From the Foreword to Amusing Ourselves to Death:
"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."
In the early 20th century, Huxley called them weird names, because he knew what was coming, but he didn't know the specific names of what we now know of as Hollywood programming, social media driven-smart phone addictions and the society-wide acceptance of the ubiquity of teh Pr0n.
The woke remnants of our rapidly declining Western civilization recognize that one of the fundamental aspects of this cultural decay are due to the fact that all of our First World nations are for the most part now a Post-Christian society. The degeneracy of sexual morality, the corruption of the family and the subversion of our Government, Churches and other traditional institutions are all the results of the long, slow march through our institutions that effected the gradual embrace by society of Mammon worship and the primacy of passively consumed entertainment as our favored form of recreation in our lives.
Not only are we a Post-Christian society, we are also a post-Literate society.
Literacy is the key to learning from the mistakes of others - aka history. But thanks to the deliberate dumbing down of we the sheeple, and the tell-a-vision and social media driven interwebz delivered by addictive smartphone technology, the average citizen of our Brave New World Order has a default mindset of TL;DR.
This crippling condition is combined with another pervasive and insidious malady that is spreading like a plague: MYP>U - My Phone is more interesting than you.
I'm so thoroughly sick of it all. It's one of the main reasons why I haven't blogged here in so long. After "taking the red pill" for so many years, I came to the point of realization that life is too short, and I've spent far too much time on teh Interwebz. Reading, writing, blogging, commenting, viewing....all that virtual activity in the virtual world, accomplishing naught.
Yeah, I learned a lot. I discovered and developed a critical skill of discernment in the seeking of Truth. But I also wasted a lot more time going over the same old ground, over and over again, like a compulsive gambler pulling the slot machine lever over and over again. So I cut myself off from a huge part of my online "life" and saw a rise in productivity, advancement and achievements in the real world.
But I still feel the need to vent every now and then about the unraveling dystopia. I guess that comes with age.... GET OFF MY LAWN syndrome.
If you're reading this, my first post of 2019, I urge you to take the following quotation to heart:
"Instead of making virtual reality, we should be making virtue a reality." -- Father Maximos, speech at the 1st International Conference on Digital Media and Orthodox Pastoral Care, 2015
