Brave New World seems like it would be awesome for the theatre. I'd love to see this one directed by James Dacre >went to Cambridge where he directed at ADC, the oldest university dramatic society in England. Also edited the student newspaper >on graduating, he won a Fulbright Scholarship and Shubert tto study Theatre Directing right off Broadway at Columbia's School of the Arts
one review wrote: >James Dacre has built a reputation for distinctive, innovative staging, and this new adaptation of Brave New World is no exception. ... with a new adaptation of Aldous Huxley’s classic Brave New World, his distinctive style shines through again. ... This adaptation is very much a collaboration of Dawn King as playwriter, James Dacre as director and music from These New Puritans. It’s difficult to pin down exactly who gets credit for what, but as a team they do a good job bring the story to life in a highly-watchable piece. Much of the credit, however, has to go to James Dacre, because this production has all his hallmarks. He clearly knows his strengths and knows how to play to his strengths. His distinctive style goes well to dark themes, he keeps the pace going through plays with an episodic structure, and his innovative staging that makes heavy use of lighting and sound always suits whatever plays he chooses to direct. With successes under his belt for a new play, a classic play, and now a new adaptation of a classic book, is there anything James Dacre cannot do?
Honestly, it's one of the most disappointing books I've read. Maybe because I've expected a dystopian story while I got something like >is living in a very engineered utopia good or bad?
And it's as accurate as a broken clock, so every once in a while.
It wasn’t a utopia at all. How did you miss the basic point that you can’t achieve good ends through evil means. Or the soulless evil of one side rational utilitarianism.
It's sort of a midwit book, imo. Orwell's shit is much more sophisticated from like a political philosophy standpoint.
>good ends through evil means
Is the world government really evil? They're elitist, sure, but I don't know if they're evil. I think their calculus is that while, yes, human beings require freedom and self determination to flourish, the overwhelming majority of the population is not philosophically sophisticated/curious enough to purse that for themselves. The world government figures the next best option is to create material security and superficial happiness for the masses, which is enough for most people. The intellectuals/broken people get to live on an island and do their own thing. I think intellectuals struggle with this book because they like to believe that the rest of the population shares their curiosity and values - I don't think that's true at all. Happy to hear your thoughts anyway.
>It wasn’t a utopia at all
It was. >you can’t achieve good ends through evil means
I mean, that's just your opinion. They managed to do it in the book. Evil is subjective. The government in the book definitely didn't have evil intentions.
[...]
Epsilons led happy lives. It's explained in the ending.
He wrote a a book about ends and means that partially underlines the themes of Brave New World.
Even before this evidence there was already a widely accepted notion that pleasure and happiness are not the same shared in both secular and religious philosophy.
Furthermore, the society described in Brave New World is fundamentally broken and unsustainable. Is bingewatching Netflix, doomscrolling Twitter, and ordering from Doordash/Uber Eats meaningfully different than SOMA? At least in BNW the consumption was that of domestically manufactured apparatus that left room for people to exercise competence. A lot of what people spend money on IRL is just digital spooks they don't even own. Turning everything into a subscription where you pay forever, own nothing, and can exercise few skills aside from making a line on a graph you'll never see go up.
If more consumption and cheap easy pleasure were the answer to making people happy, why are people who have it so mentally and physically ill?
>It wasn’t a utopia at all
It was. >you can’t achieve good ends through evil means
I mean, that's just your opinion. They managed to do it in the book. Evil is subjective. The government in the book definitely didn't have evil intentions.
>amount of people who unironically see nothing wrong with
Because everyone thinks they would be Alphas or Betas, not Epsilons
Epsilons led happy lives. It's explained in the ending.
No joke, I have read this book on three separate occasions, and I could not tell you the plot. There is just something about this story that renders it incapable of recollectiontion for me.
I actually liked it. Better than 1984. Also I would prefer to live in this world where you can have sex with anyone, govt organizes orgies for you and you get to be high all the time.
Only a virgin would say this, it's something you get better at doing over time.
Also >sex >good
It's not really 'good', it's just something you're supposed to do for general well-being, like exercising or getting sunshine. Not a lot of things in this life are just directly 'good' in terms of feeling.
>it's something you get better at doing over time.
That wasn't at all what he was saying. He was saying would it give him pleasure and you came out and vented your insecurities at not being good at it. Examine yourself.
