A Modern Prophecy by Michael Georg Conrad

Abstract

When Aldous Huxley in his Brave New World asked how we can avoid realization of utopias, he anticipated by seventeen years same question implicit in George Orwell's horrifying novel of future called 1984. Both, however, were preceded by German naturalistic writer Michael Georg Conrad who, in describing a future similar in many respects to those of Huxley and Orwell, made clear as long ago as in 1895 that utopian existence could be insufferable. We are not dealing here, of course, with ideal commonwealths but with extrapolations of present conditions and tendencies. These novels of future predict that if present characteristics of civilization are allowed to develop freely, world will proceed, with help of biological, physical, and social sciences, toward ugliness, unreason, inhumanity, and nullification of individual. Criticizing our acquiescence to sociopolitical co-ordination and authority, warning us not to rely on science and machinery to make our lives either happy or well spent, they advocate individualism, respect for traditional virtues of compassion and honesty, and cherishment of beauty, sanity, and freedom. Only in this way can we avoid superscientific utopia that lies ahead. As historians of future both Huxley and Orwell have pictured specifically what does lie ahead: a society devoted to stability, the primal and ultimate need. In Orwell's book it is stated: The rule of Party is forever.2 And in Conrad's description of thirtieth century, called In purpurner FinsterniB, we read that problems are beginnings of transformations. Those who have caused revolutions do not tolerate anyone else's trying to make changes afterward.s Although stability is achieved in Brave New World