Literally utopia

Giving heroin to citizens to make them want to work hard all day long the next day. What a great idea

>

Heroin users can be perfectly productive if you give them free access to a clean supply.

*1996

I never understood what Huxley wanted to prove with this one, the world he described didn't appear to me neither as an utopia nor as a dystopia and he clearly didn't want to give any of his characters the moral high ground.

He unironically meant it as utopia but later he revisited it and said no lads we must be hippies instead, rather than technology we will have magical birds reminding us to be good and people will get along for no reason at all, pass the mescaline etc

[citation needed]

I don't know anything about Huxley besides what is said in the prologue of this book but wasn't he criticizing Keynesianism the whole time with all those references to increasing consumption by making things unnecessarily harder? Overcomplicated games, new technologies not being released, etc.

I don't think it matters what Huxley thought, Phillip K. Dick did drugs better than he ever did. The only reason anyone know about his story is because it had child sex in it so was considered 'literary'. Did you read it? Tons of boring passages about this drug and social divide and all that nonsense. It's just a complaint that endless seeking of pleasure can ruin you, which is a no duh to us of the internet age where you can sit around all day and watch porn and no one cares.
Zizek is just wrong. People like his type, sure, those people need to exhaust themselves to feel the same kind of pleasure that normal people get out of life. Not everyone wants to be 'interesting'. The chinese even have an insult 'may you lead an interesting life'.

>The chinese even have an insult 'may you lead an interesting life'.
No they don't. You got memed. The rest of your post is rubbish, too.

if you actually believe this is utopia you're a bugman with no soul

For (You)

>you could say that we are no less indoctrinated than the people in BNW
You could make that point but you'd be wrong. They are literally subjected to social engineering from birth, given a class and a status and an order to follow. Our current society has an order, but it is no where near as rigidly defined as the one portrayed in BNW.

>It is better to be Socrates satisfied than a pig satisfied
Only if you think the only good in the world is base pleasure.

>good

what do you mean by this?
>only if you think the only good in the world is
>base pleasure
do you think john felt the only good in the world is base pleasure? because i think huxley just wanted to write a book that he though london (where he comes from) would be like in the future... also john the savage kills himself because he can not beat base pleasure such as sex with no hindrances... hes basically elliot gold which i think is a poor mask to put on someone who in my opinion was very noble although he lost in the end against his carnal desire to copulate and old world views of what is morality....

>no art

Utopia for absolute plebeians, maybe.

alpha plus weren't plebs. i believe only geniuses such as mustache mind Helmholtz Watson Bernard Marx were unsatisfied with the utopia and were sent to (islands) with like minded people who practiced art and science without hindrance to protect society and to keep away any change from destabilizing the utopias happiness it fell down to ,,,,, truth and beauty against happiness and contentment... ford was the god of capitalism and production our new god....

Childhood is thinking its dystopia. Adulthood is realizing its utopia.

you are completely off on zizek and satisfaction m8

>what do you mean by this?
That's all there is in the society. Being alone is suspect because it leads to thinking, so if you are alone too much it will draw attention to yourself and potentially have you shipped to an island. You must engage with lots of sex with lots of people. You must do everything that is a base pleasure and nothing else. There is no good music, literature, art or movies in this society. One is not allowed to feel powerful emotions unless that don't result from physical pleasure. The only thing that is allowed in this world is pleasure. Everything else is banned. To want to live in this world is to think that the only thing or the overriding good in life is physical pleasure.

Think of those who love to climb high difficult mountains, or the person who spends 40 years of rigorous practice to master the violin, even the person who likes to take long solitary walks in the countryside to clear their head. To want to live in that world is to say there is little good in any of these since the there is little pleasure and that you are okay with a society that does everything in its power to stop people from experiencing any of it.

I agree with the other user.

Being born into poverty will have a lasting effect on your social status. We're "privileged" to live in first world capitalist societies where you can "switch" classes, but even then you need hard work or luck, and it might still lead to disappointment, having a fixation on social standing. What about those who live in developing countries? Millions are born poor and thus die poor. Millions suffer from the moment they're born. In the same way, millions are born into relative luxury and will die in luxury, with basically no material needs unfulfilled.

Our social standing is defined the moment we're born. At least for 18-20 years. After that, it's blind luck. Your mental capacity, health-issues, your looks (which do matter regarding social status), and the wealth and character of your parents define you as a person, and you can't control any of these. It's like being engineered, without the infrastructure to keep you content with your current standing, or to satisfy your natural needs left intact.

But would I recognize the value of solitary walks, music and art if I was eningeered to fit in BNW's society?
In the book, the need for these things is only shown by few. IIRC they can fulfill their needs, with their own kind of people, just not among the "average".
You can live a content and happy life without art and deep feelings if you don't know or don't value those to begin with. The people of BNW didn't, so they were happy. It's perfect.

Even if our current selves, from this world, would be put into BNW, who can tell if soma wouldn't make us content enough to forget about art and true emotion? Who can tell that you wouldn't reevulate BNW's world if you could have physical pleasure until the day you die? Isn't it addictive to satisfy your sex-drive, and get high on drugs daily, to always know you'll never be involuntarily alone? I think we could adapt.

I'm reading his revisited book and throughout it he basically says that the big thing about his book was that governments will use modern tech and a promise of happiness and even goodwill to limit thier citizens and create a dystopia.

People who think this is a utopia are pretty much anti-human, there is more to being a person than a cog in a state machine that atleast makes you happy with all sorts of gadgets, drugs and toys.

