I finally got around to reading ‘Brave New World’ by Huxley. I didn’t find the distopia so distopian. Nor does it seem hideously unrealistic.<\/p>\n
It was a case of round pegs going into round holes, and square pegs going into square holes, and if the pegs and holes really don’t match, then they get shipped off to an island where they can build holes as they see fit. (okay, so that’s a horribly over-extended metaphor).<\/p>\n
There are a few fundamental problems with their universe. The belief that intrinsic nature is nothing and with rigorous control over the environment (from zygote on), individuals can be remolded and standardized. The belief that given a sufficiently advanced society, there are no challenges from the world outside the sculpting of the social order and the people that compose it. I’m not saying it’s totally bogus, but it’s taken overboard (probably to illustrate a point, which it does quite effectively.)<\/p>\n
And they did have a compelling reason to strictly regulate humanity. As the world had become overpopulated, catastrophe happened, billions died, people lived in misery and squallor, and cried out for order.<\/p>\n
The keys to what make bnw not a nightmare to me is that it does not harm. Physical injury, sickness, torture, these are things that a citizen of their society does not know, and, in fact, fear is something that citizens’ lives are constructed to avoid. It’s comfortable, though not challenging.<\/p>\n
Harmless and bland. I wouldn’t fit in their society. The attitude towards sex, while not for me, doesn’t bother me (very castro). Besides it’s blatant unrealism, the attitude towards family doesn’t bother me (I believe that the bonding to parent-figures is an almost undeniable propensity of human nature, without proof.)<\/p>\n
And furthermore, their treatment of outsiders is generally top notch. If you realy don’t fit, we’ll send you off to an island full of others who don’t fit, and you can go it on your own, if that’s what you need. You pick the island.<\/p>\n
It seems realistic in many ways to me. TV instead of hypnopaedia, anti-depressants\/ecstacy for soma, therapy instead of VPS. Poor proxies, but there nonetheless.<\/p>\n
The part of it that bothers me the most is that they don’t cause pain\/unpleasantness to adults, but they certainly do to children and fetuses, as part of their sculpting plan.<\/p>\n
Scatterbrained for a review, but those were my thoughts.<\/p>\n
I prefer a society of challenges suited to the individual, and harmonious management of conflict, rather than the elimination of challenge or conflict. I think there would be few who would disagree with that, but enh, whatever.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I finally got around to reading ‘Brave New World’ by Huxley. I didn’t find the distopia so distopian. Nor does it seem hideously unrealistic. It was a case of round pegs going into round holes, and square pegs going into square holes, and if the pegs and holes really don’t match, then they get shipped … Continue reading “Brave New World”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-474","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/474","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=474"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/474\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}