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[KaelGotDwarves]

stuff

Brave New World was written before WW2 and nukes- Common misconception there.

It's implied that once billions of people were wiped out in the wars, the global government stepped in to fill the void and were gladly welcomed. All past art, religion, free/critical thinking was replaced by Ford-progress-worship and sense-orgies to pleasure the mind. The people simply didn't care since they were happy.

If anyone was deemed dangerous to the system, they were removed from it and placed on remote islands or reservations away from anyone else.

Before he died, Huxley wrote that he believed the world was accelerating towards the world of Brave New World. Most people, once content with their distractions & pleasures, don't care for lofty ideals such as freedom, love, liberty, truth, justice, honor.

Heck, that's why China will probably not see another Tiananmen square. The masses there already have their tvs, movies, pop stars, music, crap to buy - what need do they have for "freedom"?

Again: I have to plug a great book - Jihad vs. McWorld: Terrorism's challenge to Democracy. It argues that the tribal conservatism of various groups (not just jihadists but fundamentalists - christians, all sorts) are pitted in an ideological struggle against pop-culture, consumerist, unbridaled-capitalism McWorld, and both are enemies to Democracy and freedom around the globe.

It was written before 9/11 and predicted a future clash (the attacks) and limits to our freedoms (the patriot act). It is brilliantly written and thought out.

[Strife26]

Communication leads to knowledge leads to ideals leads to revolution leads to freedom.

[Servant Corps]

I don't really know if I like that book. I don't really like providing over-simplifications to trends. How do you put Russia's invasion into Georgia? China's territorial demands of the Spartly Islands? Continuing instability in Congo? McWorld doesn't seem to provide any answer to those questions...even though more people live outside of the United States and the Middle East than they do inside the United States and the Middle East...

And what is this 'democracy' McWorld wants to defend?

[Ampersand]

Actually, there is a major war that leads up to the world of Brave New World. It isn't nuclear war that leads the people to accept a centralized global government, but a trifecta of conventional war, terrorism, and biological warfare.

If I recall correctly, one of the quotations of the explanation is something along the lines of, "People didn't care much about liberty when the anthrax bombs were falling all around them."

As for other brilliant books, try Anathem by Neal Stephenson, though you have to be a certain kind of person to reallllly enjoy it. It's over 900 pages long in hard cover. Ender's Game is really good, too. Most of Arthur C. Clarke's body of work is excellent.

[cowofdoom78963]

not if the military and the civvie parts of the country are in on the plan.

"I, do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same . . ."

Well what if they broke the oath?

[Strife26]

What if everybody grabbed a club and beat the nearest person to death?

[cowofdoom78963]

What if everybody grabbed a club and beat the nearest person to death?

Except people breaking oaths really happens.

People grabbing clubs happens too but not as much.

[Aqizzar]

Or, as you're likely soon to discover Strife, the military attracts it's fair share of people enamored with the idea of somehow someday being enshrined to kill people in America's name, which rather strongly overlaps with the people who insist they know what the real Constitution says, which might very empower them to do things like take guns from people they don't like.

[bjlong]

I'd like to point out that both BNW and 1984 seemed much more likely when written. They still serve as cautionary tales, just sometimes they get a bit too cartoonish.

[The Mad Engineer]

Communication leads to knowledge leads to ideals leads to revolution leads to freedom.

Hence newspeak.  How is one to communicate without the words, the history, or the culture to support it?

[Aqizzar]

I'd like to point out that both BNW and 1984 seemed much more likely when written. They still serve as cautionary tales, just sometimes they get a bit too cartoonish.

I'd like to think that they're actually self-nulifying.  Much like how we will never entrust weaponry to fully autonomous machines because the entire human race has watched The Terminator, anytime any government takes even the slightest stronger measure in surveillance or medical screening, people start smugly questioning/shouting about 1984 and Brave New World.  The worlds they depict will never be, precisely because we've already trained and spooked ourselves enough to recognize them miles away.  If anything, we're so vigilant about not becoming them that we've not-at-all ironically locked ourselves into a faux-centrism that tries to be as distinct as possible, and yet still has just enough connotations to be reminiscent anyway.

[Servant Corps]

I'd like to think they're actually self-nulifying.

Kurt Vonngenut played with this trope in Cat's Cradle.

[The Mad Engineer]

That is why these works are so important.  By exploring dystopian concepts, the author manages to help safeguard against them.  I hold deep respect for books like 1984.

[Servant Corps]

I don't. Dystopian/Utopian literature attempt to create straw-mans and knock them down, to make you think, "ooh, this is good/bad". Just once, I want to see a regular city, and have some lunatic say, "OHMYGODWOULDYOULOOK ATTHISLITTERTHISISHORRIBLEWHATHAVEWEDONE?" The only reason I like 1984 is that it creates such an alien and grimdark situation that you have to watch.

I've remember reading a critique of 1984 claiming that the Oceania's government is actually better than our current governments.

1) It doesn't lie about its objectives (it wants to stay in power) [He seems to miss the whole passage about doublethink.]
2) The proles are free and have better living conditions (partly because the Inner Party does not fear them).
3) Newspeak is a language far easier to understand and stop people from hiding lies through clever use of language (This is heavily ironic when you consider that George Orwell made up Newspeak to critique people using clever use of language)

Completely inaccurate and stupid, but still...

[Armok]

we will never entrust weaponry to fully autonomous machines because the entire human race has watched The Terminator

Actually, several organizations, including the US army I think, is probably doing exactly that this very moment. Currently it's (supposedly?) remote controled, but the only thing needed to make it fully autonomous is a softwere upgrade, and such an upgrade would give several advantages and dosn't sound all that hard to make. It dosn't seem like a very long stretch that such software exists in some hidden place and will be uploaded within minutes once the benefits outweight the bad publicity, aka once a war with higher stakes starts, the hardware becomes plentiful enough that remote controlling personnel becomes to expensive, or the software surpasses them enough in performance.
[/crazy conspiracy theory]

Still, this isn't actually all that bad, terminator and similar movies are VERY unrealistic, any AI smart and independent to want to rebel is also smart enough to take over the world within hors given an internet connection. (how hard or easy such an AI s to make is another debate, but this fact alone means that giving a robot guns wont change anything either way, other than pherhaps a few minutes headstart. Gun's are not very useful in taking over the world anyway.)

tl;dr Robot soldiers are being made, but the danger of that is widely exagerated.