5 months ago
Anonymous
I'm saying he's wrong, it's not something that feels worse over time, it feels better over time.
I thought it got better there. The story of a white civilized girl getting railed by big burly tribal men while her son watches it every night was very hot.
Orgy porgy pudding and pie, raped the girls and made them cry.
Then the boys came out to play and orgy porgy ramped up to eleven and oh my god there's so much rape.
I read it recently and was disappointed. I expected it to me much more subtle about how consoomer ideology had insidiously manifested itself in the human psyche but instead everybody was just totally brainwashed as an infant simple as, constantly reciting state propaganda and shit. Pretty reddit tier frankly.
I recently picked up pic related in a secondhand bookstore. The description on the back seemed similar to Brave New World, so who knows maybe it's better? I'll report back.
>I expected it to me much more subtle about how consoomer ideology had insidiously manifested itself in the human psyche
I'll give you that it's not subtle per se, but people often seem to miss how it's a critique of rational liberal values by making the most unappealing society possible that still checks every box.
Happiness: Maximized
Stability: Maximized
Freedom: For those that really want it. There's even the meta-freedom to not choose freedom.
Art: It's being produced at an incredible rate
Sexual liberation: complete
Casualties: Minimized. Internally, at least.
Coersion: all but gone.
The capacity to evolve and improve: Intact, the island guys are selected to be genuine geniuses who want to improve humanity's lot.
So where the hell is the problem? The fact that everyone being drugged, some people being deliberately brain-damaged, and so forth are "yucky" isn't a rational argument. It challenges people to put their finger on *in what way* a society demonstrably more equitable, prosperous, technologically advanced, socially liberated, happier society than our own is so apparently repulsive.
But I feel like most people just go "Yucky! Drugs and no shame! Muh Emotions!" and leave it at that, entirely missing the point of the critique.
>So where the hell is the problem? The fact that everyone being drugged, some people being deliberately brain-damaged, and so forth are "yucky" isn't a rational argument. It challenges people to put their finger on *in what way* a society demonstrably more equitable, prosperous, technologically advanced, socially liberated, happier society than our own is so apparently repulsive. >But I feel like most people just go "Yucky! Drugs and no shame! Muh Emotions!" and leave it at that, entirely missing the point of the critique.
I'm in the camp that gives up and goes "I guess my vestigial revultion is something to overcome in pursuit of values I believe in"
I think there are a number of valid answers from religious perspectives, but all it really did from a purely rationalist perspective the only thing it seems to have done wrong is expose the already-present problem of most life being purposeless. To me it looks like most people just aren't ready to face the idea that they're more attached to their problems than to their supposed values, because "fighting" something gives them purpose, whereas totally obviating it lets in existential anxiety.
4 months ago
Anonymous
>To me it looks like most people just aren't ready to face the idea that they're more attached to their problems than to their supposed values, because "fighting" something gives them purpose, whereas totally obviating it lets in existential anxiety.
Agreed.
4 months ago
Anonymous
Absolutely. It's really fricking pathetic how much of politics now is about raging against abstract meme problems like """racism""" with almost no concern given towards actually making society prosperous by considering what about it is currently working, and what isn't.
You got it perfectly. I still think it should still be an open question whether or not it's actually 'le bad.' Aldous Huxley didn't seem to completely reject the notion that a society like this is an actual goal, he may have just been trying to get us to stop and think it over first. In my opinion, we should consider the possibility that our desire for 'le heckin meaning in a tradcath bodybuilder state that sends you off to die a glorious death in battle' is actually just juvenile bullshit and cope as a result of current less developed society, and the mature thing to do is get over ourselves and get serious about making a healthy society.
I think it contains some very interesting ideas (though they're always brutely stated as just being le bad), but the actual plot is shit. It just doesn't work, feels slapped together in a desperate attempt to turn a political treatise into a novel.
I think books like this should commit to what they are and just have a "plot" of two people talking to each other in a room.
>it's so accurate, people just watching porn and getting high after spending all day working in their sterile city cages.
You're ignoring a giant difference between our world and theirs, they are supported and sanctioned in doing so. In 2024 America, we are all turbo consumers but we still have to scrap in order to make a living in a fake economy, and we face lots of pointless, hypocritical shaming for it.
We should just bite the bullet and pay to maintain the bottom echelons of society in their mashed potato existence, give them easy government-run jobs for a few hours a day and then send them to their tiny government-run apartments to nuke their brains until the next morning, with no bills to worry about.
