If Huxley were still alive, I’d love to hear his thoughts on these efforts since they’ve been met with mixed results. Additionally, more drastic measures were taken in some developing nations like China’s one-child policy. While his point is valid that raising life expectancy is often easier than reducing births, the invention of the birth control pill in 1960 has made a big impact. Probably the problem we’ve best addressed from Huxley’s concerns is overpopulation.
“That so many of the well fed young television-watchers in the world’s most powerful democracy should be so completely indifferent to the idea of self-government, so blankly uninterested in freedom of thought and the right to dissent, is distressing, but not too surprising.” – Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited Overpopulation Huxley soon bursts this bubble though, pointing out the plight of flightless birds like the dodo who became content to stay on the ground when food was plentiful and later went extinct. I even questioned whether it should be considered a dystopia or utopia in my review. Initially, I took some solace from the fact that I found Brave New World’s “dystopia” much more appealing than others I’ve read like 1984. Why is this so? Because their elders, even in the democratic countries, do not want them to be given this kind of education.” – Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited “And yet children are nowhere taught, in any systematic way, to distinguish true from false, or meaningful from meaningless, statements. Many points even had me considering whether society (at least those in power) even want things to change/improve? Indeed, Huxley himself addresses this and raises concerns about the pushback from advertisers and clergymen in addition to politicians. At the same time, many of the concerns Huxley sheds light on seem to be getting worse rather than better which can make for a depressing read. Luckily, Brave New World is often combined with Revisited these days!Īmazingly, I still found most of Huxley’s concerns profound and very relevant today. So, you may want to read these two books first if you haven’t but I wouldn’t say it’s required. In his analysis, Huxley often refers to scenarios presented in Brave New World and also George Orwell’s 1984. Twenty-seven years later, in this third quarter of the twentieth century A.D., and long before the end of the first century A.F., I feel a good deal less optimistic than I did when I was writing Brave New World.” – Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited In the passing from one extreme to the other, there would be a long interval, so I imagined, during which the more fortunate third of the human race would make the best of both worlds-the disorderly world of liberalism and the much too orderly Brave New World where perfect efficiency left no room for freedom or personal initiative. Ours was a nightmare of too little order theirs, in the seventh century A.F., of too much.
“In 1931, when Brave New World was being written, I was convinced that there was still plenty of time… Covering topics like overpopulation, propaganda, and drugs, this collection of essays became Brave New World Revisited!
Huxley brave new world quotes series#
These thoughts resulted in a series of essays highlighting many of society’s problems and potential solutions as he saw them. Fast forward to 1958 and he was shocked by how quickly society was moving towards his predictions. When Huxley wrote Brave New World in 1931, he set his sci-fi dystopia over 600 years in the future.
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