Compliance can't make a functional society: What Orwell And Huxley Got Wrong And Kafka Got Right
POSTED BY: SIGNYM
UPDATED: Monday, September 29, 2025 15:52
VIEWED: 1350
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Interesting article.
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What Kafka got right is how societies can become busily dysfunctional.
For self-evident reasons, the fictional visions of Orwell and Huxley resonate as maps to the present distemper. Orwell's account of full-spectrum technological totalitarianism maps Big Tech's mastery of Surveillance Capitalism and governments' full-spectrum surveillance powering the fine-grained coercion of social credit scores and related tools.
Huxley's vision of a doped-up, med-dependent populace that loves its servitude also maps the present. Indeed, not only do we love our servitude, which manifests in our endless addictions and dependencies on everything from debt to junk food to painkillers, our servitude has been so normalized that we don't even recognize the servitude that underpins "normal life."
What Orwell and Huxley got wrong is the limits of these nightmarishly effective systems of control. Full-spectrum technological totalitarianism can certainly enforce compliance with the desired behaviors and expressions of consent, but it can't force individuals to have ambition or creativity, to marry for love and children, or possess values or beliefs beyond the superficial lip-syncing of compliance.
The coercive structures of the Surveillance State and Surveillance Capitalism are intrinsically inauthentic, ersatz, hollow, demanding an entirely artificial and easily faked appearance of consent that mimics devotion to the principles and narratives being shoved down the throats of the populace.
These structures enforce what isn't allowed and superficial compliance, but they can't force what actually makes a society functional: the convictions, hopes and values that inspire individuals to marry, raise a family and pursue self-expression via achievement. What actually happens in societies controlled by the Surveillance State and Surveillance Capitalism is decay and decline, as young people abandon ambition, marriage and raising children by lying flat and letting it rot, expressions of young people in China that speak to youth everywhere where compliance is more important than individual liberty.
If you doubt these dynamics, please observe the dismay of authorities as their national marriage and birth rates collapse. All sorts of explanations for this collapse are offered, except the ones that count: societies that require an appearance of consent are inauthentic, hollow shells.
The same can be said of doped-up, med-dependent, entertainment-addicted societies that love their servitude. Individuals give up ambition, marriage and raising children due to soaring costs, out-of-reach financial security, and the debilitating consequences of all the Soma, meds, addictions, distractions and derangements that are accepted as "normal."
What Kafka got right is everyone's super-busy but nothing gets done. In Kafka's novel The Castle, the bureaucracy toiling unseen in the Castle is bustling 24/7, but nothing actually gets done in the impoverished village below. Attempts to reach the bureaucracy by phone are futile, as calls are only picked up randomly or as pranks.
("You've reached the DMV, the IRS, Xfinity, Engulf and Devour Healthcare, etc. Your call is very important to us...")
In Kafka's fictional world, the authority to actually get anything done is always out of reach. In The Castle, the leader who supposedly has the power to approve projects sits isolated in his office, unreachable and unapproachable, though he can be seen reading a newspaper through a peephole. Whether he actually possesses the power to approve anything is an open question with no answer.
Kafka's world is one of cowed peasants bickering among themselves, nurturing grudges and speculating fruitlessly about the cloaked conspiracies of the authorities in the Castle. The sexual predations of the authorities and the dismal fates of they used and abandoned are described in whispers, and what work that is available is menial and poorly paid.
What KaNOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
I agree, but I'm not sure that incentive can be entirely summed up as "freedom".
Most people can be trained to "not do" through punishment. Punish a behavior consistently enough, long enough (economically, socially, thru the judicial system) and eventually most people will stop doing whatever it is that you want them to stop doing, whether that is questioning the narrative or agitating for more agency.
People will "do" what is rewarded. Rewards can be ephemeral (such as pleasure, popularity etc) or durable.
In rural areas, and areas where there is no old age security, having children is necessary as farm labor and for old age security. In areas where work is necessary for survival, people work. In areas where ingenuity increases living standards, people will be inventive. In areas where work isn't necessary, or even available, people will turn to other things, and in areas where people have a lot of time on their hands they will be kept passive thru bread (government dole), circuses (the screen) and drugs, and told endlessly that they "can be anything they want to be" ... except being a worker, homeowner, and parent (which are strongly disincentivized).
