Thread by @TomLondon6

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. People will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think
-Neil Postman

Orwell feared those who would ban books
Huxley feared that there would be no reason to ban books, for there would be no one who wanted to read one
- Neil Postman

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
- Neil Postman

Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us
Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance
- Neil Postman

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."
- Neil Postman

In 1984, Orwell wrote, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Huxley's Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we fear will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we desire will ruin us.
- Neil Postman

When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, then a nation finds itself at risk; culture-death is a clear possibility
- Neil Postman

“People will come to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think”
― Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business

“What the advertiser needs to know is not what is right about the product but what is wrong about the buyer.”
― Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business

What Huxley teaches is that in age of advanced technology, spiritual devastation is more likely to come from an enemy with a smiling face than from one whose countenance exudes suspicion and hate. Big Brother does not watch us, by his choice. We watch him, by ours
- Neil Postman

“It is not necessary to conceal anything from a public insensible to contradiction and narcotized by technological diversions.”
― Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business

"In saying that the television news show entertains but does not inform, I am saying something far more serious than that we are being deprived of authentic information. I am saying we are losing our sense of what it means to be well informed.”
― Neil Postman

“If politics is like show business, then the idea is not to pursue excellence, clarity or honesty but to appear as if you are, which is another matter altogether.”
― Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business

“We are all, as Huxley says someplace, Great Abbreviators, meaning that none of us has the wit to know the whole truth, the time to tell it if we believed we did, or an audience so gullible as to accept it.”
― Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death

“For no medium is excessively dangerous if its users understand what its dangers are... This is an instance in which the asking of the questions is sufficient. To ask is to break the spell.”
― Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death

YES. WE NEED TO BE AWARE & ASK QUESTIONS