Edit: Sigh… I got the dystopia wrong. Apparently everyone is apathetic in 1984 of their own free will and just drink, smoke and do morphine.

Brave New World is apathy through euphoria through soma.
Which yeah, drugged euphoria is not happiness.

    • defunct_punk@lemmy.worldEnglish
      9·
      3 days ago

      Thought this too. Soma. No idea why ive remembered that so long, I never even finished BNW and put it down almost a decade ago

    • Krauerking@lemy.lolOP
      5·
      3 days ago

      Yeah sorry, the drug in 1984 is apparently just morphine and drinking yourself to death.

      Wild how they both are so dystopian but 1984 is just straight up political fiction with like no SciFi and my brain was trying to add more

    • Codilingus@sh.itjust.works
      2·
      3 days ago

      I’m about to finish reading 1984 for the first time.

      Spoiler:

      !Maybe they mean the drugs Winston is given after he is taken by the thought police?!<

      • Krauerking@lemy.lolOP
        2·
        3 days ago

        Yeah, i rembered him going to the prole neighborhood and for some reason always put that into brave new world context from the apathy and squalor.

        Plus definitely not a lack of drugs in 1984 just far more mundane.

    • Krauerking@lemy.lolOP
      2·
      2 days ago

      Yes, this has been covered. I made a mistake and rather than edit it I just left it up with my shame. And edited the body text.

      Still stand by there is nothing science fiction in 1984 anymore and also that euphoria pills are not happiness. Just 2 separate thoughts my brain mashed together poorly.

    • kamenlady@lemmy.world
      10·
      3 days ago

      I love drugs, but, like another commenter pointed out, feeling happy is different than being happy.

      I was happy once, some long time ago - nowadays i sometimes make myself feel happy.

      I’d love to be happy again, in exchange for never having access to drugs again.

    • IronBird@lemmy.world
      7·
      3 days ago

      lol, and a dozen others to.

      we have like 2 entire classes of drug specifically for this purpose…

    • Krauerking@lemy.lolOP
      1·
      3 days ago

      Everyone talks to their phones instead of typing now, and like microphones and cameras are everywhere.
      And we have let all infrastructure start to fail as long as it isnt a shiny thing rich people interact with.

      I dunno man its getting pretty 1984.

      • mycodesucks@lemmy.world
        2·
        3 days ago

        1984 forced all of that.

        Brave New World, people LOVE it and can’t imagine any other way to live.

        Brave New World is the nightmare dystopia we CHOOSE, not the one that gets forced on us.

        • Krauerking@lemy.lolOP
          1·
          3 days ago

          Oh for sure people view the idea of being reduced to an object of the state apparently shockingly happily enough.

          But we have a department of war that our dear leader of just got a peace medal and awards. Like the doublespeak is here. And we dont spit people out of bottles already premade for their role.
          Department of education is run by an entertainer who also cuts budget for schools.

          Its definitely a mix of them.
          I think the world is 1984, but the vibes are desperate for the fake utopia of Brave New World.

  • DomeGuy@lemmy.world
    3·
    3 days ago

    FWIW, the biggest sci-fi in 1984 wasn’t big brother or the proto-internet. It was a predictive model of human behavior that could perfectly predict individual behavior.

    That, and a competent tyrannical regime.

    (My personal headcannon is that “Airstrip one” or whatever they called Britain is the North Korea of its world, and everyone else just ignores them.)

  • FreshParsnip@lemmy.ca
    2·
    3 days ago

    There are drugs that can make you happy or emotionally numb. They tend to have different effects for different people, but I can definitely imagine science plausibly making a drug that makes everybody happy or emotionally numb. For me, marijuanna makes me emotionally numb and laugh at inappropriate times.

    • Krauerking@lemy.lolOP
      1·
      3 days ago

      Yeah I thought I remembered a drug in 1984 but it is just gin and cigarettes and everyone’s brain making them apathetic.

      So even closer to reality except for gen z.

  • FreshParsnip@lemmy.ca
    1·
    3 days ago

    While we’re discussing dystopian sci-fi happy pills, I just want to mention The Giver. In that book, people are given drugs after they hit puberty, to suppress sexual desire and other emotions