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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger
Why SECOND'S posts are brainless: "I clocked how much time: no more than 10 minutes per day. With cut-and-paste (Ctrl C and Ctrl V) and AI, none of this takes much time."
Or, any verification or thought.
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I think the point the author is missing is that compliance can very well indeed make a functional society, because the meaning of "functional" is just as much subjective as it is objective.
The high bar he has set for calling society functional is so far removed from what is actually necessary of us all to go right on functioning, regardless of how dysfunctionally Kafkaesque we go about doing it.
Join the herd. Follow the hype. Spend what little free time you have after spending most of the waking hours in the prime years of your life making somebody else money watching other people play characters that get to do all of the things that you're never going to do in your life. But don't think about it. Don't think about anything.
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Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.
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PEOPLE can continue to function at a very low level, but can a SOCIETY continue to function in the long run, i.e. over several generations?
I guess answering that question requires that the word "society" be defined.
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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger
Why SECOND'S posts are brainless: "I clocked how much time: no more than 10 minutes per day. With cut-and-paste (Ctrl C and Ctrl V) and AI, none of this takes much time."
Or, any verification or thought.
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Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
PEOPLE can continue to function at a very low level, but can a SOCIETY continue to function in the long run, i.e. over several generations?
Sure. I believe it can. In many ways I believe we've seen the degradation taking place over generations already. What has allowed an "equilibrium" of sorts while this has taken place is the proliferation of technology and manufacturing to make up for it. The average life is infinitely "easier" than it was 100 years ago. And now that we've automated most processes that required skilled people who took a lifetime to learn those skills and gotten to the point where most jobs that still need doing are something almost any idiot could manage (and could and likely will be replaced by automation in the future), we've got the technology on hand to fill up most of that down time so people don't have to dwell so much on the pointless existence they have ahead of them.
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I guess answering that question requires that the word "society" be defined.
And that's the thing right there...
I don't think we have a very good "society" ahead of us. It certainly will come nothing close to what anyone of any mindset would call idyllic.
But it will continue to function. All it needs is an extremely basic level of knowledge or input or desire on almost everyone's part to do that without completely falling apart. I'd argue that even if we manage to turn the next couple of generations into fully formed adults that walk around with the mind of 5 year old children we could still "function".
The people on top care very little about how the rest of us live our lives as long as it isn't negatively impacting their own. And it turns out that it can get pretty lousy for everyone else before it ever risks adverse effects on their own lives.
That is, unless, there actually are real truths to the manmade climate changes. And if that's the case, I hate to break it to any of the idealists out there, but we're going right back to the subject of the overpopulation problem. Not only aren't at least half of the human beings on this planet completely redundant, but if they're actually contributing to a real problem that needs a solution it's not going to be the gas burning cars that need to go... it's going to be at least 4 billion people that need to go.
They've already got a plan for all of that.
Just like the barely functioning "society" that we have to look forward to in the future, they care just as little about how many bodies are actually inhabiting it as they do the quality of the lives being lived in it.
I just hope for their sakes that they really planned it all out and have contingency plans in place at every single step. When man decides to mess too much with Mother Nature, she's usually pretty good at messing right back.
And I'm not confident that they've got the right people in place to think about all of the possible outcomes of what they're going to eventually end up doing about the problems before them, and when something inevitably goes sideways, I'm not convinced they've thought about all the possible ways that it could go sideways and what they'd need to already have in place to put out those fires that are too late to put out.
They say there's a reason why we're likely to never see extra terrestrial life, and that's because any species that had evolved to the point where interstellar travel could be in their future found a way to extinct themselves before they ever got there.
I'd say we've got about a couple of hundred years left before we truly figure out those mysteries, but when your most brilliant minds are spending their time figuring out how to make bioweapons in the military or coming up with the more effective boner pills in the civilian market, I'm not too hopeful that us lowly Earthlings are ever go
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Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
PEOPLE can continue to function at a very low level, but can a SOCIETY continue to function in the long run, i.e. over several generations?
