First off, this may be better in IMHO or maybe even GD, but I thought I’d start it off here. I’m sure the mods don’t need my permission to move it if they see fit.
OK. I’ve just read the book for the first time, and although it is usually described as a vision of a dystopian (v. bad) future, I can’t help but feel that its not that bad afterall. Most people seem to be very happy in their lives and jobs (Bernard, John, and towards the end Lenina are something of an exception).
The bit where we come across an Epsilon-Minus-Semi-Moron who opperates a lift seems to indicate that no matter what their position in the hierarcy, they are pleased to be who/what they are. Let’s face it, if a job needs doing isn’t it better that it is done by someone who has been conditioned to enjoy doing it than by someone who is intelectually overqualified.
From what Mond tells us, Iceland would be quite a good place to live, and the people there presumably get a sort of fulfilment.
It’s been a while since I read this, but I seem to recall that the issue was around the stifling of creativity and individuality. So yes, the underlying premise doesn’t sound bad, but to the individual who desires something other than what life as dealt this would be the equivalent of lifelong prison sentence. Perhaps worse would be if all such individuality were stamped out and eventually humankind became a sort of collective where we did things purely to exist with no concept of aesthetics, discovery, creativity, etc.
Or perhaps I am confusing the book with Charlie and Chocolate Factory?
I dunno, a society that bases itself on a caste system formed by fetal manipulation to cause physical and mental retardation in the lower classes, mass consumption of consumer goods to no purpose, and keeping the population in constant drug induced intoxication doesn’t really come across as all that desirable.
Streptocock-Gee to Banbury T, the fat’s in the liver, the cod’s in the sea!
I would love to live in a society with lifetime job security - a job you’re sure to love because you were designed for it.
But no Internet and no classical music - I’d miss those after a while. (or maybe not, being kept busy till bedtime with Electromagnetic Golf and Riemann-Surface Tennis.)
Paddle’s question is exactly why I find Brave New World more fearful than 1984 - BNW is more subtle, and it is the one that we Americans are seeing unfold before our eyes (other countries appear to be experiencing a 1984 type of reality - scary but true).
Would it be all that bad? Well from a day to day convenience and practicality standpoint, obviously not, or we wouldn’t be moving so aggessively in that direction - can you say designer babies? Prozac or Halcion is Huxley’s Soma, etc.?
But Captain Amazing gets at the deeper truth - we are giving up something fundamental to the success of the human race by going this route - the magic of connecting to one’s surroundings, of accomplishing things in the face of deadly risk, of experiencing the pain and promise of freedom.
To quote that eminent philosopher, Barry Manilow - “it was all very nice, but not very good”
