The World Is More ‘Brave New World’ Than ‘1984’

The carnival that is Western civilization is coming to an end

Two plus two is five.

That was always my favorite takeaway from George Orwell’s 1984. It meant that any government party or social group could make you believe anything based on emotional fervor and not empiricism.

They’d likely say: “Sure, two plus two is four is an excellent thing; but if we’re going to start praising everything, then two plus two is five is sometimes also a most charming little thing.”

Like in Orwell’s novel, Western civilization is losing logic and objectivity.

Our sense of morality is dictated by dogmatic social justice warriors and the corporate media, the latter of which is a nascent “Big Brother.”

However, while Orwell got many things right in 1984 — especially political conformity and mass surveillance — he didn’t go deep enough.

The world isn’t so much 1984 as it is Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.

Pharmaceuticals are having a field day

Brave New World is many things.

But in a nutshell, it is a society addicted to stimulants; it’s a society with genetically engineered test-tube babies; it’s a society hooked on birth control; it’s a world captive to culture and no longer at the forefront creating it; and above everything else — and contrary to 1984 — it is a society not being ruined by what we hate, rather by what we love.

The modern struggle isn’t survival, it’s learning how to deal with an abundance of resources.

Pornography is on every device, fast food is ubiquitous, and each of us is addicted to a drug (even 85% of Americans take caffeine once a day).

Meanwhile, pharmaceuticals claimed more than 600,000 lives this year, with the toll climbing higher.

The average life is being prolonged through pharmaceuticals, but the quality of life is in sharp decline. Anti-depressants help, but ultimately make you numb to everything. They make us less relatable and less emotionally connected. And the only question I’m left with is, ‘How many drugs do we need to take before there’s nothing human in us left?’

Distracting yourself to death

Literary critic Neil Postman wrote in his 1985 non-fiction book 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.”

Twitter. Instagram. TikTok.

Scrolling through these apps kills your ambition as a human. You are entertaining yourself to death and nothing more.

My worst fear is consuming more than I create. Even people who create shitty things like The Room or McDonald’s cheeseburgers have the value of being creators, not lazy consumers.

“But I don’t want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.” — Brave New World

Here’s some food for thought: Watching the news every night might make you smart, but it does not make you wise. Knowing a bunch of loosely collected facts only makes you the most interesting-boring person in the room.

Many of the characters in Brave New World are like this, with the exception of the main character Bernard who’s idiosyncrasy and intrepidness almost get him killed.

It’s why when he says, “but I don’t want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin,” nobody understands what he’s talking about. I fear that world is coming.

Sex is meaningless

The birth control pill is the most influential drug in modern history.

In 1970, medical degrees were over 90% male. Law degrees and MBAs were over 95% male. Dentistry degrees were 99% male. Then after the creation of the birth control pill in 1970, everything changed.

Women were no longer destined to become mothers at an early age. Of course, this had clear economic benefits. Harvard economists Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz found that the pill played a major role in allowing women to invest in their own careers.

However, birth control also changed the dating landscape forever.

Women are having more sex with high-value men while average men are remaining virgins, or becoming incels. The share of men under 30 in the U.S. who aren’t having sex has nearly tripled between 2008 and 2018, according to data published in the Washington Post.

Because sex for women is consequence-free — and because women typically date above their societal placement — sex has become less for making a family and more just for fun. If you want to destroy society, destroy the family.

Huxley predicted that birth control would make us jaded towards sex. Not only has it done that, but it’s also completely rewired the sexual marketplace; the long-term implications of which are playing out right now.

Final Thought

Brave New World is much more insidious and subtle than 1984.

You don’t need dudes in trucks coming to your house to enforce draconian government policy. The working class will be the ones to choose Western civilization's downfall. They’ll do it willingly out of ignorance and a lust for convenience.

If you don’t say “no” to one policy disagreement then you risk inching back a little more each time until you’ve realized you’ve gone a mile.

It’s why — although I’m vaccinated — I believe that vaccine mandates imposed by the government are ridiculous, cancel culture is evil, and all minorities don’t need to think and vote the same way (i.e. always vote left).

Our only hope is for people to step up.

Ah, shit.

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