Forget 1984, We’re Facing a Brave New World
By Eta Onrish
TheOrganicPrepper.com
August 27, 2019
I see quite frequently, people warning that the US is becoming an ‘Orwellian nightmare,’ or that we’re living in a country that’s fast becoming a new 1984. I think they’re wrong. It’s worse.
We here in the US look at what China’s doing as if they’re on a reality TV show. Seeing what they’re doing with surveillance and their social credit system as if we’re watching some kind of dystopian entertainment series fashioned after the George Orwell book, 1984. Our burgeoning dystopia isn’t as overtly dystopian as Orwell warned against, and that’s the problem.
If you haven’t read 1984, you really should. I’m not really a fan of the storyline since it’s pretty crappy but the message still comes through, and it’ll give you an idea of why people reference it so much when talking about governments gone awry. Then, get yourself a copy of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and you’ll start to see the problem. The story’s a little better, but not much. The message is more apropos, however.
1984 was about a government that would ban information and rule with a leather boot on your throat, whereas Brave New World was about a system that would slowly seep into our life like a drug. In other words, Orwell warned us about a dystopia that we wouldn’t be able to stop, Huxley warned us about a dystopia that we would beg not to stop. The US isn’t becoming Orwellian, it’s becoming Huxleyan.
Social credit systems are coming.
In 2013, China started its social credit system, coordinated by the Central Comprehensively Deepening Reforms Commission. What they’re planning to do by next year is to have a comprehensive credit system under one roof that will cover pretty much everything in the lives of its citizens. It’s already well on its way.
In that system, your life is measured based on how well your actions align with the Party’s vision of what you should be doing, and how often. It’s a little like the credit score your mortgage broker pulls up when you buy a home but instead of deciding if you’re allowed to borrow money, this system increasingly decides if you can do anything.
Good social credit? You’ll be able to travel freely around the country and get into jobs that you want and live in better neighborhoods, and your kids will attend better schools. Bad social credit? You’ll be increasingly limited in where you can go and how comfortable your life is until you finally get yourself back in line with everyone else.
Sounds like a good plan, right?
The ‘biggest’ problem is that these freedoms that you enjoy will be infringed without due process. The social credit system is a very nebulous and fuzzy system that lacks any sort of transparency. Also, if you happen to speak out against the government or are somehow considered a threat, you could easily find yourself without a job or money and unable to travel – and not only could this be done without any proof that you’ve done anything illegal – this could happen completely behind the scenes. Because there is no legal proceeding, you have no recourse other than to fall back in line and hope they give you your life back.
So what? We don’t have social credit here in the US and we wouldn’t allow such a thing, right?
Wrong. China’s system of government allows them to pull from the 1984 rule book but our system is worse. In this case, it isn’t directly the government that’s the problem, it’s Big Tech.
The Brave New World of Big Tech
The Rest…HERE
