# Can Big Brother, Handmaiden's Tale, Brave New World happen? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [July 5, 2013, 8:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-big-brother-handmaidens-tale-brave-new-world-happen/662750 "2013-07-05T20:48:15Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2013, 11:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-big-brother-handmaidens-tale-brave-new-world-happen/662750/21 "2013-07-05T23:57:15Z")
> [@Justin\_Bailey](#): > > You know what, you’re right. I do have an IMPOSSIBLE stamp. And I think I wield it fairly. Google is too big to be bought out by any other company barring an ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE uprising within the Google-Plex and the future of The Handmaid’s Tale will never come to pass barring an IMPOSSIBLE collective decision by everyone that women deserve to be property. The US population is 52% female, I don’t think that’s going to happen anytime… well ever. You’re right, Google could never possibly shrink in size or value and no company could possibly ever be bigger and they’re just too darned beloved to ever have an engineered takeover… but that’s another argument. You are completely ignoring that the situation of HT is not our present day one. Some calamity has befallen the US, one result of which is that something like 90% of women have become infertile. The remaining fertile ones have become quasi-property of those wealthy enough to own them. When you’ve come to terms with that major difference of situation, get back to me. Better yet… when you’ve come to terms with the fact that history is filled with such calamities causing extreme changes in society and government, burn your IMPOSSIBLE stamp and get back to me. ---
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2013, 11:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-big-brother-handmaidens-tale-brave-new-world-happen/662750/22 "2013-07-05T23:59:42Z")
> [@RealityChuck](#): > > I’m claiming the people who would _have to be_ totalitarian in order to set up a state (the army, business leader, etc.), are dead set against that sort of system. I’d like to agree with you on this and so far it’s been true, but I wonder about, say, the era of post-Vietnam Joint Chiefs. And the post-Enron generation of senior business leaders. And the fifth or sixth President in a row with no military service, much less combat experience. ---
**Author:** ![Sleeps\_With\_Butterflies](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bb73d2/32.png) [@Sleeps\_With\_Butterflies](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sleeps_With_Butterflies)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2013, 12:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-big-brother-handmaidens-tale-brave-new-world-happen/662750/23 "2013-07-06T00:08:19Z")
> [@Amateur\_Barbarian](#): > > When fertile women fall to 10% of the population? > > I won’t claim HT is absolutely likely or even possible as writ, but governments and peoples have shifted over far small crises. I think that if female fertility were to fall to some fraction of its present level, women would return to being commodities in many respects. You could look at about 5,000 years of history for examples. I believe it would be unlikely for HT to happen, but I tend to agree with you that it’s certainly not impossible especially with that low of a percentage of fertility. Atwood describes several rallies/gatherings/protests to fight the changes but mentions that protesters were shot and killed. If the government started shooting protesters I think you’d see protests drying up. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2013, 12:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-big-brother-handmaidens-tale-brave-new-world-happen/662750/24 "2013-07-06T00:16:34Z")
> [@Justin\_Bailey](#): > > No, it’s impossible. Let me paraphrase this for Amateur Barbarian. NO, IT’S IMPOSSIBLE. Obviously, horrible societies occurred with appalling frequency in the 20th century, some in places that, like Germany, were once considered to be the most civilized in the world. There will be some place, some time, a country becoming a horrible society in the future. It won’t be the United States unless some ridiculous scenario, like a ten-mile wide asteroid slams into earth, happens. There is no real world pathway to an American dystopia. > [@](#): > > There’s a reason all dystopian novels/movies either or open with a short “present day” montage and fast-forward to a future where things are bleak with no mention of how they got that way or they just skip all that and start in the future. Exactly. No dystopia has ever had a believable pathway. Again, a pile-up of ridiculous calamities could happen in theory but they are not believable in reality. Dystopias have a legitimate place in fiction by portraying one aspect of society grown in hypertrophic fashion to make a point. The real world never moves one aspect of society ahead in that way without also affecting a million other aspects. That’s why fictional dystopias never occur in the real world. They simply cannot. ---