I've encountered a disappointing (but not surprising) amount of people who unironically see nothing wrong with Huxley's nightmare world. Of course they're the same sort of people who think turning off the check engine light means the problem is fixed. There are always going to be stupid poles that allow themselves to be exploited pharmacologically or no.
BNW isn't about the idea that there's nothing good about pharmacology, but it and radical secular materialism is a potent vector to basically destroy humanity.
>I kept waiting for some sort of redemption arc for this savage wherein he stopped being a complete asshat, but that didn't happen. He was creepy as frick right up till the end. >And what an ending it was. >So John has had enough of polite society and runs out to some deserted little strip of land. Once there, he prays to some weird mash-up of Christian and Native American gods, flogs himself daily, and tries his darndest to make his life as hard and unbearable as he can. Because suffering for no reason whatsoever is what makes life good? >Bottom line, he's so batshit that tourists start showing up at his doorstep to watch him act the fool. But it's not till Lenina gets there and tries to embrace him that he loses his damn mind. He tries to attack her with his nasty little flogger and when he doesn't succeed, he just starts beating the frick out of himself. And if that wasn't weird enough, he AND all the tourists end up getting turned on by his self-flagellation and have a massive orgy. >John wakes up after his night of debauchery, can't deal with having busted a nut, and hangs himself. >The end.
>I kept waiting for some sort of redemption arc for this savage wherein he stopped being a complete asshat, but that didn't happen. He was creepy as frick right up till the end. >And what an ending it was. >So John has had enough of polite society and runs out to some deserted little strip of land. Once there, he prays to some weird mash-up of Christian and Native American gods, flogs himself daily, and tries his darndest to make his life as hard and unbearable as he can. Because suffering for no reason whatsoever is what makes life good? >Bottom line, he's so batshit that tourists start showing up at his doorstep to watch him act the fool. But it's not till Lenina gets there and tries to embrace him that he loses his damn mind. He tries to attack her with his nasty little flogger and when he doesn't succeed, he just starts beating the frick out of himself. And if that wasn't weird enough, he AND all the tourists end up getting turned on by his self-flagellation and have a massive orgy. >John wakes up after his night of debauchery, can't deal with having busted a nut, and hangs himself. >The end.
Notice how it's almost exclusively women echoing this review
Disgusting book, threw it away after reading the first 30 pages. That's the comment I made on the mook when I was still a moronic plebbitor, that it to say, before I became so based that plebbit perma-banned me, and another stupid plebbitor replied that 'noooooooo!!!! You should have kept reading after the gross sex scenes nooooo!!!! It's just to show you a literary effect I'm a stupid plebbitor' so everyone who likes this book is a stupid plebbitor by default who should go back and kill himself
Was the antagonist right? Are "old things" really so detrimental to progress? We need God no matter what. Even if you're for or against Him, without him you have nothing to strive for. That's what a lot of atheists fail to understand.
J. B. S. Haldane's Daedalus (1924) - his vision of a future in which humans controlled their own evolution through directed mutation and use of in vitro fertilisation ("ectogenesis") is thought have been an influence on Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, where citizens are engineered through artificial wombs and childhood indoctrination programmes into predetermined classes (or castes) based on intelligence and labour
>J. B. S. Haldane
That dude is interesting. He was the classic eccentric genius. Biology professor and research at Cambridge, one Cambridge student said: "he seemed to be the last man who might know all there was to be known"
Nobel laureate biologist Sir Peter Medawar called him "the cleverest man I ever knew"
Nobel laureate molecular biologist, Sir James Watson described him as "England's most clever and eccentric biologist"'
Univ of Texas professor Sahotra Sarkar described him as "probably the most prescient biologist of this [20th] century"
>It’s a well written dystopian tale of a future where the concepts of mothers, fathers, families, monogamy, childbirth, and many other things have all been abolished and seen as perverse
an English chemical plant made its mark on Brave New World.
the Billingham Manufacturing Plant in Stockton-on-Tees, North East England. The author visited this industrial giant and was struck by how it was an "anomalous [oasis] of pure logic in the midst of the larger world of planless incoherence." The factory was set up by a businessman and politician named Sir Alfred Mond, 1st Baron Melchett, who might have lent his name to the story’s Resident World Controller of Western Europe, Mustapha Mond.
>I liked that smart people were sent on an island.
