Contemplating Black Friday

When I was in my last years of high school and the early years of college, there were a whole series of books that my instructors had us read that are still among my favorite literature. They had a common theme, dystopia, the opposite of utopia, Utopia being a perfect society. This theme hit a real chord with me, the displaced farm boy who railed and ranted about the loss of farm for the dystopia of the endless, plastic, mass produced tracts of houses. Probably the two most widely read of this series of novels was Brave New World by Aldous Huxley and George Orwell’s 1984. While the two stories paint vastly different portraits of engineered societies in some unclear future, they contain surprisingly similar perceptions on how society works. In the past several years, I have reread both of these and was amazed at how much of their wisdom and accurate phrophecy I had missed in the teenage reading of these books. I found them both to be profound and even kind of spooky in what these philosophers foresaw in our potential future.

Brave New World was written and published in the early 1930s. 1984 was first published in 1949. Both were predicting a culture which is yet, possibly, in our own future, some half century later. The clarity and insightful vision of both of these authors is a testament to their genius and uncompromising dissection of societal realities.

Today, the day after Thanksgiving, is what they now call “Black Friday.” This Friday after Thanksgiving has evolved into an over-publicized and insane display of unfettered, glutinous over-consumption that has become a virtue in the context of present day culture. Perhaps my austere, sometimes, almost Puritanical upbringing colors my perceptions but I’m supposing I’m not too far off the mark as I hear so many other people criticize the entire Black Friday concept as well. While I always think of Brave New World as being the “white” dystopia, and think of 1984 as the “black” dystopia, they both have a similar view as to the value of consumerism, or, as I prefer to call it, “societal consumption.” In both the black futuristic society and the white futuristic society, consumerism is not simply condoned but encouraged. In Brave New World, the children are taught limericks to help foster a subliminal predisposition to not repair their torn or worn out clothes, but to get brand new, recently manufactured clothes. Similarly, if a radio doesn’t work, don’t repair it, get a new one, if a clock doesn’t work, don’t repair it, get a new one. The organizers of the society start very early, teaching the people to consume, not conserve.

The same is true in 1984 but Orwell uses a more familiar and simple social mechanism to ensure consumption of society’s manufactured products, war. In 1984 there are only a handful of super-states on the planet and they are all in a constant, but limited, state of war against one another War is used to ensure that what is produced is consumed and not stock piled because of lack of demand. There is always war so there is always demand, but not so much war as to make the populace uncomfortable nor put a strain on the existing production limits. The amount of production is calculated and controlled as is the amount of war that is occurring.

Everything is calculated and controlled to keep the society in a non-progressive steady state. There is no development, no progress, no innovation. Everything is done to keep the society running smoothly. A balanced system has been devised that works pretty well and the people that run the well oiled machine want to keep it working pretty well, not better, not worse. Change isn’t tolerated. The balance has been found and it has to be maintained at all costs. Thus, we come to the common theme of all of these dytopias: The welfare of the society is above all else. The welfare of the individual member of the society is a very low priority. So long as the individual fits into his tiny, little roll that the society has built for him, the machine works. If the individual has some unique qualities and doesn’t exactly fit into his roll, well . . . 

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