Brave, New World.

What I liked about reading this was how quickly it came after reading 1984. A little over a month, for me. My favourite part of Brave New World is that no matter where you dig through Aldous Huxley's collection of analysis and review and "Revisited" literature, he never refers to this world as a Dystopia. Rather, it is a satirical take on a Utopian society in which nobody need worry about anything that makes us human today. Our way of life, as progressive as we may think it be, is savage to them.

I read it with a comparison of 1984 in mind, and though I thought myself clever at the time there exists many takes on comparing/contrasting the two, mainly these websites: 

http://www.egodialogues.com/words-language/huxley-orwell.php
&
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/rrxW1.png

They both carry basically the same message to readers, written from authors with similar goals writing in the same time period, and both works remain equally timeless, regardless of the warnings that the future holds no room for reading. And the message is that our society is trending in a very scary direction, we should all be concerned and we should all keep an intellectual assertiveness to keep this from happening to us.

But how this comes about is totally different in Brave New World. The ruling bodies and powers that be have no need for censorship, and rely on the fundamental truths that if society is given enough freedom to engage in fun yet ultimately unrewarding behaviour, that their need to continue to have fun and be worry free will outweigh their desire to learn, be independent and seek greater knowledge. I compared it a lot more to Fahrenheit 451 (review out soon, hopefully) because people, for the most part, have better things to do than to think and learn and philosophise and expand their minds. They have girls to play with, erotic games to engage in, orgies to attend and soma to take if they ever feel stressed. It reminded me much of the crowds of frat guys in college who think the last thing in the world they want to do with their free time is read a book or study history or visit a culture that lacks our technologies which is firmly rooted in traditions we may find savage.

Just thinking about things, who we are, what others did and what could be or thinking up scenarios for how people react and what makes us human, what is an acceptable reaction to any stimuli, is a fairly basic concept of philosophy. And of Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451 and 1984 I love how the authors make these ideas, these thought processes obsolete so that society can sleep peacefully at night and not deal with the horrors and brain cramps that deep thinking brings about. But nobody did it quite like Huxley.

He makes a satirical Utopia so easy to relate, even for us, 80 years later. There's no need for any intellectual tools anymore because there's pleasurable stimuli all around you, plus the social norms and peer pressure prevent many from wanting to seek knowledge and the tools that will expand their mind. It's very comparable, in my view, to those that put off fulfilling activities to watch ABC, NBC, CBS and FOX weekly and nightly programming or Hollywood blockbuster movies with their shitty writing, shitty plots and great special effects and excessuive use of PG-13 tits and ass (Transformers, anyone? What a pile of shit).

But rather than instill fear and scare you, Huxley makes fun of it all. And for that, I think he's done something no one else can match, and few even attempt to.