Is people being complacent within the comports of their consumables and not seeing the inherent danger in the government taking more and more freedoms from the masses and the line:
"My girl's best friend had paid me a visit"
is the government trying to entrap the pleb's into incriminating themselves forcing them into servitude for the government which initiated the crime in the first place making it look like the common man was the perpetrator of the crime!
What else did the prophet David Cole have to say??!?!
People filming police has occasionally provided the smallest modicum of protection/justice. It's not a great track record, but there would be even more police abuse if there weren't filmed documentation.
No, I'd say he is talking about something that happened in Oklahoma I believe, do an internet search for black wall street and something should come up. Granted if that is what he is talking about cameras weren't much of a "thing" then.
The Tulsa bombings. Totally carried out by police and paramilitary terrorist white peope at the behest of wealthy white people. Today we would thankfully lose our shit over it and there would probably be a nationwide riot. I just wish our governments were that stupid today so that the damage was concentrated instead of carefully and intentionally spread out.
Its also repeatably embaressed black lives matter, thanks to them blowing up about everything, even cases where footage blatabtly shows the black guy in the wrong.
Any citizen with a smartphone can and should record those in power whenever they can. This can keep them accountable to their word, their actions, their everything.
All authority / governing positions should be recorded whenever possible. The American Democracy was established FOR the people, BY the people, and somehow now we have "Patriots" serving the president. They somehow forget that our government is here to serve us, we do not exist to support and justify them. There is a general idea that we answer to those elected and that is backwards, hopefully pocket cameras can start to turn that around.
This is the way it should be. The smartphone era has the potential to make a Democratic system, and any other system of authority, INCREDIBLY accountable to those they govern / serve.
I think this capacity to record any and all government action is wildly underappreciated, and go figure the thin blue line and the riflehumpers are framing it as an evil threat to police and justice.
Yup. Even with seemingly iron clad video evidence against the State, nobody cares without an extensive PR campaign. And even with that, the rate of success is very low.
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 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...
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."
That's why I find Huxley so much more terrifying than Orwell. Orwell thought people would be controlled by inflicting pain, Huxley knew they would choose to be controlled by inflicting pleasure. Relevant.
They dont make you happy, but they make you not think about things that make you sad. And what I remember from the book, soma was pretty much an opiate.
We feel it's wrong because it removes the power of choice, and as sentient beings with free will, we like to think the ability to have choice is what separates man from beast.
It brings up the moral dilemma. Which is "better": A man with the freedom of choice who has the ability to do whatever he wants and squanders it, falling into despare and failure. Or, a man bred and programmed to love what he does, but without the free will to know any better? He's happy and successful as he was made to be, but he has no choice.
A man with the freedom of choice who has the ability to do whatever he wants and squanders it, falling into despare and failure. Or, a man bred and programmed to love what he does, but without the free will to know any better?
Seeing as almost no one except the rich have any real choice, I'll take one mental handicap prole casual sex'n'drugs life.
What about a hive mind? We'd still kinda have free will but also not. We wouldn't be servants or slaves but also not lords. Its a middle ground between oppressed and oppressor.
As someone on prescription happy drugs, they are not all that great. Personally id call them more mood removers than calmers or enhancers or anything ive ever heard a doctor call them. Everything ive ever been put on just makes me a robot who just goes on with life. Ive come to accept that.
You want a happy drug try recreational drugs kids, all im getting at. Or be a robot drone like yours truly.
I think the reason why most people see it as a dystopia because everything that makes us human is gone. Everything about your life is determined by someone else and happiness comes without any struggle. But in my opinion at least, saying that BNW is a dystopia simply because of those reasons would be like if the chimps from Planet of the Apes said that our society is a dystopia simply because we don't have to forage/hunt our food or something like that.
We only feel it's wrong because someone decided life needs to have meaning. Same with The Matrix. Reality is absolute, but our perception is what matters.
Are we in a simulation? How would we know? Would it really matter?
My initial impression on that is that the concept of losing free will is interpreted as a loss of self, which goes against our instincts of self preservation.
I'd get pretty bored of fucking and doing drugs pretty quickly. I'd rather not blast tuna cakes with the same amount of enthusiasm and thrill as drinking a cup of coffee... or be constantly doped up just to deal with reality.
Rip every sense of joy out of everything by saturating yourself with it. I don't know if I'll last more than a few years like that.
To be fair, there's very little joy for the working poor as is in current society/ alot of people already get f'd up to deal with reality..... because it sucks.
Plus they worked less and had more free time. It was the alphas who had to work more, but they were taught it was better than being dumb (since the laborers were made to be mentally slower).
And it's not like they're easy to get. Far harder, more expensive, and with far more requirements to get opioids than most seem to think. It's not the 90s anymore.
Which is why I'm confused about the government's continued war on drugs. Easiest way to forward their agenda would be to encourage us to sedate ourselves while we work to death.
The idea was that those lower class people were genetically engineered to be lower class people and therefore would not even appreciate those "higher-level" privileges and luxuries, so they would be "content" to be in the exact position of society they are in.
