Academy of Ideas Aug 11, 2022 This is a clip from our video George Orwell and 1984: How Freedom Dies Watch it and access the transcript here – https://academyofideas.com/2017/12/ge… . The opening image was artwork created by Andreas Varro – https://www.andreasvarro.com/
This is an interesting piece. It implicitly raises but doesn’t answer: why was Orwell so convinced that capitalism was dying? Where did he go awry? Or, maybe he thought that today’s capitalism could never have come about, i. e., that politicians would, in full view of the voters, pass laws that enabled the extremely rich to get richer, often at the expense of those very voters.
I think Huxley’s views are much more complicated than simple hedonism. “Brave New World” required a huge technological shift to a biological caste system. The relevant scientific communities involved in “genetic engineering,” so called, are fighting against Huxley’s bio-dystopia tooth and nail.