SIX: Sure. I believe it can. In many ways I believe we've seen the degradation taking place over generations already. What has allowed an "equilibrium" of sorts while this has taken place is the proliferation of technology and manufacturing to make up for it. The average life is infinitely "easier" than it was 100 years ago. And now that we've automated most processes that required skilled people who took a lifetime to learn those skills and gotten to the point where most jobs that still need doing are something almost any idiot could manage (and could and likely will be replaced by automation in the future), we've got the technology on hand to fill up most of that down time so people don't have to dwell so much on the pointless existence they have ahead of them.
So, how is this supposed to work? Machine spit out stuff, and people with no jobs buy it with ... what?
Life CAN BE easier, as long as we can afford it. But I guess we'll have to charge it on our credit cards.
Quote:
SIGNY: I guess answering that question requires that the word "society" be defined.
SIX: And that's the thing right there...
I don't think we have a very good "society" ahead of us. It certainly will come nothing close to what anyone of any mindset would call idyllic.
But it will continue to function. All it needs is an extremely basic level of knowledge or input or desire on almost everyone's part to do that without completely falling apart. I'd argue that even if we manage to turn the next couple of generations into fully formed adults that walk around with the mind of 5 year old children we could still "function".
As long as the USA could splash dollars around the world and buy stuff then we don't have to do anything except exist. But what if that ends?
Quote:
The people on top care very little about how the rest of us live our lives as long as it isn't negatively impacting their own. And it turns out that it can get pretty lousy for everyone else before it ever risks adverse effects on their own lives.
That is, unless, there actually are real truths to the manmade climate changes. And if that's the case, I hate to break it to any of the idealists out there, but we're going right back to the subject of the overpopulation problem.
Oh, I think we're going to run into problems long before that becomes an issue.
Quote:To who?
SIX: Not only aren't at least half of the human beings on this planet completely redundant,
Quote:Let's start with the rich folks and their private jets. I'll bet 100,000,000 of THOSE would solve the problem!
SIX: but if they're actually contributing to a real problem that needs a solution it's not going to be the gas burning cars that need to go... it's going to be at least 4 billion people that need to go.
Quote:
SIX They've already got a plan for all of that.
Just like the barely functioning "society" that we have to look forward to in the future, they care just as little about how many bodies are actually inhabiting it as they do the quality of the lives being lived in it.
I just hope for their sakes that they really planned it all out and have contingency plans in place at every single step. When man decides to mess too much with Mother Nature, she's usually pretty good at messing right back.
And I'm not confident that they've got the right people in place to think about all of the possible outcomes of what they're going to eventually end up doing about the problems before them, and when something inevitably goes sideways, I'm not convinced they've thought about all the possible ways that it could go sideways and what they'd need to already have in plNOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:I've clicked on your link:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Wish I had more time. I'd like to get back to this.
https://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/2024/04/what-orwell-and-huxley-g
ot-wrong-and.html
At the bottom of the page there is another link to the first chapter of Smith's book:
https://www.oftwominds.com/Self-Reliance-sample2.pdf
On page 10 of that sample chapter is this quote: "I have to chuckle when I read an article about a new agricultural robot that will replace human labor, as if human labor were the key cost in industrial agriculture."
I am not taking the sentence out of context, but I had to chuckle, to quote Smith. The robots are there because there is a shortage of humans who will do that work unless there is no alternative but death. Speaking of death, farmers bought tractors and sold their plow horses to glue factories. Similarly, farmers bought cotton harvesting machines and the farmers didn't care what happened to the humans who picked cotton by hand and sent their human cotton pickers to the glue factory, too. Now some robots plow the fields without even a human driving the tractor. I wonder what happened to the 72% of Americans who once worked on farms? Did they die of starvation and suffer mental illness because factories are not farms? Did they long for the good old days of meaningfulness in the countryside communing in perfect harmony with nature?
Figures on the number of Americans in "farm occupations" go back to 1820, when they were reported at less than 2.1 million, or about 72 percent of the American work force of 2.9 million. By 1850, farm people made up 4.9 million, or about 64 percent, of the nation's 7.7 million workers.
https://www.nytimes.com/1988/07/20/us/farm-population-lowest-since-185
0-s.html
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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So, what are you saying, SECOND? That automation is a two-edged sword that benefits some but not everyone? We know that.
That automation is more profitable to the owners than human labor? That labor will always be squeezed to the lowest possible wage in competition with automation?