This was my favorite part of the book, and it presents a very important lesson for real life: what is good for smart people is not necessarily good for dumb people, and vice versa. This should really be talked about more, as our school system simultaneously tries to send everyone to college (bad for dumb people who aren't cut out for it and should just get practical life and job training), but still ends up pushing hedonistic ghetto values on everyone (bad for smart people who would be happier just accepting that they prefer quieter pursuits instead of pretending to be turbo normies).
This is also relevant on an individual level: If you have an obviously low-IQ friend, you don't need to try to 'groom' them into becoming an intellectual, they simply are not built for it. Settle for just helping them drop any particularly ass-backwards views they have that cause them trouble.
And no, I don't think it was a euphemism for euthanasia. They had already established the premise of taking advantage of islands to safely try out new ideas (Ireland was a testing grounds for a reduced working week), not a stretch at all to say that they would stick the Alphas who inevitably get too smart in very remote island where they can live in peace.
One common recreational activity that is programmed to promote “happiness”, and is encouraged at a very young age, is sexual promiscuity. In school, children would “discover each other” at “recess” through erotic foreplay. “‘The nurse shrugged her shoulders. ‘Nothing much,’ she answered. ‘ It’s just about this little boy seems rather reluctant to join in the ordinary erotic play.’” (Huxley 31-32)
/// The National Park is surrounded by moist deciduous forest and teak plantations /// You can see it, like skid marks of a car at an accident scene /// Similarly, the ministry teaches the premillennial view of eschatology /// I'd like to travel around Europe this summer but Jacob is dead set on touring the U.S. /// Tuck your chair in (= put it so that the seat of it is under the table) so that no one trips over it /// Marauding gangs of armed men have been looting food relief supplies /// Shapiro received $6.25 million in TKO Class A common stock vesting in one year, while Endeavor CEO Ari Emanuel (who is also CEO of TKO) received stock grants worth $40 million vesting over a four-year period /// It was his first vacation after 18 months of straight up hustling /// Hayes had a blank slate to fill, a team to construct from scratch /// This cream contains a mild analgesic to soothe stings and bites /// The epistemological deadlocks of quantum physics ///
Each caste is split into "plus" and "minus" members
Unlike the lower castes, Alphas and Betas are not clones, allowing for more individual personalities. The lower three castes are usually clones.
Alphas wear gray
Betas wear mulberry
Gammas wear green
Deltas wear khakis
Epsilons wear black
Linda (a Beta-minus) accompanied the Director (Alpha) on a date to the Savage Reservation (in New Mexico and not under the jurisdiction of the World State), accidentally got separated from him, and later gave birth to a normal human "savage" child, John (the Savage), who is the tragic hero. He’d rather be unhappy and free than living under World State slavery.
Lenina (a Beta) is a hottie who dates Henry Foster (an Alpha Plus in every way) and Bernard (Alpha with a smaller stature that normal Alphas) but she ultimately becomes obsessed with John the savage
English band...The album artwork and title song are references to the novel of the same name written by Aldous Huxley.
I have seen many things
In a lifetime alone
Mother love is no more
Bring this savage back home
Wilderness, house of pain
Makes no sense of it all
Close this mind, dull this brain
Messiah before his fall
What you see is not real
Those who know will not tell
All is lost, sold your souls
To this brave new world
A brave new world
In a brave new world
...
A brave new world
Where is salvation now?
Lost my life, lost my dreams
Rip the bones from my flesh
Silent screams, laughing here
Dying to tell you the truth
You are planned and you are damned
In this brave new world
...
In a brave new world
A brave new world
...
Bring this savage back home
Now enjoy the 1980 production of it. If you are a fan of 1968-1979 sci-fi, it's magical.
wheres the 2nd half
Brave New World seems like it would be awesome for the theatre. I'd love to see this one directed by James Dacre
>went to Cambridge where he directed at ADC, the oldest university dramatic society in England. Also edited the student newspaper
>on graduating, he won a Fulbright Scholarship and Shubert tto study Theatre Directing right off Broadway at Columbia's School of the Arts
one review wrote:
>James Dacre has built a reputation for distinctive, innovative staging, and this new adaptation of Brave New World is no exception. ... with a new adaptation of Aldous Huxley’s classic Brave New World, his distinctive style shines through again. ... This adaptation is very much a collaboration of Dawn King as playwriter, James Dacre as director and music from These New Puritans. It’s difficult to pin down exactly who gets credit for what, but as a team they do a good job bring the story to life in a highly-watchable piece. Much of the credit, however, has to go to James Dacre, because this production has all his hallmarks. He clearly knows his strengths and knows how to play to his strengths. His distinctive style goes well to dark themes, he keeps the pace going through plays with an episodic structure, and his innovative staging that makes heavy use of lighting and sound always suits whatever plays he chooses to direct. With successes under his belt for a new play, a classic play, and now a new adaptation of a classic book, is there anything James Dacre cannot do?
