Quote from: NadiaHel on August 05, 2018, 03:42:07 PM

Quote from: byteball on August 04, 2018, 06:10:08 PM

...
In your paragraph how both visions came equally true I saw young H.G.Wells' (who was a friend of them both) prediction about Morlocks and Eloi. Indeed, the distant descendants of Orwell became Morlocks in Wells' vision, and those of Huxley generated Time Traveller's beloved Weena.

It is kind of true. H.G. Wells vision was a big influence on Orwell, however, I think that hey didn`t share the first`s scientific point of view. While Wells was talking about how science will change the future, Orwell was more related to sociology. In fact, there is an essay, written by George Orwell (published in 1941) called: "Wells, Hitler and the World State". In there, he pointed out his own vision about Well`s work in lines like this one:

Quote

He was, and still is, quite incapable of understanding that nationalism, religious bigotry and feudal loyalty are far more powerful forces than what he himself would describe as sanity. Creatures out of the Dark Ages have come marching into the present, and if they are ghosts they are at any rate ghosts which need a strong magic to lay them.

You can read the complete essay in here: http://orwell.ru/library/reviews/wells/english/e_whws
...

In the closing paragraphs of Justine, Marquis de Sade makes the following remark: whatever Man does, he cannot harm Nature.
Thus, it doesn't really matter what Man does.
Marquis understands this narrowly: whatever atrocities humans commit against themselves or other beings, there will still be forests, beasts and birds singing (he literally mentions that).
But his scientific knowledge represents the bottom, the narrowest possible worldview in human history: gone is the magic, spirituality, everything religious, and the new-born science in times near the Great French Revolution is in its infancy.
This is materialist, reductionist science that is very far from what we have today: science and philosophy approaching the enigma of Consciousness and the innermost secrets of the Universe.
In that early scientific materialist philosophy (also called "vulgar materialism") humans are simple beasts with some tools, but their tools have negligible influence on the world around them.
What we know now is: we can start thermonuclear reaction in the atmosphere, after which only procaryots have a chance to survive; we may even be able to turn Earth into a Black Hole. There will still be exoplanets and other Suns, with their forests and birds, but they will not be our forests and birds.

I am not sure if he really means that, or if any French revolutionary does the same: maybe it's some kind of pretence, to pursue their political goals. Maybe they know in the depth of their souls that it's dangerous to tamper with the inherent Chaos of things.

Huxley, Wells and Orwell are closer to us on spiritual level: they are still materialists and followers of "scientism" to some degree, but not vulgar.
Huxley turned on himself with mescal and Wells had unique "sense of Wonder" that he conveyed to a perceptive reader in his fantasy stories and Orwell was a great novelist like Leo Tolstoy, shrewd social observer and master of words. We have much to learn from them.