Amusement and Control

Another wellspring of surrealism that I'll be exploring further during my extended surrealism appreciation week: the disparity between the "haves" and the "have nots" in a society.

Coming from a country that "Holds to be self-evident that all men are created equal," and having witnessed countless examples of the absence of this equality, I've always been interested in this problem. Who has power, and who doesn't? How do the people who have power keep it? How do people with little to no power respond to the situation? What tradeoffs do we make between power and security?

I'm writing this a week or two after the Nobel Prize was awarded to Liu Xiaobo, the imprisoned dissident who by now is probably the most famous Chinese citizen that most Chinese have never heard about. Much has already been written about the award and its repercussions, both within China and globally. What's surreal, of course, is being here in China and not feeling able to talk about it much. "Hey, everyone - did you see that big elephant walk by? It was on the news just now!" Oh, yeah, right, it's an invisible elephant. Sorry to bring it up...

I was reminded during all this of this cartoon by Stuart McMillan, talking about the differences between Orwell's 1984 and Huxley's Brave New World, two novels that, lest we become too smug, apply equally well to the dangers of power disparities in China or the United States. (Or anywhere else in the world where people use force and coercion to maintain power, come to think of it.) He's illustrating this quote from Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death:

"What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions”. In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us."

Check out the full version of "Orwell vs. Huxley" here.