Apprentice: Walking the Way of Christ

by Steve Chalke

Orwell feared we would be overcome by externally imposed oppression (in the form of ‘Big Brother,’ the all-seeing eye that watches everybody’s every move), but Huxley saw that people would come to choose their own self-imposed oppression through their addiction to technologies that destroy their ability to think. Orwell feared that the authorities would ban books, but Huxley worried that there would be no reason to ban books – no one would want to read them. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information, but Huxley worried about those who would provide us with so much information that we would be reduced to passivity. Orwell believed that truth would be concealed from us, but Huxley feared that truth would be lost in our self-made sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared that we would become a captive culture, but Huxley feared that we would become a trivial culture. Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us, but Huxley saw that what we love will ruin us; Western societies would dance themselves into oblivion, suffocated in their own trivia. In Orwell’s writing people are controlled by having pain inflicted on them. In Huxley’s picture of the future, they are controlled by self-induced pleasure.