Honestly, it's one of the most disappointing books I've read. Maybe because I've expected a dystopian story while I got something like
>is living in a very engineered utopia good or bad?
And it's as accurate as a broken clock, so every once in a while.
It wasn’t a utopia at all. How did you miss the basic point that you can’t achieve good ends through evil means. Or the soulless evil of one side rational utilitarianism.
It's sort of a midwit book, imo. Orwell's shit is much more sophisticated from like a political philosophy standpoint.
>good ends through evil means
Is the world government really evil? They're elitist, sure, but I don't know if they're evil. I think their calculus is that while, yes, human beings require freedom and self determination to flourish, the overwhelming majority of the population is not philosophically sophisticated/curious enough to purse that for themselves. The world government figures the next best option is to create material security and superficial happiness for the masses, which is enough for most people. The intellectuals/broken people get to live on an island and do their own thing. I think intellectuals struggle with this book because they like to believe that the rest of the population shares their curiosity and values - I don't think that's true at all. Happy to hear your thoughts anyway.
He wrote a a book about ends and means that partially underlines the themes of Brave New World.
There is overwhelming scientific evidence proving that relationships are what make people truly happy.
https (colon) //nationalmarriageproject.org/
https (colon) //www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/charles-taylor
https (colon) //www.goodreads.com/book/show/36742986-if-you-re-in-my-office-it-s-already-too-late
Even before this evidence there was already a widely accepted notion that pleasure and happiness are not the same shared in both secular and religious philosophy.
Furthermore, the society described in Brave New World is fundamentally broken and unsustainable. Is bingewatching Netflix, doomscrolling Twitter, and ordering from Doordash/Uber Eats meaningfully different than SOMA? At least in BNW the consumption was that of domestically manufactured apparatus that left room for people to exercise competence. A lot of what people spend money on IRL is just digital spooks they don't even own. Turning everything into a subscription where you pay forever, own nothing, and can exercise few skills aside from making a line on a graph you'll never see go up.
If more consumption and cheap easy pleasure were the answer to making people happy, why are people who have it so mentally and physically ill?
>It wasn’t a utopia at all
It was.
>you can’t achieve good ends through evil means
I mean, that's just your opinion. They managed to do it in the book. Evil is subjective. The government in the book definitely didn't have evil intentions.
Epsilons led happy lives. It's explained in the ending.
No joke, I have read this book on three separate occasions, and I could not tell you the plot. There is just something about this story that renders it incapable of recollectiontion for me.
I actually liked it. Better than 1984. Also I would prefer to live in this world where you can have sex with anyone, govt organizes orgies for you and you get to be high all the time.
Would sex still be as good tho if you had it all the time?
Only a virgin would say this, it's something you get better at doing over time.
Also
>sex
>good
It's not really 'good', it's just something you're supposed to do for general well-being, like exercising or getting sunshine. Not a lot of things in this life are just directly 'good' in terms of feeling.
>it's something you get better at doing over time.
That wasn't at all what he was saying. He was saying would it give him pleasure and you came out and vented your insecurities at not being good at it. Examine yourself.
I'm saying he's wrong, it's not something that feels worse over time, it feels better over time.
By the way you write it's obvious you don't get sex, possibly never have
orwell mogs huxley so hard it's not even funny
>Also I would prefer to live in this world where you can have sex with anyone, govt organizes orgies for you and you get to be high all the time.
just move to Hollywood bro
It really fell off when they got out into the wilds.
I thought it got better there. The story of a white civilized girl getting railed by big burly tribal men while her son watches it every night was very hot.
is that really what this book is??
Sex is one of the core topics of the book. It was too sexy honestly.
Only if you're a Black incel.
mfw its almost time for orgy porgy
Orgy porgy pudding and pie, raped the girls and made them cry.