**Author:** ![Justin\_Bailey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/justin_bailey/32/8792_2.png) [@Justin\_Bailey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Justin_Bailey)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2013, 12:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-big-brother-handmaidens-tale-brave-new-world-happen/662750/25 "2013-07-06T00:30:09Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > Let me paraphrase this for Amateur Barbarian. > > NO, IT’S IMPOSSIBLE. HO-LEE KER-APP! **Exapno Mapcase** and agree on something. Porky is leaving on a jet place to-night! ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2013, 12:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-big-brother-handmaidens-tale-brave-new-world-happen/662750/26 "2013-07-06T00:51:32Z")
> [@Justin\_Bailey](#): > > HO-LEE KER-APP! **Exapno Mapcase** and agree on something. Porky is leaving on a jet place to-night! Your amazement apparently reached all the way down into your fingers. 🙂 I was amazed, too. Maybe there’s hope for Congress yet. 🆒 ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2013, 12:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-big-brother-handmaidens-tale-brave-new-world-happen/662750/27 "2013-07-06T00:55:30Z")
> [@Nzinga\_Seated](#): > > I have a very good hardcore feminist friend and she is convinced that Handmaiden’s Tale is happening NOW as we speak. She told me flat out, “the phrase abortion riots keeps popping into my head. I don’t want to riot, but I will.” Does she mean she thinks most of the things in the book are coming true, or just that she’s concerned about restrictions on abortion and birth control? > [@](#): > > So, I am curious. Does anyone else worry that these kinds of books are honestly coming true? I don’t mean, do you think you see signs of some of the details from the book in play…that is obvious. I mean, do you actually believe one of the scenarios from the book could actually become a reality. What I’ve heard about the [Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamentalist_Church_of_Jesus_Christ_of_Latter-Day_Saints) (not the mainstream LDS Church) sounds rather _Handmaid’s Tale_-eque. According to the Wikipedia entry they even suffer from a high rate of birth defects, presumably due to inbreeding. That is a community of maybe 10,000 people though, not a whole country. I don’t see the likes of [Warren Jeffs](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_Jeffs) getting elected President of the United States or staging a successful coup anytime soon. Now, what would happen in this country if the birth rate plummeted while the birth defect rate skyrocketed is beyond my powers of prediction. In such a situation it strikes me as plausible that abortion and birth control would be banned and violating these laws would be considered a serious offense. Beyond that I don’t know. ---
**Author:** ![Gagundathar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a183cd/32.png) [@Gagundathar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gagundathar)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2013, 1:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-big-brother-handmaidens-tale-brave-new-world-happen/662750/28 "2013-07-06T01:20:41Z")
All of these dystopias are essentially political essays and not science fiction. One of Mr. Orwell’s proposed titles for \*1984 \*was 1948 (the other was The Last Man in Europe) and was a commentary of the spread of socialism in continental Europe and Great Britain. It was, at its heart, a study on the effects of language on the thinking processes of users of that language. Some of what Mr. Orwell predicted, such as pervasive governmental surveillance has become normative in several nations, including Great Britain and (to a lesser extent) the USA. The usage of language to control the masses is certain a hallmark of modern totalitarianism. The iconic imagery of the ever-present face of the Ayatollah in Iran and Morsi in Egypt reflect the Orwellian Big Brother chillingly well. Mr. Huxley’s ground-breaking work,\* Brave New World\*, was largely a parody of H. G. Well’s _A Modern Utopia_ and is set in a future several hundreds of years from now. As such, the ideas set forth of control by pharmaceutical means seem less absurd than one might immediately think. Yes, modern society is revolted by eugenics and yet it was less than a century ago when such ideas were considered by many to be the wave of the future. It is almost impossible to predict societal changes even over the coming decades, much less centuries. What sea changes might occur to cause such a dystopia? If the majority of people cede control of their personal destinies to the few in power and are rewarded by lives of drug-induced calmness and contentment, who can say that such a monstrous future might not eventually come into existence? The fact that Ms. Atwood’s _The Handmaid’s Tale_ is set in the near future and was written in 1985, makes this particular dystopia the least probable of the three to actually occur, even given the fact that it employs only that technology available in 1985 and is considered by its author to be ‘speculative fiction’ rather than ‘science fiction’. The integration of women in our modern culture is vastly different than the projected fate in Ms. Atwood’s world where efforts toward equality stalled out around the end of the 20th century. Where we may be wary of the continued influence of theocratic elements in our governments, it is difficult to imagine how such a future could ever come to exist in the US. I like to think that the overall attitude toward gender equality has been altered significantly enough in the past 28 years that such a scenario would never be allowed. But, I am a bit of an optimist. ---
