Brand New World vs. 1984.....Which one is more like modern society??

1984 and Brave New World. These two novels were both revolutionary and extremely inventive for the time that they were produced. They were works that were so ahead of their time and that attempted to predict the outcome of society’s progression in the future. Neil Postman wrote of the comparison of the two ideas and about which he feels actually materialized. I agree with Neil Postman’s assertion that contemporary society is most like that of Brave New World. In general, I see three prominent functions of society that promote this speculation: people want things to be easier, faster, and newer.

These days people are obsessed with things being easier, in all aspects of their lives. Our fixation with technology and instant gratification has led us to this vice. Our current society has become lazy from accessibility, drug use, lack of a desire to challenge ourselves and our surroundings from this conditioning of a lax atmosphere,- among other things. We are obsessed with trivial fixations like celebrities and sports teams, leaving few who know about current events and governmental issues. Our current society is blindly resting in what they feel is safe and comfortable. Individuals tend to choose ‘the path of least resistance’ and are fueled primarily by pleasure (as the article “Everyone Is Happy Now” concludes). This is exactly like the world presented in Brave New World, because it demonstrates how people have lost touch with appreciation for things if they take too much time, in comparison to other things in constant upgrades in availability (Therefore our history is lost and older professions, such as hand-made carpentry, etc.).

In today’s world, its members are also concerned with the pace at which they receive the things they want or need. Speed has also led our society to rely on and demand systems like mass production and priority shipping, etc. Because of this evolution in pace, we have also begun to loose our connection with other humans. This “fast-paced-world” we live in limits the amount of time that we have to spend with each other. Also, the fact that people are becoming progressively lazier, has not helped remedying this growing societal issue. Our society demands things to be quick, flawless, on time, and also in the latest version. This parallels to the world shown in Brave New World in so many ways. The individuals participated in the same sort of fixation with time. This can be seen in the novel when remarks expressed an extreme disapproval of a plane being “40 seconds late,”. Their society runs on a precise schedule that is constantly refined and scrutinized, whereas the society shown in 1984 had its members doing neither of those things.

The last component of recent society shown clearly in the novel Brave New World, is the aspect of advancement. Individuals today are obsessed with obtaining the newest products available in order to maintain their laziness and desire for speed. The most prominent facilitator of this concept in society is by far found mostly in technology. It is utilized today to the point of dependency and is being incorporated into almost every aspect of daily life. Everywhere you go you can find a computer, TV, cell-phone, phone tower and/or post, cars, etc. Our society is completely obsessed with any advancement in technology, just as the people in Brave New World were. In the novel, the only books distributed (that were actually wanted to be read) were instructional and technical and about how to keep their society’s machinery and operations running successfully. They were, as we are, obsessed with getting better and better technology that is constantly an improvement in proficiency.

Although some aspects from both the dystopias presented in Huxley and Orwell’s novels are present in our current society, I feel as though Huxley’s is more dominant. It has been shown for years that people have become increasingly more interested in (the three main aspects of our world today) ease, pace, and keeping up with advancements. These are matched much more closely to the foundations on which the world Huxley presented reside. Either way, it is scary to think that society will turn into the dystopias predicted in these novels that have seemed surpass their time and time itself.