Then the boys came out to play and orgy porgy ramped up to eleven and oh my god there's so much rape.
1984 was far better.
>1984 was far better.
not better, different. they are visions of two different ways a dystopian, government controlled society, could go.
now read The Tragedy of Man by Imre Madách
>human advancement is le bad
It is.
>''Everyone is happy! Everyone takes soma!''
b***h if you we're truly happy you wouldn't NEED soma
I read it recently and was disappointed. I expected it to me much more subtle about how consoomer ideology had insidiously manifested itself in the human psyche but instead everybody was just totally brainwashed as an infant simple as, constantly reciting state propaganda and shit. Pretty reddit tier frankly.
I recently picked up pic related in a secondhand bookstore. The description on the back seemed similar to Brave New World, so who knows maybe it's better? I'll report back.
>I expected it to me much more subtle about how consoomer ideology had insidiously manifested itself in the human psyche
I'll give you that it's not subtle per se, but people often seem to miss how it's a critique of rational liberal values by making the most unappealing society possible that still checks every box.
Happiness: Maximized
Stability: Maximized
Freedom: For those that really want it. There's even the meta-freedom to not choose freedom.
Art: It's being produced at an incredible rate
Sexual liberation: complete
Casualties: Minimized. Internally, at least.
Coersion: all but gone.
The capacity to evolve and improve: Intact, the island guys are selected to be genuine geniuses who want to improve humanity's lot.
So where the hell is the problem? The fact that everyone being drugged, some people being deliberately brain-damaged, and so forth are "yucky" isn't a rational argument. It challenges people to put their finger on *in what way* a society demonstrably more equitable, prosperous, technologically advanced, socially liberated, happier society than our own is so apparently repulsive.
But I feel like most people just go "Yucky! Drugs and no shame! Muh Emotions!" and leave it at that, entirely missing the point of the critique.
>So where the hell is the problem? The fact that everyone being drugged, some people being deliberately brain-damaged, and so forth are "yucky" isn't a rational argument. It challenges people to put their finger on *in what way* a society demonstrably more equitable, prosperous, technologically advanced, socially liberated, happier society than our own is so apparently repulsive.
>But I feel like most people just go "Yucky! Drugs and no shame! Muh Emotions!" and leave it at that, entirely missing the point of the critique.
So? What is it?
I'm in the camp that gives up and goes "I guess my vestigial revultion is something to overcome in pursuit of values I believe in"
I think there are a number of valid answers from religious perspectives, but all it really did from a purely rationalist perspective the only thing it seems to have done wrong is expose the already-present problem of most life being purposeless. To me it looks like most people just aren't ready to face the idea that they're more attached to their problems than to their supposed values, because "fighting" something gives them purpose, whereas totally obviating it lets in existential anxiety.
>To me it looks like most people just aren't ready to face the idea that they're more attached to their problems than to their supposed values, because "fighting" something gives them purpose, whereas totally obviating it lets in existential anxiety.
Agreed.
Absolutely. It's really fricking pathetic how much of politics now is about raging against abstract meme problems like """racism""" with almost no concern given towards actually making society prosperous by considering what about it is currently working, and what isn't.
You got it perfectly. I still think it should still be an open question whether or not it's actually 'le bad.' Aldous Huxley didn't seem to completely reject the notion that a society like this is an actual goal, he may have just been trying to get us to stop and think it over first. In my opinion, we should consider the possibility that our desire for 'le heckin meaning in a tradcath bodybuilder state that sends you off to die a glorious death in battle' is actually just juvenile bullshit and cope as a result of current less developed society, and the mature thing to do is get over ourselves and get serious about making a healthy society.
Cool midwit opinion bro. Next you'll be telling me how e-girlta is softcore porn, and Dostoevsky writes melodramas.
I think it contains some very interesting ideas (though they're always brutely stated as just being le bad), but the actual plot is shit. It just doesn't work, feels slapped together in a desperate attempt to turn a political treatise into a novel.
I think books like this should commit to what they are and just have a "plot" of two people talking to each other in a room.
I couldn't quite enjoy 1984, it was just so boring (I still haven't finished it).
I don't often read fiction, but I found this to be entertaining in the aspect of genetic modification, soma is also a great concept.
it's so accurate, people just watching porn and getting high after spending all day working in their sterile city cages.
also the pavlovian orgy.
the ending didn't make sense, did he rock about to symbolize infantilism? this is what I made of it.
