After reading the Amusing Ourselves to Death webcomic the first time I was immediately drawn to Orwell's argument in Nineteen Eighty-Four which he positioned as "what we hate will ruin us." After reading the webcomic a second time I completely changed the way I was thinking and found that I agreed with Huxley's argument in Brave New World that "what we love will ruin us." I read it a third time and realized that although I agreed with both arguments Huxley's argument seems more relevant for the times.
The webcomic section on Orwell focuses on wars, pain, and the intake of information. This focus was probably taken from World War II where the focus of the world was on sending troops to fight and keeping up morale through media which may or may not be the truth. The section on Huxley however is more relevant for today because of all information and media that is constantly bombarding us in every form. Orwell was worried that we would be a "captive culture" but Huxley thinks that we have become an insular culture, one that can choose to ignore what we don't want to see. I really felt the impact of that when Arab Spring came up in class and none of us were willing to speak up about it even if we did know what it was. In general, our generation is quick to talk about the newest reality tv show, video game, or youtube sensation but we have a hard time speaking intelligently about current events within our nation or in other countries.
I think that the author chose to present his views through a webcomic because it is an eye catching way to express information and it gets the reader thinking about not only the message or the picture but how the picture and message relate together and with the rest of the comic. Personally the "captive culture" image really resonated with me because the eye had no choice but to see what it was being directed. That image contrasted really well to the idea that we live in a "trivial culture" in which so many meaningless things are filling our sight and knowledge that we have no time for things that actually do matter.
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