Brave New World Revisited
In 1958, Aldous Huxley wrote what might be called a sequel to his novel Brave New World, published in 1932, but it was a sequel that did not revisit the story or the characters, or re-enter the world of the novel. Instead, he revisited that world in a set of 12 essays. Taking a second look at specific aspects of the future Huxley imagined in Brave New World, Huxley meditated on how his fantasy seemed to be turning into reality, frighteningly and much more quickly than he had ever dreamed.That he had been so prophetic in 1931 about the dystopian future gave Huxley no comfort. He was a far more serious man in 1958 -- at the age of 64 -- and the world was a very different place, transformed by the catastrophe of World War II, the advent of nuclear weapons and the grip of the Cold War. Looking behind the Iron Curtain, where people were not free but dominated by totalitarian power, Huxley could only bow to the grim prophecy of his friend (and, briefly, his student at Eton) George Orwell in the novel 1984. In the free world, however, the situation seemed even more to be one for despair.
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- One of my most fascinating reads of all time was "Brave New World Revisited" (1950s I think), a follow-up of "Brave New World" (1920s I think) by Aldous Huxley. Similarly, the point then was how the mass media and TV would eventually be used to mislead and deflect populations' attentions.
Such innocent times when we thought the TV could be evil.
- can't help to think about Brave New World where they basically do that for inferior-cast humans. A great read. I recommend the sequel Brave New World Revisited
Those looks like to be the full texts (didn't verify):
- Yap, Brave New World is much more interesting to those who want to understand what might be our future than 1984. I believe that's common sense to those who read both novels.
Also interesting is Brave New World Revisited, a book written 30 years after he's other book where he compares it with 1984 by Orwell. He also makes some guesses about the future[1].
I love dystopias and Brave New World is the best.
spoiler
[1] The most important one being about soma and how it's so similar to lsd.
- Interesting on the topic as well is Huxley's Brave New World Revisited. As I recall he postured that democratic systems would come under significant strain if the world population reached 2 billion. :-)
- The really frustrating bit is sorting out how much of society relies on these fundamentally anti-intellectual structures. That's hard to answer. I really believe that over a certain size, widespread free-thinking is almost an impossibility.
A really interesting exploration of those sorts of ideas is reading Huxley's Brave New World, Brave New World Revisited and Island as a trilogy. I've read Gato's book that this essay is taken from, and he does a good job of stating the problem, but doesn't step far enough into it to look at how you restructure society to live in a freer way. Brave New World sets up a completely systemized dystopia, Island a communal utopia and BNW Revisited (collection of essays) puts down in more explicit terms much of what he thinks is the core of modern societies.
- Let's not forget "Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley, published in 1932, where he already described consumerism and instant gratification, rejection of science, as well as shallow experiences by consuming "soma" (todays "social media") versus authenticity.
And about 30 years later his book "Brave New World revisited" where he stated that "Brave New World" appeared much faster then he expected.
