Links for 1984 and Brave New World
(Note: While searching the net for info on the "The Treason Felony Act of 1848" for footnotes for the "Along the Road to a New Europe"essay, I came across links for the full texts legally online of "1984" by George Orwell and "Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley, and decided to put them here as well. I have not had time to reread either in their entirety, and have not read them since high school. With "1984" I remember the plot, and "Brave New World" sounded interesting and similar to "1984" by the synopsis of it. I have just reread Chapters1 and 2 of "1984" though, and found it chilling to be reading it in a place where much of what it talks about was very real, and its text's existence itself would have been in other times as illegal and as dangerous to possess as Winston's diary. It is also chilling to be reading it in a time when its existence seems very likely to be illegal in many other places in the future, or if not outright illegal, at least criminally suspect. In fact, leaving it out there to see who reads it might be considered a good way to see who might be considered hostile to propaganda or prone to independent thinking. So much of what it talks about is becoming commonplace, and worse, people just accept it. Increasing media control, people forgetting or not caring what they were against or for only a year or two ago, revisions of history and rehabilitations of leaders overthrown or tarishing recent heroes under new leaderships, people attempting to write others out of history altogether and although not as organized as in the book, no less real. Redefining freedom and liberty to mean less or something else entirely, political slogans that could easily double for doublespeak, political parties devovling into cults of personality with less regard for specific or even definable policies, and people supporting leaders they don't agree with on just about anything simply because of the images they project, these are just a few of what is disturbing not just about the book, but how real it has become all around us, for those who bother to try to step back from or turn off the propaganda machines set on overload, and try to remember and hold on to a past where this was not the case, though that past is becoming increasingly irrelevant as it is twisted around every retelling. With better archieving, you would think that is no longer the case, but people only care about what they are told today, and less about what was before. You need not brainwash them any longer, only deluge them with useless and pointless information, require them to constantly have to relearn to do the same tasks differently just to keep them busy, and leave them little time to get to think, not that people are ever predisposed to want to do that in the first place anymore. Like nearly everyone in the book, we have been conditioned not to, for it only gets in the way, and leads only to less happiness because we too have begun to accept that change for the better about this is impossible, or that it will ever be any other way, and soon even forget or care it ever was any other way.)
 

     http://www.online-literature.com/orwell/1984/

     http://www.online-literature.com/aldous_huxley/brave_new_world/