Dystopia: “a society characterized by human misery, as squalor, oppression, disease, and overcrowding.”<\/p>\n
I still lean towards Bizzaro World<\/a>\u00a0myself, but I HAVE spent \u00a0several days re-reading\/skimming both books after the revelation I stumbled across.<\/a><\/p>\n “In 1949, George Orwell<\/a> received a curious letter from his former high school French teacher.<\/em><\/p>\n Orwell had just published his groundbreaking book Nineteen Eighty-Four, which received glowing reviews from just about every corner of the English-speaking world. His French teacher, as it happens, was none other than Aldous Huxley <\/a>who taught at Eton<\/a> for a spell before writing\u00a0Brave New World<\/a> (1931), the other great 20th century dystopian novel.”<\/em><\/p>\n The last paragraph opens with chilling prescience:<\/p>\n “Within the next generation I believe that the world\u2019s rulers will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging and kicking them into obedience.”<\/em><\/p>\n I don’t really care about being thought as an odd sort of Luddite, but if you have spent any time around someone looking at their phone AND offering little, if any, connection to things going on around them perhaps you should wonder too. Toss in the notion of Texting While Driving, or this reaction to tech deprivation<\/a> as discipline,\u00a0 and maybe the modern day Luddite has a point.<\/p>\n Maybe, just maybe, Orwell and Huxley both missed, and yet sort of emphasized \u00a0a simple thing. Nobody was actually paying attention.<\/strong><\/p>\n Why bother posting about things esoteric and a bit painful to deal with?\u00a0 Most here have, at least, committed to watching the back of\u00a0 their brethren. We’ve also committed by oath to defend this country. Still, when ennui becomes rampant what can we do? Yelling FIRE<\/strong> in crowded theater is only a crime IF<\/strong> there is no actual fire –\u00a0 but what if no one is paying attention?<\/p>\n Oh well… Sitting around watching the world crumble is The Geezer Prerogative, ain’t it?<\/p>\n One thing that cheers me up is a song from some fellow hillbillies. YMMV:<\/p>\n