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.
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.
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.)