It's time for duelling George Orwell quotes.

[elfs]

It's duelling George Orwell quotes!

For the true socialist, in tying himself to the ideal of mechanical efficiency, ties himself to the ideal of softness. But softness is repulsive; all progress is seen as a frantic struggle toward an objective he hopes and prays will never be reached...

The apostle of 'progress' will sometimes declare that this is not the case, but you can usually drive him into a comer by pointing out the horrible lengths to which the process can be carried. There is really no reason why a human being should do more than eat, drink, sleep, breathe, and procreate; everything else could be done for him by machinery. Therefore the logical end of mechanical progress is to reduce the human being to something resembling a brain in a bottle. That is the goal towards which we are already moving, though, of course, we have no intention of getting there.

Orwell's whole point is that his real fear, at least in 1937 (when Road to Wigan Pier, from which the quote comes, was written-- 12 years prior to 1984), was that Socialism-- and Orwell was a Socialist-- would fail because the bright, shiny, sterile world that was the mode of expression of most Socialists, most notably H. G. Wells, was heading not to Animal Farm or 1984, but to a book that had already been written, and which Orwell fully admired: Brave New World, an ugly, unhappy world that repelled most English citizens. Socialism was doomed as long as the Wellsian view remained dominant.

Orwell believed that Socialism's ultimate goal, if the popular view of Socialism put forth by Wells and his cadre were considered seriously, was what we would now call the Singularity. Orwell wanted a Socialism that looked more like the pastoralism of Tolkien than the technocracy of Wells, but he wanted Socialism all the same.

Orwell is probably spinning in his grave to know that not only have some people embraced the whole 'brain in a bottle' idea, but they've gone far, far beyond it, and that they expect capitalism to deliver.

[Edit: Oh, grief. A Google for "The Road to Wigan Pier" and "the Singularity" brings up only one hit directly linking the two concepts, and it's a doozy: Charles Rubin's contribution to the execrable Human Dignity and Bioethics, from President Bush's Council of Bioethics. I'm mortified.]

Comments

[amythis.livejournal.com]

Funny that you posted this when I'm rereading Bellamy's Looking Backward. In the year 2000 in Boston (and world-wide), something sort of like socialism prevails, but all work is honorable and art/literature/music/etc. is at all time high, not at all "brain in a bottle." Yet there is something rather bland about this vision of "the future." Maybe I can't picture life without the messiness.

[mikstera.livejournal.com]

When I read any of Iain M. Banks' Culture books, or James P. Hogan's Voyage From Yesteryear, or the many wonderful Journal Entries, I see the potential for a civilization that has the chance to get beyond our primate impulses, our petty social hierarchies and the scheming some of us do to get just a little bit higher up on the pile.

Post-scarcity Economy? Adhocratic social structure? Yes, please... that's close enough to a practical utopia to suit me.