**Author:** ![Nzinga\_Seated](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/b5ac83/32.png) [@Nzinga\_Seated](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nzinga_Seated)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2013, 1:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-big-brother-handmaidens-tale-brave-new-world-happen/662750/29 "2013-07-06T01:43:54Z")
Great post, Gagundather. I don’t actually think any of these worlds are likely at all. But I am surprised to hear people saying “impossible”. It is as if some people seem to think that the U.S. will be the first empire to stand forever in the way that we recognize it. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2013, 1:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-big-brother-handmaidens-tale-brave-new-world-happen/662750/30 "2013-07-06T01:44:58Z")
All science fiction is speculative fiction. All speculative fiction is science fiction. Honestly, nobody cares what Margaret Atwood thinks about the field on any given day. Whatever she says tends to make actual practitioners laugh and weep. ---
**Author:** ![Apocalypso](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f19dbf/32.png) [@Apocalypso](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Apocalypso)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2013, 1:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-big-brother-handmaidens-tale-brave-new-world-happen/662750/31 "2013-07-06T01:48:09Z")
A black man is elected president, and redneck racists hate him. A series of deadly terrorist attacks on the United States spreads fear and panic. The prez tries to put out the fires and make peace, but all of his efforts are portrayed as sympathy for terrorists. The grumbling grows louder and louder, and more and more retreat to less populous states and form their own heavily religion based communities. After two or three nuclear bombs are detonated in American cities, many of the “seclusionists” band together under a charismatic religious leader and call for an upheaval. After the president is assassinated, the charismatic religious leader is elected president and vows to reunite the country under “the laws of the bible”. Much of the Constitution is re-written to discriminate against the religion of the terrorists… ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_A.Robrin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sam_a.robrin/32/14497_2.png) [@Sam\_A.Robrin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_A.Robrin)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2013, 2:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-big-brother-handmaidens-tale-brave-new-world-happen/662750/32 "2013-07-06T02:00:02Z")
> [@RealityChuck](#): > > **1984** > > If we end up with a dystopia, it will take a form that no one has ever thought of; the only version that I can think of as being slightly plausible is that in Sinclair Lewis’s **It Can’t Happen Here**. A Berzelius Windrip could possibly arise if factors were right (Windrip was based loosely on Huey Long). I just re-read it recently, and was mentally casting Newt Gingrich in the role the entire time! ---
**Author:** ![Justin\_Bailey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/justin_bailey/32/8792_2.png) [@Justin\_Bailey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Justin_Bailey)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2013, 2:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-big-brother-handmaidens-tale-brave-new-world-happen/662750/33 "2013-07-06T02:08:25Z")
> [@Lamia](#): > > Now, what would happen in this country if the birth rate plummeted while the birth defect rate skyrocketed is beyond my powers of prediction. In such a situation it strikes me as plausible that abortion and birth control would be banned and violating these laws would be considered a serious offense. Beyond that I don’t know. In such an extreme situation, I’d wager a large group of women would swing to the Pro-Life side of the debate. But women as property? That’s where it gets ridiculous. ---
**Author:** ![Cat\_Whisperer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cat_whisperer/32/4839_2.png) [@Cat\_Whisperer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cat_Whisperer)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2013, 2:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-big-brother-handmaidens-tale-brave-new-world-happen/662750/34 "2013-07-06T02:39:14Z")
> [@Amateur\_Barbarian](#): > > \ > …we’ve been fortunate to have a government and elected officials that are far better and more sincerely devoted to ideals than we’ve given them credit for. I think you might actually be serious! :eek: > [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > \ There is no real world pathway to an American dystopia. > \ There are those who would argue that you’re already 90% (or more) of the way there already. > [@Nzinga\_Seated](#): > > Great post, Gagundather. > > I don’t actually think any of these worlds are likely at all. But I am surprised to hear people saying “impossible”. It is as if some people seem to think that the U.S. will be the first empire to stand forever in the way that we recognize it. I am, too. Maybe the dystopian futures won’t happen exactly as in the novels, but to say it is impossible, period? I would not say that. As someone mentioned earlier, I don’t think there were many people in Germany in 1925 who thought their country would end up where it ended up in 1945. Not to, you know, Godwinize the thread or anything. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Tom\_Tildrum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e95f7d/32.png) [@Tom\_Tildrum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tom_Tildrum)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2013, 2:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-big-brother-handmaidens-tale-brave-new-world-happen/662750/35 "2013-07-06T02:56:56Z")
> [@JohnT](#): > > \*This is how women were replaced in the workplace - the army took their jobs of bagging groceries, being bank tellers, selling cars, etc. The first (bagging groceries) was specifically referenced in the book. Why would soldiers want to bag groceries? ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2013, 3:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-big-brother-handmaidens-tale-brave-new-world-happen/662750/36 "2013-07-06T03:09:01Z")
I have no idea, just that it was mentioned that one of the changes Offred noticed was that the woman who rang her up at the grocery store had been replaced by a guy who looked as if he was in the military. ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2013, 3:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-big-brother-handmaidens-tale-brave-new-world-happen/662750/37 "2013-07-06T03:19:39Z")
> [@Justin\_Bailey](#): > > In such an extreme situation, I’d wager a large group of women would swing to the Pro-Life side of the debate. But women as property? That’s where it gets ridiculous. Were _all_ women treated as property in _Handmaid’s Tale_, or just the handmaids? The handmaids were IIRC all women who’d been convicted of crimes under the new regime. While serving as a handmaid would be considered cruel and unusual punishment under our current legal system, we do allow for convicts to be denied certain freedoms. Beyond that, treating a class of humans as chattel is hardly unknown in world history, or even the history of the United States. That’s all far enough behind us now that I don’t see us going back to it quickly or easily, but _Handmaid’s Tale_ is set during an unprecedented population crisis. I don’t know that such a situation really _would_ lead to women being treated as property, but I’d be pretty sure it would lead to social changes that went far beyond “more women become Pro-Life”. ---
**Author:** ![coffeecat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/coffeecat/32/3405_2.png) [@coffeecat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/coffeecat)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2013, 3:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-big-brother-handmaidens-tale-brave-new-world-happen/662750/38 "2013-07-06T03:46:58Z")
Nothing is too absurd to happen, but the future will almost certainly be different from what anyone thought of beforehand. ---
**Author:** ![Shakester](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/shakester/32/437_2.png) [@Shakester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shakester)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2013, 4:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-big-brother-handmaidens-tale-brave-new-world-happen/662750/39 "2013-07-06T04:07:25Z")
> [@Gagundathar](#): > > One of Mr. Orwell’s proposed titles for \*1984 \*was 1948 (the other was The Last Man in Europe) and was a commentary of the spread of socialism in continental Europe and Great Britain. Orwell lived and died a Socialist. He was warning against TOTALITARIANISM, whether it came from the right (Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan) or the left (the USSR). [QUOTE=George Orwell] Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism. [/QUOTE] From Why I Write (1946) [(full text here)](http://orwell.ru/library/essays/wiw/english/e_wiw), which he no doubt wrote specifically to rebut claims that he was warning against “socialism”. ---
**Author:** ![Quimby](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/22d042/32.png) [@Quimby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quimby)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2013, 4:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-big-brother-handmaidens-tale-brave-new-world-happen/662750/40 "2013-07-06T04:07:44Z")
Exactly as portrayed in those books? No. But can a Democracy become a Totalitarian Dystopia? Of course it can. In fact in Modern history that is what kills Democracies. They don’t get invaded and conquered; they rot from the inside out. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-big-brother-handmaidens-tale-brave-new-world-happen/662750.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-big-brother-handmaidens-tale-brave-new-world-happen/662750.md?page=3)