If you push the value of a person as down as that, if you don't mind loosing all of those neat things like "art" that makes us human for the sake of feeling good 24/7, why not just abolish life entirely?

You could be like these fucks:
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_Euthanasia

Live your life, do whatever you want, destroy all the spooks and end it like samson by kamikazeing into the white house or something.
There you go, a life of joy and freedom.

Unless of course you care about future generations, at which point I have to ask why?

>People who think this is a utopia are pretty much anti-human, there is more to being a person than a cog in a state machine that atleast makes you happy with all sorts of gadgets, drugs and toys.

A clockwork orange if u will

Haven't read it yet but I have so much stuff to read until then desu senpai

Thx though

Thanks for the illuminating reply. You should be proud

>You can live a content and happy life without art and deep feelings if you don't know or don't value those to begin with.
I could not disagree with this more. I am a virtue ethicist and so I believe that virtue is the underpinning of what it is to be a fulfilled individual, and if you are not virtuous (and the knowledge required to pursue virtue is itself a virtue) you are not fulfilled human being.

You are claiming that these people in this link are the equals of the greatest men who have ever lived just because they get what they want. youtube.com/watch?v=h1BQPV-iCkU

I listed two possibilities:

-We are engineered to conform to BNW's utopia, so we don't value the things that make us human in reality
-We become addicted to their drugs and lifestyle, and conform to the utopia we disliked before for the lack of "human values"

I didn't state that I'd rather live in BNW's world. I'm just arguing that we can't say if it's better or worse than reality by discarding the basis of the book and its world: Numbing and altering people until they either feel no need to satisfy the "human" inside, or until they don't know what a human is like in our real society.

You are hung up on the idea that if you were in their world, you'd be your current self, un-engineered, born in reality, unchanged by drugs and the abundance of pleasure, and not one of them. To you and me, it's a distopya. To them it's an utopia. I'm judging their world based on their average person, and not on ours.

I totally understood your comment.

I just added onto that.
The most Frightening thing about dystopias, be they obviously horrible like 1984 or spooklishlesly horrible like BRW is that they are logically consistent at some level.

If I were born into BRW, I wouldn't question it probably, and the system will never fall.

I think so, too, OP. However, I mean it in the sense that ignorance is bliss. It simply is a different world from ours, and that doesn't necessarily mean it's wrong or dystopia-like. But there are some aspects of their world that are quite outlandish, of course. There are possibly many things wrong with our society that the masses are completely oblivious to-- just like Brave New World-- in which someone like The Savage think us nightmarish. And incidentally, this would mean that we are far from an utopia. It's all relative, you faggot.

>spoonfed ideology

Well the difference is we're spoonfed ideologies. And have access to even more. Not just a single ideology.

>Pneumatic
Quite pneumatic

Prolly why 90% of children's fiction involves orphans

The biggest part for me why A BNW is distopian is because the fact that creativity is dead. You have no chance of expressing yourself. There by you can't learn and you are being conditioned. The free mind is gone and you are program to oppress every thing with drugs. In my opinion this sounds so wrong.

Not that it's not happening right now but we have a change to free ourself from the herd without being a real heretic.

Nah mate, I don't get to go around committing mischief so it wouldn't work for me.

>I would rather be depressed and in control of my life than forever decently satisfied and lost

This is some severely subtle bait

Worked for the Chinese in early America, smoking opium and all.

Brave New World Revisited. Also, LOST was the basis of that.

Our society is only non-rigid where it does not matter to those in charge. We're allowed to bicker over video game consoles and maybe the puppet on the throne, but when you start fiddling with things that fuck with the power structure that gets shut down quickly.

The illusion of freedom is one of the main tools in keeping us complacent.

>Our social standing is defined the moment we're born. At least for 18-20 years. After that, it's blind luck. Your mental capacity, health-issues, your looks (which do matter regarding social status), and the wealth and character of your parents define you as a person, and you can't control any of these. It's like being engineered, without the infrastructure to keep you content with your current standing, or to satisfy your natural needs left intact.
I think realising this is essential to appreciating the BNW world. We are no less determined than them, just less adapted.

I always saw that a strength. It allowed the reader to see what they needed to see.
Is the future a hellish place, controlled by soft authority?
Is the future a magical pillow free of suffering?
It is both!

Every one of you who thought it a utopia are symptomatic of the decline of man and the shit state of things.

>The biggest part for me why A BNW is distopian is because the fact that creativity is dead.

Well what about if the general premise, if everything good about it was kept, and everything bad about it was tweaked to be good, such as, creativity was allowed?

What Huxley paradise was better

Brave New World or The Island? Which would you want to live in? Which promoted the most happiness?

>Manlet: The Book

How much is generally different between bnw and today? Heavily drugged population on average, heavily pursuing base pleasures, relative class systems based on intellect,

I still don't think so to create art men must suffer. But every body is conditiond to not suffer. when one suffers, one takes soma. True art does not exist in BNW, look at the feelies, they are okay but they wil never reach te epic climax of an Shakespeare story because they people are not know with these extreem kind of emotions.

And would you be happy to be an Epsilon? I mean every body is happy when he is a sheep but I still prefeer my free mind over being happy and numbed out of all the feelings that I am alouwd to feel as a human being.

>I still don't think so to create art men must suffer.

Do not believe that is a true statement. didnt read the rest yet

If the base is what you value most, then yes. That's actually the point.

I assure you tramadol is a real drug.

>I still don't think so to create art men must suffer.
I reject this idea. People can transmute their suffering into art but not all art comes from suffering.

I would trade my right nut to live in his Island.

Proud pleb reporting in
What should one read first - 1984 or Brave New World?

1984