The Question
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Blindgroping posting from the Den of TQ
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
http://huxley.net/bnw/index.html
6? Thoughts?
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
http://huxley.net/bnw/index.html
6? Thoughts?
Brave New World reading
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Number_6
beer, I want beer
On the novel? I think it's a more accurate depiction of the American tendency towards dystopia than Nineteen Eighty-Four, which to me seems more the European route to dystopia. No coincidence, then, that Huxley's book comes out of his experiences living in Hollywood, while Orwell's comes out of his living in Europe.
I can't count the number of Leninas I have in my classes semester after semester, incapable of thinking--and unwilling to think--in any real way about anything more difficult than what's on television. And with each passing year, we capitulate just a little more to their demands not to be asked to think to hard about things, and not to have to be confronted with ideas that make them uncomfortable.
So I think that the threat Huxley talks about is very real, and when I do a course that includes a section on dystopia, I generally assign Huxley rather than Orwell (though when time permits, I will screen the film version of Nineteen Eighty-Four with John Hurt--despite it's inability to completely realize the novel on film, particularly the long passages from Goldstein's book, it does a very good job).
I think that in many ways, we are in danger of becoming the sort of vacuous culture described by Orwell, and I think the blame cannot be assigned to any one political segment of our society. While the right fights against certain types of knowledge--and I wonder how the anti-evolutionists will respond to yesterday's announcement that the gap in the fossil record has been filled--it's the Hollywood left that provides a regular smorgasbord of pre-digested ideas and mindless entertainment. And it's the medical and pharmaceutical industries that over-prescribe antidepressants and other sorts of medicines that are being used precisely the way Soma is used in Brave New World. Good God--there actually is a drug called Soma now: http://www.drugs.com/soma.html.
I think all Americans should be required to read Huxley's novel and to write a lengthy essay chronicling their own tendencies towards the sorts of behavior chronicled in the book, as well as an analysis of those elements in our culture that encourage the movement towards a Huxleyan future.
Excellent novel, disturbing foresight.
I can't count the number of Leninas I have in my classes semester after semester, incapable of thinking--and unwilling to think--in any real way about anything more difficult than what's on television. And with each passing year, we capitulate just a little more to their demands not to be asked to think to hard about things, and not to have to be confronted with ideas that make them uncomfortable.
So I think that the threat Huxley talks about is very real, and when I do a course that includes a section on dystopia, I generally assign Huxley rather than Orwell (though when time permits, I will screen the film version of Nineteen Eighty-Four with John Hurt--despite it's inability to completely realize the novel on film, particularly the long passages from Goldstein's book, it does a very good job).
I think that in many ways, we are in danger of becoming the sort of vacuous culture described by Orwell, and I think the blame cannot be assigned to any one political segment of our society. While the right fights against certain types of knowledge--and I wonder how the anti-evolutionists will respond to yesterday's announcement that the gap in the fossil record has been filled--it's the Hollywood left that provides a regular smorgasbord of pre-digested ideas and mindless entertainment. And it's the medical and pharmaceutical industries that over-prescribe antidepressants and other sorts of medicines that are being used precisely the way Soma is used in Brave New World. Good God--there actually is a drug called Soma now: http://www.drugs.com/soma.html.
I think all Americans should be required to read Huxley's novel and to write a lengthy essay chronicling their own tendencies towards the sorts of behavior chronicled in the book, as well as an analysis of those elements in our culture that encourage the movement towards a Huxleyan future.
Excellent novel, disturbing foresight.
Blindgroping
U mad 'bro?
Is this where the user Soma took his name from?
SaintLucifer
beer, I want beer
Aw fuck. Not with the baby books. I read that when I was still crawling towards my crib. Get with the times my children.
SaintLucifer
beer, I want beer
Number 6 sucked my cock and told me it was number ONE to him. *ROTFLMAO*.
Big Dick McGee
If you don't know, now ya know
Number_6 said:
Will do! It might take me a couple of months to read it (what with my tendency to fall into bed and pass out these days), but I will pick it up, and post my thoughts here.