Man is about to be an automaton; he is identifiable only in the computer. As a person of worth and creativity, as a being with an infinite potential, he retreats and battles the forces that make him inhuman.
The dissent we witness is a reaffirmation of faith in man; it is protest against living under rules and prejudices and attitudes that produce the extremes of wealth and poverty and that make us dedicated to the destruction of people through arms, bombs, and gases, and that prepare us to think alike and be submissive objects for the regime of the computer.
—Justice WILLIAM O. DOUGLAS, Points of Rebellion, pp. 32–33 (1970)
Justice Douglas (1898-1980) was a dedicated champion of civil liberty and an outspoken opponent of censorship of any kind. His words of warning came nearly 40 years after Brave New World appeared. What does his message have in common with Aldous Huxley's novel? Were the two writers correct?—are individual rights in danger? Is dissent itself dangerous to the individual?
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