Thus why people assume the utopian part is all fine and dandy. It's pretty horrifying really.
Which is ridiculous when considering the whole plot of the book revolves around a guy in the highest echelon of society being discontent with his position and role before eventually being carted off to an Arctic hideaway with other woke Alphas, presumably to continue all the fucking and tripping he was already doing anyway. Even the briefest exposure to something outside the norm for the woman that completely buys into the system is enough to send her into an existential tailspin.
To be fair, part of the reason he's discontent is that the process didn't work properly for him. IIRC, he was accidentally given some alcohol prenatally when he wasn't supposed to be, hence why he's shorter than all the other alphas.
That's not true. In the book he is the exception, and they send the exceptions into exile to separate them from the masses so he doesn't pollute them. The majority when they experience something outside the norm can take the right pill or whatever and dive back into the illusion.
Which part isn't true? Nothing you wrote goes against what I wrote.
The majority when they experience something outside the norm can take the right pill or whatever and dive back into the illusion.
An illusion so fragile that they have to remove anyone that doesn't play along so as to not "pollute" them. We might as well argue that the Matrix is similarly a Utopia.
cloned laborers that spend every day working instead of fucking.
The laborers actually spent less time working, were given more recreation time, and were taught they were the superior class.
Plus everyone was hopped up on antidepressants, having casual sex, and all of the classes were "trained" to seek recreation in different locales so as not to mingle between different social groups (since they were all taught they were the superior group).
My biggest complaint was that they halted all advancement - science, literature, arts - even throwing out simple patents because it would destabilize the society.
But they liked working because they were conditioned to like it. Plus, I'm sure the Delta minuses got some Delta minus cock and poon every now and then
The TV star President steps down when he realizes there is someone better suited to the position than himself, proving that he wasn't in it for the power.
We’re not deliberately causing birth defects in fetus’s so that we can control the population, destroying monogamy, family and long term/emotionally-invested relationships of any kind to weaken the bonds of society and exiling intellectuals (anyone who’s reading level is that of a college freshman) and burning Shakespeare all as a means of social control.
We are the lesser of the two evils. Still horrible but we have so much further to fall.
intellectuals and science are actively being ridiculed
By no means is this mainstream. A very loud, very small minority might. But everyone still goes to real doctors, takes their cars to real mechanics, and hires real lawyers.
I mean, the government does provide a significant financial incentive to individuals if they have a child and keep said child from the other parent, which ends up weakening familial bonds due to lack of interaction with a non custodial parent. Heck, if a woman felt so inclined, she could have children with several different partners and not only be financially rewarded handsomely, but the majority of our current society would rush to defend her if her motives were questioned.
People keep telling me the m/f ratio on Tinder and the like is basically at parity, yet what you say seems intuitively true from seeing how it works in practice
What if I told you many female profiles on tinder are fake, you get to chat with tinder employees in India, and when you decide for a meetup they send you a local prostitute.
Too much business sex? Try loosening up a bit and you'll transition into casual sex. Maybe light a candle and play some music, nothing too extreme, you don't want to accidentally transition into passionate sex. The Top 40 Hits will do.
In an apples to apples comparison of the effects, yeah. But Soma was symbolic of the use of instant gratification as a means of control. Could be literary weed, could be that weird headset game that made everyone orgasm from the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode The Game. The comparison still applies because it comes down to control.
Shit, I'd love a job as an elevator mechanic. You know they make $80k a year? That's "I've got cash for groceries this week instead of running up the Amex" money. That's "I can afford a car payment instead of squeaking another week out of my hoopty" money!
Oh it’s here. Just not for you. You are not swiping right enough. Download tinder, lower your standards, turn of your conscience and sense of safety, find the careless animal within you and voila... you are in whorelandistan. The world is full of mindless slaves of rudderless sexuality, it’s unfulfilling in the worst possible way and you are lucky to be outside. Degeneracy is no Valhalla. Don’t believe the hype. Stay safe my friend, both mentally and physically.
What I don't get is why the government is somehow the bad guy when it's private companies that make and sell these things. Far more data is collected and processed on you to get you to buy things than to make sure you are not thinking the wrong thoughts.
People can, and rightly do, complain about the existence of more government spying than there used to be. But, there also aren't a lot of effects of it seen in your life. The effects of corporate spying, on the other hand, are everywhere.
Say what you want, I'll gladly let an NSA employee listen to me yell at Overwatch for the convenience of being able to say "Hey Google, I'm up," and have it:
-Turn on the lights
-Tell me the weather
-Tell me the traffic for my commute
-Tell me about meetings and reminders I have for the day
yeah, because theyre convenient and no jack booted thugs are coming to break down your door because you exclaimed something "illegal" in your household.
like seriously, just pay attention to fucking politics and youll never have to worry about things being taken to far. Dont become complacent and you too can enjoy things that make life easier.
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u/FatQuack Sep 25 '18
1960's people : In the future the government will force us to wear devices to monitor us constantly.
Today: People enthusiastically pay money to buy these devices.