Nothing, however, but nothing, could rival the sales boost provided by Donald Trump [in his first term]. This president embodies the insight that given a willingness to lie without compunction, norms of veracity can be abolished with extraordinary speed. It is one of the central demands of the Party, in Orwell’s book, that you “reject the evidence of your eyes and ears”. Trump put that maxim into effect on his very first day in office of his first term, with his insistence that people ignore the evidence of their senses about his Inauguration day crowds.
One particular area of Huxley’s prescience concerned the importance of data. Facebook’s mission statement “to give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together” sounds a lot like the new world’s motto “Community, Identity, Stability”. The public nature of relationship status, the idea that everything should be shared, and the idea that “everyone belongs to everyone else” are also common themes of the novel and the company — and above all, the idea, perfectly put by Zuckerberg and perfectly exemplifying Huxley’s main theme, that “privacy is an outdated norm”.
This theme, of an attack on privacy, is central to Orwell’s vision too. Thought crime is one of the most serious crimes in Nineteen Eighty-Four. It is at this point that we can start to see his and Huxley’s novels not as competing visions of the future but as complementary, overlapping warnings. Our world has sex on display everywhere, entertainment to take you out of your mind whenever you want, and drugs to make you stop feeling.
It also has an increasing number of strongmen leaders who rewrite history and ignore the truth, and a growing emphasis on crimes-by-thought. Social media tweets are the equivalent of Orwell’s official “Two Minutes Hate”.
The idea of permanent low-level war as a new norm matches America’s war on terror — the GWOT fits in nicely in Orwell’s world of acronyms and Newspeak.
A society permanently stratified into inherited or genetically determined social classes matches a modern map where the most unequal societies are the ones in which people are most likely to inherit their life chances.
Huxley and Orwell both wrote their books to warn against their dystopias from coming true –
- a globally dominant society
- ruled by a party and a strong leader,
- which uses every possible method of surveillance and data collection to monitor and control its citizens,
- which is also enjoying a record rise in prosperity and abundance,
- using unprecedented new techniques in science and genetics.
But they did come true, in large part by Aldous Huxley’s older brother Julian discarding the moral laws of religion and substituting Humanism.
Let’s objectively examine some of the statements made by the Humanist Society.
- Humanists believe that this is the only life of which we have certain knowledge.
- That’s a direct contradiction. You either believe or you know. Isn’t that why religion is accused of being a coping mechanism against the unknown?
- Humanists free to think for themselves, using reason and knowledge, are best able to solve world problems.
- Most people are struggling to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table and their family members alive and intact. Humanism is quite frankly an elitist pastime, not a democratic experience.
- Humanists don’t accept “prefabricated” answers to the problem of life.
- It should be self-evident that “prefabricated” responses to crises are based on laws of human nature at every social level from a couple with a safe word to a medical team working in close harmony to a city with law enforcement teams responding to a riot to health agents responding to a natural disaster to nations engaging in international relations with treaties backed up by military force. If you collapse one day do you want your bystanders to use a prefabricated response with CPR or a humanist to explore new options to resuscitate you?
- Humanists relish the adventure of being part of new discoveries.
- Seriously? Like all the new emerging diseases from humanity’s reckless disregard of ecological balance? The problem is that discovery more often than not entails an inability to manage the unknown, as when exploration of previously unexplored wildernesses created the opportunity for new viruses to jump into the human pool.
- Humanists take responsibility for their own lives. What about all the others in the world? A tiny fraction of the world’s population hogs the majority of the resources, heartless to the suffering they cause. How billionaires like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk avoid paying federal income tax while increasing their net worth by billions
It is time to replace rosy colored lenses with clear vision, to see the whole reality of the world we live in, not limited to the gracious homes, exotic getaways, classy restaurants, elegant fine arts venues and mirrored halls of the elite we watch on television and somehow justify identifying ourselves with because its our value system, even when it’s not our reality.
