The ‘Ultimate Revolution’ is Here, Now!
This is where we are, in our onetime 'Free West': trapped between the binge and the boot, the orgy and Room 101, the ultimate instrument of the 'Ultimate Revolution.’
An Orwellian Boot in a Huxleyan Sock
In this essay, just published in the online American magazine, Humanum Review (the Quarterly Review of the John Paul II Institute), I summarise some of the ideas in my recently published book, The Abolition of Reality: A First Draft of the End of History. For more details on where to buy this book, go to the bottom of the page.
‘If Orwell, instead of choosing 1984 as the dateline of his book, had opted instead for, say, 2054, would the world have remained so inert in the face of totalitarianism’s early-stage manifestation in 2020?’
The prevailing idea that the emerging tyrannies targeting the former Free West owe more to the prophecies of Arduous Huxley than those of George Orwell is bogus. All tyranny rests on violence, or its threat, which amounts to the same thing. No matter how lulled or dulled a population, it remains a threat to the abusers of power. for both numerical and metaphysical reasons, and this threat is always counterposed with the threat of State reprisal, enforcement and coercion. But, each human being, each group of humans, including a nation, has a tipping point beyond which he, she or it will refuse to be pushed, and for this reason the apparent unassailability of authoritarianism is always an illusion. Complacency is the sleeping enemy of the tyrant in power; time and monotony the allies of the people.
For these reasons, it is important to understand our situation to the fullest possible degree. Too many shorthands, cast in concrete by repetition, tend to lead the people astray, to blind them to their strengths, to mislead them concerning the weaknesses of the usurpers and evildoers. It is fallacious to believe that human beings can be bought off and pacified for ever by distractions, sensations, baubles and cheap thrills. For this reason, the Huxleyan hypothesis is, of its essence, a misreading of human nature, for it assumes that human beings can be rendered permanently satisfied with material distractions, sensations, pacifiers, and reliefs, whereas even the most rudimentary psychological or anthropological framework betrays a radically different picture. Man, as Václav Havel prognosticated, requires a “something” that the material world cannot supply. To deprive human beings of spiritual nourishment is violence, just as to deprive them of love, affection, company, friendship, culture or mental sustenance amounts to torture.’ And, like all forms of torture, there is a point beyond which it cannot be endured.
Hence, it is clear, the Orwellian hypothesis offers the most accurate map of the depths and undertows of our emerging situation. Tyrants can always be relied upon to go too far, and it is therefore ineluctable that the limits of human tolerance of despotism will be reached and breached, and that the once unthinkable will become inevitable. These facts and realities are written into the present predicament of the West’s population, which endures attack from within and without.
To read the Humanum Review article, click here or lift and paste the link just below
https://humanumreview.com/articles/huxley-v-orwell-the-orwellian-fist-in-the-huxlean-glove
This essay is not itself included in my recently published book, The Abolition of Reality, and yet it amounts to an encapsulation of a number of the book’s key themes. If you liked the article and would like to delve deeper, you can purchase the book using one of the links below:
America/World — click here or use link underneath
https://www.amazon.com/Abolition-Reality-First-Draft-History/dp/1959666541/ref=sr_1_1
UK/Europe — click here or use link underneath
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Abolition-Reality-First-Draft-History/dp/1959666541/ref=sr_1_1
Ireland — click here or use link underneath
https://www.amazon.ie/Abolition-Reality-First-Draft-History/dp/1959666541/ref=sr_1_1
Humanum Review is about humanity, what makes us human, what keeps us human, and what does not. We are driven by the central questions of human existence: nature, freedom, sexual difference and the fundamental figures to which it gives rise, man, woman, and child. Humanum probes these questions in the context of marriage, family, education, work, medicine and bioethics, science and technology, political and ecclesial life. It sifts through the many competing ideas of our age so that we may “hold fast to what is good” and let go of what is not. Humanum is published as a free service by the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family in Washington, D.C.
