But we had forgotten that alongside Orwell’s dark vision, there was another—slightly older, slightly less well known, equally chilling: Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley’s vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think. What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Breve New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.” In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.

— Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death, Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business

As I witness the world today, it seems the Brave New World & 1984 are at play together.

— rawjeev

My self is a thing I must now compose, as one composes a speech. What I must present is a made thing, not something born.

— Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

Kurt Vonnegut wrote: “When I was 15, I spent a month working on an archeological dig. I was talking to one of the archeologists one day during our lunch break and he asked those kinds of “getting to know you” questions you ask young people: Do you play sports? What’s your favorite subject? And I told him, no I don’t play any sports. I do theatre, I’m in choir, I play the violin and piano, I used to take art classes.

And he went WOW. That’s amazing! And I said, “Oh no, but I’m not any good at ANY of them.”

And he said something then that I will never forget and which absolutely blew my mind because no one had ever said anything like it to me before: “I don’t think being good at things is the point of doing them. I think you’ve got all these wonderful experiences with different skills, and that all teaches you things and makes you an interesting person, no matter how well you do them.”

And that honestly changed my life. Because I went from a failure, someone who hadn’t been talented enough at anything to excel, to someone who did things because I enjoyed them. I had been raised in such an achievement-oriented environment, so inundated with the myth of Talent, that I thought it was only worth doing things if you could “Win” at them.”

— IAM, but…

In measurable terms my actions hardly matter. But feeling tiny does not have to end at why bother?

— Wendy Jehanara Tremayne. “The Good Life Lab”

It is no sign of wellness to be well adjusted to a sick society.

— Krishnamurti

Your task is not to seek love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.

— Rumi

Love is the merchandise which all the world demands; if you store it in your heart, every soul will become your customer.

— Hazrat Inayat Khan

We have so largely lost track of the sacred that we are even becoming incapable of committing sacrilege.

— Gregory Bateson (Angels Fear)

Culture preserves the map and the record of past journeys so that no generation will permanently destroy the route.
The more local and settled the culture, the better it stays put, the less the damage. It is the foreigner whose road of excess leads to a desert.

— Wendell Berry

To teach how to live without certainty, and yet without being paralyzed by hesitation, is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy, in our age, can still do for those who study it.

— Bertrand Russell

Travel isn’t always pretty. It isn’t always comfortable. Sometimes it hurts, it even breaks your heart. But that’s okay. The journey changes you; it should change you. It leaves marks on your memory, on your consciousness, on your heart, and on your body. You take something with you. Hopefully you leave something good behind.
— Anthony Bourdain