That doesn't make sense in your argument, bc current agricultural labor is apparently the last remaining nubbin that CAN'T be automated, so in theory those workers aren't in direct competition with machines. There is another factor, then, besides automation to account for low wages, and that is likely the surfeit of cheap imported "stoop" labor.
In fact, there are still a lot of jobs that can't be automated, some of them on the higher end of the wage scale (doctors, dentists, technicians of various sorts, high-level repairmen etc), some in the middle of the wage scale (teachers, police, emergency responders, nurses, therapists, handymen, construction workers etc.) and some at the low end (housecleaners, nannies, gardeners, barristas, garment workers, agricultural workers etc) and the defining factor for wages in the "unautomateable" jobs is the availability of workers. The less education a job requires, the more people there are qualified to do the job, the lower the wages.
Is your point that technology and innovation will soak up that "excess labor" into better, less laborious work? I think we're past that point now.
What I get out of your example us that as long as owners make the decisions on how much to pay to produce an item, they will always chose the cheapest, most profitable (for them) route, whether it's automation, imported cheap foreign (illegal) labor, or cheap offshored labor.
Or, better yet (for them), no labor and production at all: speculation in the rent-seeking sectors of finance (finance, insurance, and real estate).
However, the most profitable for the small group of owners isn't what's best for society overall. For example, if a society gives up on production completely, it winds up at the mercy of societies that still produce, such as our current relationship with China and Russia.
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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger
Why SECOND'S posts are brainless: "I clocked how much time: no more than 10 minutes per day. With cut-and-paste (Ctrl C and Ctrl V) and AI, none of this takes much time."
Or, any verification or thought.
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Quote:What I am saying is that Charles Hugh Smith, Signym, and 6ixStringJack cannot philosophically adjust to changes. Instead, they get nit-picky, angry, sad, and long for the old ways, expending huge quantities of mental energy and feeling emotional turmoil that never ends while accomplishing nothing. They are Captain Malcolm Reynolds permanently feeling dislocated and hostile, never coming up with an actual plan on how to prosper. He is still fighting a lost war, searching for a feeling of victory by being as useless and grumpy as possible, just barely surviving while opposing all changes. I could see Mal becoming a Trumptard, if another Trump came along in the future. Someone like Trump already convinced Mal to go to war against the Deep State of the Alliance.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
So, what are you saying, SECOND? That automation is a two-edged sword that benefits some but not everyone? We know that.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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And what I'M saying is that it's important to look at the end state of whatever changes are taking place.
There is a downside to many changes, as well as an upside. The downside to mass automation- driven by profit motive- is that it squeezes many people out of the formal economy, both as workers AND as a market for goods. The problem isn't automation, per SE, the problem is that it's used to increase parasitical profits. If profit were not in the picture, EVERYONE would enjoy the benefits of automation.
Another downside to mass automation- is the increased emissions of CO2. Something for you, especially, to consider.
But I think there is another downside to automation. I think that we have run into an intrinsic limit of human nature. Humans, like other animals, are adapted to taking some kind of activity that ensures their survival. Horses, for example, graze and wander. Give a horse a choice between being fed in a stable or being outdoors it will choose outdoors, even in bad weather. Monkeys will forage, act as a troop etc. Hunting animals will hunt.
Animals in zoos, adequately fed, show pathologized behavior bc they're bored. Zookeepers have to provide, "enrichment" activities.
People are the same way.
Screen time is no substitute for work that people feel is necessary, and for real social interactions - face to face dealings with people you can count on in a pinch.
The reason why we see such pathologized behavior is probably bc of lack of meaningful activity, which includes work. As intrinsically social animals (except for the sociopaths and psychopaths among us) "work" is our ticket to belonging in society, whether that's at a tribal or national level.
People have several natural inclinations. Being foragers and hunters, humans are adapted to using hands and eyes and mind together. Humans also have advanced abstract thinking and language skills, and some people have advanced visualization skills. Humans (most of us, anyway) are also intensely social. Engaging all of these strengths together would make people happier.
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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger
Why SECOND'S posts are brainless: "I clocked how much time: no more than 10 minutes per day. With cut-and-paste (Ctrl C and Ctrl V) and AI, none of this takes much time."
Or, any verification or thought.
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