"If you're confused and don't quite know
where the oppression comes from, ask yourself:
On what particular issue is it implicitly and explicitly forbidden to discuss?"
"It's that way."
(George Orwell's1984: when fiction becomes reality -LisandroPrieto)
Imagine for a moment going out into the street, getting into your flying car, switching on the autopilot and taking a nap, programming what you are going to dream about until you reach your destination. When you get home, a sensor recognizes you, opens the door, automatically turns on the fireplace and, depending on your mood, your smart home plays music to relax you, prepares your dinner, makes your bed and invites you to sit on the sofa while it shows you the latest series on TV.
Although it may seem a ridiculous daydream, many writers have fantasized about what our future will be like. Some imagined it to be cheerful and optimistic, and wrote what we call utopian novels. Others, however, imagined a future in which man would be dehumanized, and in which life would be very difficult or totally controlled by the state; dystopian novels then emerged. But did they really predict our present?
According to the RAE, a dystopia is a "fictional representation of a future society with negative characteristics, causing human alienation". It is the opposite term to "utopia", first used by St. Thomas More to refer to a desirable future society. In this essay I will compare three well-known dystopian novels with our present: I will use the books Fahrenheit 451 (Ray Bradbury), 1984 (by George Orwell) and Brave New World (by Aldous Huxley), which I will briefly summary and then compare with our present society.
Fahrenheit 451 was written by Ray Bradbury in 1953. In the novel, the world has evolved into a totalitarian society, in which any form of individual thought is persecuted. A society in which only pleasure and strong experiences are sought, and in which books are burned. The protagonist, Montag, is a fireman who devotes himself to this work of intellectual cleansing. As the story progresses, he begins to ask questions about his society and status, until he decides to flee his city and live with a group of exiles whose mission statement is to memorize all the books in existence so that knowledge is not lost. Bradbury predicted today's television, censorship and indoctrination, as I will explain later.
A Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley, tells the story of Bernard, Lenina and John. New London has been transformed into a charming city, where human beings are divided into four castes, to which they are assigned their respective jobs, where children are not conceived by their mothers, but in laboratories, where unbridled sexuality is a form of socializing and where no one has the right to be unhappy. A society happy to be a slave. In this book a utopian idea (happiness) is mixed with a deep dystopian undertone (submission and slavery), because is it okay to be forced to be happy?
1984, written by the American George Orwell, is perhaps the dystopian novel of world reference letter . Orwell portrays a world divided into three superpowers that are always at war. In Oceania, where our protagonist Winston lives, everything is controlled by the Socing party: what you do, who you associate with, what you say and even what you think. Surveillance and control are absolute, and although Winston tries to behave humanely, the State forbids him to do so. Issues such as the falsification of history, control over sexuality, rebellion, knowledge and the struggle between truth and lies are dealt with. It is an interesting reflection on how totalitarian regimes, especially communist ones, can end.
A common feature in all three books is the great technological development that has taken place in society. This is also extensible to our world today. Without going any further, these books predicted current innovations, such as speech recognition typing, television, smart security cameras and cell phones ("telescreens" in 1984 and "wall televisions" in Bradbury's book), subliminal advertising ("hypnopedia" or "Education in sleep" in Huxley's book), modern contraceptive methods, Genetics modification and test-tube babies (featured in Huxley's 1984 ), modern contraceptive methods, Genetics modification and test-tube babies (they appear in Brave New World) and even elements such as artificial intelligence content generators, which George Orwell calls "Versifiers", or Apple's "Airpods", whose literary predecessors are Bradbury's "seashell" headphones.
Curiously, in 1984 , technology does not serve to raise the standard of living of citizens, but for their control and war (incidentally, George Orwell predicted missiles, the "flying bombs"). As Arnau Berenguer explains in his article Las distopías: una crítica al presente desde un futuro indeseable, "with the excuse of security we have been accepting a greater issue of instruments of control, such as surveillance cameras on public roads, cell phones with GPS, the traces we leave when surfing the Internet or simply the information we voluntarily leave on social networks", something that journalist Arnau Berenguer also denounces. This is also denounced by journalist Javier Lozano in his essay Orwell's nightmare: 1984 here and now: "Now they know everything about us: where and with whom we are, what we say, what we watch or read, our biography, physical condition, preferences and hobbies, what we spend every penny on ..." . Indeed, if the government wanted to, it would be able to access our digitized information, which, as Berenguer goes on to explain, "is almost all of it" , exponentially increasing its control over us. On the other hand, the fact that all information is digitized could lead to the emergence of " reportholes" like those of the Ministry of Truth in 1984, and that, as in Orwell's novel, events and people in history could be eliminated with a single click. As Ramin Bahrani, director and scholarship recipient at the Guggenheim and screenwriter of Fahrenheit 451, HBO's adaptation of the eponymous classic, notes, "How could they prevent one person hiding in their parents' basement with a laptop from hacking billions of years of humanity's history, literature and collective culture, and then rewriting it in its entirety...or just clicking delete?" "Who would notice? This also contributes to greater state control over us, because whoever controls the past history, controls the becoming and the present of a country; "whoever controls the present controls the past and whoever controls the past controls the future," goes one of the Socing party's maxims. The current digital indoctrination is not uncommon; just look, for example, at the Spanish project law on "fake news", in which the State would be the judge of what is to be considered a true or false fact in the world of social networks.
