Just Because the Government Allows us to Have Fun Doesn’t Mean We’re Free

The difference between Orwellian totalitarianism and Huxleyan totalitarianism is the permission for “fun.”

In Orwell’s world, there was no fun at all. It was pure drudgery. Sex was outlawed. No pleasure at all. No sports, no entertainment, no leisure time. And so in our minds we believe that if we are allowed to have fun—watch sports, watch porn, go to music festivals, have casual sex with many partners, enjoy movies and TV shows, lose ourselves in online content and video games—then we are not oppressed. Hedonism equals freedom!

But on the contrary: the Brave New World view of tyranny is not that pleasure is outlawed, but that it is leveraged against you and used to oppress and control you. It is a distraction. Entertainment and fun are the opiates of the masses, because without them, the masses will have nothing to do but sit and think about how awful things truly are.

Modern-day tyrants don’t want to deprive you of fun. They don’t want you to live a life of constant drudgery and seriousness.

They want you overwhelmed with superficial pleasures. Do drugs, get drunk all the time, obsess over sports and TV dramas, pour countless hours into video games, watch tons of online porn, buy Nice Things from Desirable Brands—anything but think about how corrupt the government is.

They want you distracted. They want you focused on trivial pursuits. They want your life to revolve around the next big music festival.

When you’re not wasting away in a cubicle pushing paper for some Megacorporation, they want you mentally sedated by entertainment.

People whose lives revolve around entertainment of course, in the back of their minds, ultimately feel unfulfilled. They wonder if there’s more to life than obsessing over sports, entertainment and nightlife. Materialism is unfulfilling. Most people are aware of this on some level.

They may not know what, exactly, is missing in their life, but they are at least partially aware that something isn’t right. Maybe it’s visceral, but once you get a bit older you begin to realize that you will never find fulfillment and meaning in life through entertainment and materialism. For me, this first started to dawn on me around my senior year of high school.

Yet even though most people are partially aware that there is more to life than entertainment and materialism, most people still nonetheless believe that they are free because they can enjoy superficial pleasures like entertainment, drinking, partying and materialism.

They don’t really care about the fact that they don’t have a say in government, and that voting does not have any material impact in the outcomes of the political process. They don’t care that they have no way of stopping the mass immigration that is destroying their country, or dissenting political voices are silenced online, or  that they can do nothing about the fact that male pedophile drag queens are reading stories to their young children.

They have Entertainment, so that must mean they’re free!

This is the fatal flaw of Orwell’s 1984: people who read it feel like as long as their lives don’t resemble Winston Smith’s, then tyranny has not yet arrived in the real world.

This is my great concern about why “The Revolution” may never materialize: people are content to allow the Uniparty oligarchy to do as it pleases so long as they have abundant options for entertainment and pleasure. They figure things can’t be that bad if they can still drink and party and binge TV shows.

But this view is mistaken.

The government allowing you to pursue a hedonistic lifestyle does not mean the government isn’t tyrannical and corrupt.

And so this is why, while of course it sucks that the left is ruining entertainment, it might actually backfire on them, because Entertainment is the only thing most people actually care about. Invade their country with foreigners? Meh.

Ruin Star Wars and Marvel with feminist propaganda? Now that’s going to get the people riled up.

The Uniparty had better tread carefully in its quest to spread its propaganda and values: people are starting to take notice that leftwing politics are becoming pervasive in entertainment, and they don’t like it.

Perhaps the masses will finally rise up once the Uniparty ruins entertainment by making every last movie, TV show and video game blatant Uniparty Propaganda.

Perhaps this is what it takes.