turned to garbage.  The   
   > > kits described by Huxley have materialized as "the pill".  There is even a   
   > > drug on the market called "soma".   
      
   "Charles" is tremendously optimistic to feel that "the 'big brother' bunch"   
   has been defeated.   
   Unfortunately, *1984* isn't about specific people, it's about recurrent   
   patterns.   
      
   >   
   >   
   > My God--this question was one of the essays on my A.P. English Lit.   
   > Exam!   
   > I think that both dystopia are (necessarily) exaggerations; which is   
   > more accurate depends almost entirely upon the angle from which you're   
   > looking.   
   > When I first answered the question, five years ago, I agreed that   
   > Huxley's warnings were the more valid. Now, I'm not so sure.   
   > /Rachel   
      
   I'm not sure the two approaches are really in tension with each other: one   
   emphasizes the carrot, the   
   other the stick. Both involve a system of control that has set out to abolish   
   private space. Orwell writes   
   in *1984*, "...Not love so much as eroticism was the enemy, inside marriage as   
   well as outside it...The   
   Party was trying to kill the sex instinct, or if it could not be killed, then   
   to distort it and dirty   
   it..." In a way doesn't Huxley talk about something done similarly but in a   
   mirror-image way, by replacing   
   personal attraction with sterile promiscuity?   
      
   /M   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)