7
GENIUSES LOOK INTO THE FUTURE
If Wells had been predicting the future American university campus instead of the whole future, he would have been a darned good prognosticator.
People in the year 2540 stay youthful until age 60. Hah! We’ve got octogenarians doing Iron Man triathlons. Education is conducted by a “hypnopaedic” process. Hasn’t school always put kids to sleep? High art, deep culture, and serious literature no longer exist. Ho-hum. Entertainment deals only with shallow emotions. Same old, same old. People take a drug to make them happy. Big whoop. In remote geographic areas, “savages” are left to their own devices. Presumably they will vote for the 26th century Trump in the next World Government presidential election. And George Orwell’s 1984 is even more antiquated and moss-grown. First, Orwell missed the mark by three decades plus. The real 1984 was a great year. Inflation had been curbed. Unemployment was falling. GDP growth was 7.3% (almost three times its present rate). Apple introduced its Macintosh personal computer. McDonald’s sold its 50 billionth hamburger. And – “Where’s the beef?” – Ronald Reagan was re-elected, carrying 49 states. In 1984 the U.S., thanks to a U.S.S.R. boycott, won 174 medals at the Summer Olympics. My Detroit Tigers beat the left- coast loseroid San Diego Padres 4-1 in the World Series. Hulk Hogan defeated Iron Sheik to become WWF champion. In related news, Iran and Iraq were at war with each other instead of with everybody else in the Middle East. TV’s Bloopers &
That brings us to futurism’s two most famous 20th century works of genius – Brave New World by ALDOUS HUXLEY (1894-1963) and 1984 by GEORGE ORWELL (1903-1950) . Both books are still taught on those American university campuses, with great emphasis on their “relevance.” Huxley wrote Brave NewWorld in 1931. The action takes place in the 26th century. There’s a world government again (though at least Huxley has the sense to know this is not a good thing). Re-reading the book, it seems old-fashioned... more a prediction of the near fertilization and fetal genetic manipulation. But rather than seeing these as progress, making for happy new parents and children free of birth defects, they scare Huxley. Children in Brave NewWorld are bred and conditioned to occupy one of five “castes” – Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, and Epsilon. Or as today’s costal elites would call them, A-list celebrities, New York Times op-ed page columnists, 2020 Democratic presidential contenders, people found on Angie’s List to fix the toilet, and members of the NRA. present than of the distant future. Two major innovations are artificial
70 | September 2017
Made with FlippingBook flipbook maker