I want to read something for you before we jump into today's program.

We were keeping our eye on 1984.

When the year came and the prophecy didn't, thoughtful Americans sang softly in praise of

themselves.

The roots of liberal democracy had held. Wherever else the terror had happened,

we at least had not been visited by Orwellian nightmares. 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 prophecy

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, or well feared we would become a captive culture.

Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture.

As Huxley remarked in brave 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.

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