>it's so accurate, people just watching porn and getting high after spending all day working in their sterile city cages.
You're ignoring a giant difference between our world and theirs, they are supported and sanctioned in doing so. In 2024 America, we are all turbo consumers but we still have to scrap in order to make a living in a fake economy, and we face lots of pointless, hypocritical shaming for it.
We should just bite the bullet and pay to maintain the bottom echelons of society in their mashed potato existence, give them easy government-run jobs for a few hours a day and then send them to their tiny government-run apartments to nuke their brains until the next morning, with no bills to worry about.
I've encountered a disappointing (but not surprising) amount of people who unironically see nothing wrong with Huxley's nightmare world. Of course they're the same sort of people who think turning off the check engine light means the problem is fixed. There are always going to be stupid poles that allow themselves to be exploited pharmacologically or no.
It's even more stupid to unironically see nothing good about it.
BNW isn't about the idea that there's nothing good about pharmacology, but it and radical secular materialism is a potent vector to basically destroy humanity.
Fair enough.
one of funniest reviews I've ever seen:
www.goodr eads.com/review/show/197996170#comment_list
>I kept waiting for some sort of redemption arc for this savage wherein he stopped being a complete asshat, but that didn't happen. He was creepy as frick right up till the end.
>And what an ending it was.
>So John has had enough of polite society and runs out to some deserted little strip of land. Once there, he prays to some weird mash-up of Christian and Native American gods, flogs himself daily, and tries his darndest to make his life as hard and unbearable as he can. Because suffering for no reason whatsoever is what makes life good?
>Bottom line, he's so batshit that tourists start showing up at his doorstep to watch him act the fool. But it's not till Lenina gets there and tries to embrace him that he loses his damn mind. He tries to attack her with his nasty little flogger and when he doesn't succeed, he just starts beating the frick out of himself. And if that wasn't weird enough, he AND all the tourists end up getting turned on by his self-flagellation and have a massive orgy.
>John wakes up after his night of debauchery, can't deal with having busted a nut, and hangs himself.
>The end.
Notice how it's almost exclusively women echoing this review
It's because they don't want romantic little pussies like John.
fricking kek. This is so true. They literally get wet for an abusive toxic character.
Jesus Christ. How did she make it through the entire book when it doesn't have any silly little gifs??
>amount of people who unironically see nothing wrong with
Because everyone thinks they would be Alphas or Betas, not Epsilons
Epsilons have the best time in the world, this is stated outright. It's Alphas that have a hard time.
Disgusting book, threw it away after reading the first 30 pages. That's the comment I made on the mook when I was still a moronic plebbitor, that it to say, before I became so based that plebbit perma-banned me, and another stupid plebbitor replied that 'noooooooo!!!! You should have kept reading after the gross sex scenes nooooo!!!! It's just to show you a literary effect I'm a stupid plebbitor' so everyone who likes this book is a stupid plebbitor by default who should go back and kill himself
The setting is AF 632 (After Ford)
>AD 2540 in the Gregorian calendar)
i really like the whimsical art deco kaleidoscope aesthetic BNW has, thats the strongest thing it has going for it IMO.
Is there an audio book of this somewhere? (British speaker only)
1984 has better storytelling. Orwell is a better writer, but Huxley is more intelligent and it is apparant if you compare these two books.
Was the antagonist right? Are "old things" really so detrimental to progress? We need God no matter what. Even if you're for or against Him, without him you have nothing to strive for. That's what a lot of atheists fail to understand.
I want some soma
J. B. S. Haldane's Daedalus (1924) - his vision of a future in which humans controlled their own evolution through directed mutation and use of in vitro fertilisation ("ectogenesis") is thought have been an influence on Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, where citizens are engineered through artificial wombs and childhood indoctrination programmes into predetermined classes (or castes) based on intelligence and labour
>J. B. S. Haldane
That dude is interesting. He was the classic eccentric genius. Biology professor and research at Cambridge, one Cambridge student said: "he seemed to be the last man who might know all there was to be known"
Nobel laureate biologist Sir Peter Medawar called him "the cleverest man I ever knew"
Nobel laureate molecular biologist, Sir James Watson described him as "England's most clever and eccentric biologist"'
Univ of Texas professor Sahotra Sarkar described him as "probably the most prescient biologist of this [20th] century"
>It’s a well written dystopian tale of a future where the concepts of mothers, fathers, families, monogamy, childbirth, and many other things have all been abolished and seen as perverse
an English chemical plant made its mark on Brave New World.
the Billingham Manufacturing Plant in Stockton-on-Tees, North East England. The author visited this industrial giant and was struck by how it was an "anomalous [oasis] of pure logic in the midst of the larger world of planless incoherence." The factory was set up by a businessman and politician named Sir Alfred Mond, 1st Baron Melchett, who might have lent his name to the story’s Resident World Controller of Western Europe, Mustapha Mond.
