A brave new unconscious civilisation

I read John Ralston Saul's Unconscious Civilisation when I was trying to get into politics. I'd recently purchased the Oxford Companion to World Politics in order to better understand the US election process, and my brother-in-law recommended Unconscious Civilisation because it was about where he stood. Since then I have seen Ralston Saul give a lecture on his book The Collapse of Globalism, and he's quite an interesting speaker.

He comes from an economics background, and has ideas that are probably centre-left - which is good because it's progressive but realistic. It's one of those books (indeed, he's one of those writers/speakers) that looks at conventions of today and questions their necessity. Of note, intellectual property laws that stopped a condom maker from making "Stealth Condoms" because the shape of the stealth bomber is patented, and the elitist culture where leaders drive public interest rather than respond to it as per democracy. Obviously there's some room for debate here - perhaps one of the reasons most of us have hope in Obama is that he's likely to orient the public toward "better" interests, but when stakeholders and the elite get together things can go wrong.

A most interesting line in this book is his mention of 1984 and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Huxley's book I think came out in the 30s, a decade or so before 1984, but I guess they are roughly written around the same time in our unconscious - what Ralston Saul points out is that we have been so preoccupied with warning against the bleak 1984 future, and virtually no mention is made of Brave New World - even though it's much closer to where our society is headed and probably far more dangerous.

Brave New World manufactures 5 classes of citizens by adding a little alcohol to the test-tube babies in different doses, and inculcating the societal roles from a young age. Sex is no longer needed to reproduce, so partnership becomes redundant and indicative of an unhealthy lifestyle. Once again, the point isn't to predict "hey, we might become this test-tube society - isn't that strange and terrible?", but rather every aspect of the society is somehow related to our own. We are brought up culturally to recognise tiers of society, keep to our own limitations and not try to upset the order, and we get plenty of messages from government and advertising companies that reinforce this, even if we don't really think it should be the case.

Oh yeah, plus the THC drug in it, rad stuff.

1984 and v for vendetta

People (that I talk to) seem to respond differently to Orwell's 1984. One friend seemed to think that it was not a masterpiece like Animal Farm. Others find it morbid and depressing. Some focus on the big brother aspect - perhaps having watched big brother but not having read the book... Indeed, future fiction will always be tied to the issue of its prediction accuracy - like how people seem to like saying "Stem-cell research - it'll be just like Gattaca" or "CCTV cameras - it's just like 1984" - that sort of stuff.

I felt like Animal Farm set the blueprint, and then 1984 really fleshed out the ideas, making it far more intense. I don't see it as a "look what might happen if..."-book because most of its central themes are relevant and tangible to current, everyday life. I find myself repeatedly thinking of the lines "underneath the chestnut tree, i sold you and you sold me". I think the love-story here, and the issue of what it means to betray someone, is one of the lasting impressions of the book - this concept exists outside all the futuristic themes of the book. Sometimes things we thought we'd never relinquish just aren't worth holding on to.

The exploration of newspeak also is philosophically brilliant (i'm pretty sure it gets its own entry in the Oxford companion to philosophy), and is psychologically and linguistically thought provoking.

I find it funny that the movie with John Hurt is not more renowned. Despite its age I think it captures the world pretty perfectly - I must watch it again. On a related note, I found V for Vendetta surprisingly good - like a 1984 world with a superhero. John Hurt plays the big brother character in this which i'm sure must have been deliberate - crazy that they got away with speeches about the "significance of blowing up a building", so soon after Sep 11 (well... 5 years... but still). Anyway, that impressed me.