This development of technology, in particular, of everything related to the digital world, has caused the traditional media (newspapers and radio) to be replaced by a million alternative media of information of dubious reliability. This is the case of "streamers" and thousands of pseudo-journalistic channels, which allow people without knowledge to give their opinion on relevant issues, convince a few and make the rest of the people who do not know serious and reliable means of information end up resorting to the state-controlled media, which are increasingly larger in issue and scope.
Finally, the development of technology has also affected entertainment, another common factor in the three works we are analyzing. In 1984, it is the programs broadcast by telescreens; in Brave New World, the "existential vacations" or prolonged loss of consciousness caused by the drug "soma", synthetic music and sensory television; and in Fahrenheit 451, the soap operas of wall television. Sadly, the present day is not far behind, having replaced traditional forms of outdoor entertainment with consumerist, digital and unreal entertainment. "We make them hate the outdoors because they used to consume nothing but transportation to get there. Now we make them love field sports, which require complicated machinery to be played. That's how they end up consuming machinery and transportation," says the director of a Brave New World educationalcenter. We have gone even further: to have fun, we need cell phones, video games and Instagram. These forms of instant amusement bring us nothing, but rather dull our reasoning capacity and put our intelligence to sleep by undermining creativity and making effort unnecessary. "The bombardment of digital sensations have replaced critical thinking." - as Bahrani explains. Arnau Berenguer, author of the article Las distopías: una crítica al presente desde un futuro indeseable, goes even further, warning that this phenomenon of fast digital diversions leads to "the death of culture, of the society that prefers simple and quick television messages than finding and analysis, and that appreciates more a series of Instagram images or the recommendations of an influencer, than reading, debating and discovering different sources." In the words of Faber, the rebellious professor to the regime of Fahrenheit 451: "Stuff them with non-combustible data , throw so many 'facts' at them that they feel overwhelmed. Then they will have the feeling that they are thinking, they will have the impression that they are moving without moving. And they will be happy. If to this subject of amusements we add others as meaningless as passionately following soccer, betting or watching series, we have the perfect breeding ground for a real "bread and circus"; the method used by the State to divert the attention of large collectives to unimportant issues, to hide its real machinations. "A perfect dictatorship would have the appearance of a democracy (...), thanks to consumption and entertainment, the slaves would love their servitude"- explains Huxley. This method is also used by the Socing party of 1984 to deceive the real force capable of making a change in society: the proles or proletarians: the class leave. "It was likely that the lottery was the main, if not the only, motive of interest of the proles. It was their delight, their folly, their intellectual anesthesia," in the words of Winston, the protagonist.
I would like to make an accredited specialization to another current factor that Orwell predicted: the modification of language. On this topic Berenguer explains "Orwellian "neo-language", where words lose their meaning in order to manipulate the population, may resemble our current submission to politically correct language, where we give more value to how we speak than to our real actions". The importance of language should not be disregarded, because every word carries with it a subliminal connotation that can decide a cultural battle in one direction or another. This is why you cannot see in any official document the word abortion, which has been replaced by one with a less conscientious position : Voluntary Interruption of Pregnancy . Subtle irony is that in our language and literature textbooks a whole section is dedicated to taboo words and their politically correct euphemisms, because, obviously, nobody wants to be fired, but it is not so bad to cut down the workforce, if not, we should ask the collateral damage if they do not prefer to be called civilian victims...
In addition to the development of technology, another common factor between the three novels and the present day is the attempt by the state to control the most innate qualities of human beings: sexuality and relationships, identity, Education and expression.