The most such killing was done by
- the Soviet Union (near 62,000,000 people),
- the communist government of China is second (near 35,000,000),
- followed by Nazi Germany (almost 21,000,000), and
- Nationalist China (some 10,000,000).
Lesser megamurderers include WWII Japan, Khmer Rouge Cambodia, WWI Turkey, communist Vietnam, post-WWII Poland, Pakistan, and communist Yugoslavia. The most intense democide was carried out by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, where they killed over 30 percent of their subjects in less than four years.
The best predictor of this killing is regime power. The more arbitrary power a regime has, the less democratic it is, the more likely it will kill its subjects or foreigners. The conclusion is that power kills, absolute power kills absolutely.
The Bolshevik Revolution helped define the world of the 20th century. It led to the advent of the first socialistic government in Russia, which soon expanded into the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). in Eastern Europe, then ideologically into China, North Korea and Southeast Asia.
At the same time, it enslaved its people behind an “iron curtain” of a tightly controlled political, economic and cultural system…
the October Revolution was the extraordinary success of Marxist philosophy, which was espoused by an aggressive minority. It was named after Karl Marx, a Prussian-born political theorist, sociologist, journalist and revolutionary socialist of the previous century.
Karl Marx saw the world as divided between the working class and property owners. Those of the working class labored for wages but never got ahead because they didn’t own what they created.
Marx saw the solution as communism…socialistic governments whose resources would be shared for the betterment of all.
Communism isn’t a government. It is a stateless system where everybody shares. Its motto, coined by Karl Marx, is “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” The concept is that everybody will give and take what they want, and it will somehow work out.
However, this wouldn’t happen on its own. A dictatorship-led military was required to transform the unwilling existing political system.
In communist ideology, the dictatorship of the proletariat was to be temporary with the state then withering away once the ideals of communism had taken over. But that never happened. Those who took power stayed in power.
And what did the Communists do once in power?
Atheism was suddenly imposed on millions of people engulfed in Communist revolutions. The total number of Christian victims under the Soviet regime has been estimated to range around 12 to 20 million. Mao Zedong was responsible for at least 40 million deaths and perhaps 80 million or more, occurring during deliberate eradication campaigns of landowners, potential counterrevolutionaries, and Christians. “As the Chinese Communist Party celebrates its centenary, Christianity—and other faiths—remain among the challengers it fears most.”
Belief in a hyper dimensional Supreme Being supersedes the authority of the four dimensional Supreme Dictator and – most importantly – the historically proven promise of resurrection – demonstrated to all humanity through nature’s regeneration – removes the fear of death, therefore the biggest weapon of control.
Available quantitative analyses of history’s wars show that religious conflicts are but a relatively modest percentage of the total.
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The difficulties encountered in
- learning the truth from one who already knows it, then,
- breaking free from an entrenched existing belief system
is entertainingly depicted by Neo’s/ New man’s faltering trust in Morpheus / God dreams in The Matrix, but is in reality accomplished by placing trust in God’s Word. From day one, God has given humans the same message of salvation from sin and death.“Behold, I am according to thy wish in God’s stead: I also am formed out of the clay…
I have heard the voice of thy words, saying, I am clean without transgression, I am innocent; neither is there iniquity in me…Behold in this thou art not just: I will answer thee, that God is greater than man.
Why dost thou strive against him?…If there be a messenger with him / man, an interpreter, one among a thousand, to shew unto man his [God’s] uprightness: then he is gracious unto him, and saith, Deliver him from going down to the pit [eternal death]: I have found a ransom…
He [the ransomer] shall pray unto God, and he will be favourable unto him: and he shall see his face with joy: for he will render unto man his [the ransomer’s] righteousness…if any say, I have sinned, and perverted that which was right, and it profited me not; he will deliver his soul from going into the pit…to be enlighted with the light of the living. ” (Job 19:6-30)
“To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth [of God’s promise of a ransomer]. Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice [accepts and responds to, like a Nanny to the cries of her charge – “I hear you, I hear you!” as she hustles to the toddler’s side].” (Jesus Christ quoted in John 18:37)
Kingdom Come 