Orwell, by his own statements on the matter, was writing about communism and some of his own experiences with British publishing, namely in attempting to publish Animal Farm.
Huxley, it seems to me, is taking issue with a classist society that uses stilted education and propaganda to put people in a position in which they are obligated to be happy with their position and, simultaneously, offers distractions to keep people from thinking hard about their lot in life.
It's easy to see them as complaining that these are new elements of society that could take us over if we don't hold to deeper values. (You can kind of see that in the sexual politics of this world, a sex-mandating purity culture seen as the alternative to a sex-restricting purity culture.)
When I say that they're inescapable parts of the human societal condition, they're a part of human societies being human societies. Romans had bread and circuses and propaganda about the Roman superiority to the barbarians.
What Orwell and Huxley are pointing out as new threats are human failings that we can see them falling into, not the least of which in the sexual politics they present.
As to who was at war with the Simple Lifers... yeah, that lecture gets really confusing when it's cut together with everything else happening. But, at a perfunctory reread and a very quick guess, it looks like early Fordian society was at war against the Simple Lifers who were refusing to take part in the whole "Community Identity Stability" scheme.
I will present thoughts based, in large part, on someone else's fan theory when it comes to the Savage Reservations and why there's a group that's excluded from the conditioning.
Re: Life of Pi?
Huxley, it seems to me, is taking issue with a classist society that uses stilted education and propaganda to put people in a position in which they are obligated to be happy with their position and, simultaneously, offers distractions to keep people from thinking hard about their lot in life.
It's easy to see them as complaining that these are new elements of society that could take us over if we don't hold to deeper values. (You can kind of see that in the sexual politics of this world, a sex-mandating purity culture seen as the alternative to a sex-restricting purity culture.)
When I say that they're inescapable parts of the human societal condition, they're a part of human societies being human societies. Romans had bread and circuses and propaganda about the Roman superiority to the barbarians.
What Orwell and Huxley are pointing out as new threats are human failings that we can see them falling into, not the least of which in the sexual politics they present.
As to who was at war with the Simple Lifers... yeah, that lecture gets really confusing when it's cut together with everything else happening. But, at a perfunctory reread and a very quick guess, it looks like early Fordian society was at war against the Simple Lifers who were refusing to take part in the whole "Community Identity Stability" scheme.
I will present thoughts based, in large part, on someone else's fan theory when it comes to the Savage Reservations and why there's a group that's excluded from the conditioning.