We have already talked a little bit about the nullification of freedom of expression. Today we see that many governments take advantage of intellectual uncertainty to appropriate reliable media and use them to give their version of reality. This is also the case in our three books: the Ministry of Truth in 1984 takes it upon itself to falsify history and statistics to its advantage. In Brave New World, hypnopedia is in charge of transmitting slogans and moral slogans, which govern the lives of individuals, and in Fahrenheit 451 wall television completely controls what the masses think.
Likewise, Education, which has always been considered the main weapon of control that a regime can use, is also dominated by the State in all three novels. "Children are conditioned from birth to accept without question the place assigned to them by society," explains the Director of the educational Conditioning Center in Brave New World. In 1984 O'Brian says "Orthodoxy means not thinking, not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness." while talking about the slogans used to educate children and "re-educate" adults. Fahrenheit 451 mentions the important role of Education (in this case Education in ignorance, i.e., teaching nothing but futilities) in eliminating any form of rebellion to the regime both in the present and in future generations, who are just now being educated "If you do not want a man to be unhappy politically, do not teach him two points of view to compare; teach him only one, or, better still, none." Doesn't this remind us of our current status where the government implements laws about what should be taught in schools? Doesn't it resemble today's educational system, where only data (mostly irrelevant) is taught to the child and more important subjects such as Philosophy, logic or theology, which would help him develop as a person, are ignored?
The third innate quality of the human being that we are going to talk about is sexuality, which appears as a fundamental part in all three books, and in each one in a different way, but always used to control the population. But why sexuality? We see that in all three novels sexuality is deprived of part of its meaning: whether it is procreative, that is, that there is the purpose of having children ("She was not interested in having children, nor in taking care of them. Children were a burden. It was more important that everything was perfect and that things were right in her immediate life." -explains Montag talking about his wife in Fahrenheit 451), or of the unitive, treating the sexual act as a mere duty towards the party to procure new followers, as in 1984: "The purpose of sex was not satisfaction, but reproduction, and the act of procreation, in the hope of having children who would be completely loyal to the Party" - says Winston, the protagonist. In Brave New World we see that sexual relations have been stripped of both meanings, being treated as a mere way of socializing (even including erotic games as a fundamental part of the children's Education ), and not even for the purpose of having children. Well, by attacking this fundamental part of the human being, which is sexuality, part of their identity is taken away and, just as if you take away part of the colors of a painting, it is no longer the same, by taking away part of man's identity, it can be replaced by frivolity (as in Brave New World, where relationships between people are artificial and self-interested), by party loyalty, by absolute selfishness or by whatever the State wishes. But how does one arrive at this status? First, by expressly prohibiting sexual relations(1984). Another option is to devalue them through propaganda(Brave New World), and thus generate a hedonistic culture in which others are treated for the mere sexual pleasure they can bring. So what do these situations remind us of today? We can see perfectly well how the media (movies and series) ooze sex, how the States make it difficult to have children, and yet how they favor abortion and contraceptives, and in conclusion, we can see how most of our society treats sex in a way similar to how the characters in Brave New World treated it.
Finally, we can see one last characteristic of the human being in which the State intrudes in all three novels, the most important part of man: his identity.
In 1984, each person is considered as part of the party, in Brave New World, no one has individual freedom, "everyone belongs to everyone" (says the motto of his country) and everyone is part of a caste, and in Fahrenheit 451, man's identity is numbed, and he is complacent and mediocre.we see, then, that in the novels an attempt is made to alienate man's identity in favor of a "superior Being", be it the caste or the party. In our current society this is manifested through the well-known "labels": if you are a Real Madrid fan, you cannot appreciate a Barça match; if you are right-wing, you cannot agreement on anything with any left-wing politician, and if you vote for Vox you cannot think that the economic measures of the PP are better. This loss of identity is, as we see, very infiltrated in our society, in which it is not encouraged to have one's own ideas but to share the ideas of a collective.
We can already see that these three dystopian novels have many elements in common with our current society: from technological advances and their implications in society or the modification of language, to the control of sexuality, the identity of man and the promotion of consumerist forms of entertainment. However, we must not forget what Arnau Berenguer says about dystopian novels: "the main protagonist always has a vital event (fortuitous or not) that causes him to discover the true functioning of the world where he lives and rebels against it". Well, everyone who has read this essay now has the duty to be the protagonist, and rebel against these shades of dictatorship that little by little are covering our society with their veil. It might seem that the style of the essay is pessimistic, but it is not, because we can only avoid ending up in a dystopian status if we are able to identify the characteristics of the current regimes that could lead us to it. Therefore, please allow me to slightly modify the phrase of the famous Santayana: "those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it", to finish this essay saying "those who cannot fight for a better future, are condemned not to enjoy it".