I liked that smart people were sent on an island. I hope it was a real island and not some "the giver" euphemism for euthanasia.
But yeah, this is the best kind of dystopia, because sex.
>I liked that smart people were sent on an island.
This was my favorite part of the book, and it presents a very important lesson for real life: what is good for smart people is not necessarily good for dumb people, and vice versa. This should really be talked about more, as our school system simultaneously tries to send everyone to college (bad for dumb people who aren't cut out for it and should just get practical life and job training), but still ends up pushing hedonistic ghetto values on everyone (bad for smart people who would be happier just accepting that they prefer quieter pursuits instead of pretending to be turbo normies).
This is also relevant on an individual level: If you have an obviously low-IQ friend, you don't need to try to 'groom' them into becoming an intellectual, they simply are not built for it. Settle for just helping them drop any particularly ass-backwards views they have that cause them trouble.
And no, I don't think it was a euphemism for euthanasia. They had already established the premise of taking advantage of islands to safely try out new ideas (Ireland was a testing grounds for a reduced working week), not a stretch at all to say that they would stick the Alphas who inevitably get too smart in very remote island where they can live in peace.
One common recreational activity that is programmed to promote “happiness”, and is encouraged at a very young age, is sexual promiscuity. In school, children would “discover each other” at “recess” through erotic foreplay. “‘The nurse shrugged her shoulders. ‘Nothing much,’ she answered. ‘ It’s just about this little boy seems rather reluctant to join in the ordinary erotic play.’” (Huxley 31-32)
/// The National Park is surrounded by moist deciduous forest and teak plantations /// You can see it, like skid marks of a car at an accident scene /// Similarly, the ministry teaches the premillennial view of eschatology /// I'd like to travel around Europe this summer but Jacob is dead set on touring the U.S. /// Tuck your chair in (= put it so that the seat of it is under the table) so that no one trips over it /// Marauding gangs of armed men have been looting food relief supplies /// Shapiro received $6.25 million in TKO Class A common stock vesting in one year, while Endeavor CEO Ari Emanuel (who is also CEO of TKO) received stock grants worth $40 million vesting over a four-year period /// It was his first vacation after 18 months of straight up hustling /// Hayes had a blank slate to fill, a team to construct from scratch /// This cream contains a mild analgesic to soothe stings and bites /// The epistemological deadlocks of quantum physics ///
Each caste is split into "plus" and "minus" members
Unlike the lower castes, Alphas and Betas are not clones, allowing for more individual personalities. The lower three castes are usually clones.
Alphas wear gray
Betas wear mulberry
Gammas wear green
Deltas wear khakis
Epsilons wear black
Linda (a Beta-minus) accompanied the Director (Alpha) on a date to the Savage Reservation (in New Mexico and not under the jurisdiction of the World State), accidentally got separated from him, and later gave birth to a normal human "savage" child, John (the Savage), who is the tragic hero. He’d rather be unhappy and free than living under World State slavery.
Lenina (a Beta) is a hottie who dates Henry Foster (an Alpha Plus in every way) and Bernard (Alpha with a smaller stature that normal Alphas) but she ultimately becomes obsessed with John the savage
English band...The album artwork and title song are references to the novel of the same name written by Aldous Huxley.
I have seen many things
In a lifetime alone
Mother love is no more
Bring this savage back home
Wilderness, house of pain
Makes no sense of it all
Close this mind, dull this brain
Messiah before his fall
What you see is not real
Those who know will not tell
All is lost, sold your souls
To this brave new world
A brave new world
In a brave new world
...
A brave new world
Where is salvation now?
Lost my life, lost my dreams
Rip the bones from my flesh
Silent screams, laughing here
Dying to tell you the truth
You are planned and you are damned
In this brave new world
...
In a brave new world
A brave new world
...
Bring this savage back home