/lit/ - Literature

You don't get it because you're part of it.

john the savage kills himself at the end

>>5435888
Part of what? There wasn't one character that I did not despise in the book. Was I supposed to hate them?

>>5435906
Really I thought that he achieved the next stage of human evolution and learned to levitate, becoming the chosen one.

>>5435937

It's a nightmare future society in which all remnants of democracy have been liquidated and people have absolutely no freedom of choice while society keeps them anesthetized by porn, female bestiality and iphones.

Sound familiar?

>>5435950
Thus we see the the writer to be person whose subjective morals to himself seem more then such. There is nothing wrong with complete rule if one is happy, is this not from where all will comes from? and truly determinism refutes any notion of freedom you had, does it not? Give me me peace, or give me death.

>read this shit in high school
>"lol this is such bullshit"
>years later
>realize most of the book could be considered prophecy

>>5435942

It doesn't say he kills himself but it implies it by describing him hanging from a stair well or whatever. was it stair well? i only read it once.

I didn't like brave new world too much.

>>5435985

You might think you're happy, but you don't really know if you haven't tasted freedom.

You don't know what it's like to be one of the protesters at Tienanmen square, who believed this was it, this was going to be the big liberation, we will start to have a part in deciding our own destiny, only to have it all squashed.

Now the government floods them with neat little baubles and consumer goods to try to keep them appeased. It's the exact same shit you see in BNW. And they constantly talk of "freedom" in their propaganda. You're free to cheat on your spouse, you free to choose your pizza toppings. You can 'live as you please,' just stay out of politics.

Aldous Huxley said this in an interview about happiness, "There are situations in which you might be happy when you oughtn't be happy." A woman who is abused everyday by her boyfriend might convince herself she is happy, but she ought not be happy in that situation.

>>5435950
Yeah, but where do characters like Bernard, John, and Helmholtz fit in the context of the book, since all three rejected societal norms, were individuals, but were still flawed and damaged people. The overall tone of the book that I got was "Look how horrible this society is, and look how horrible it is not being a part of it." It honestly made me feel kinda shitty.

>>5435985

And if you're an American, then these are the words of a traitor. Not to it's flag, not it's cheesy anthems or any nationalistic construct. You're a traitor to what it makes an earnest attempt to stand for.

>>5436029
You might think you're happy, but you don't really know if you haven't tasted freedom. When you are happy you are happy. I am not necessarily happy right now, but In this moment I find contentment. Which truly is the best things, since what you call happiness is impermanent.

>>5435985
are you OP? did you actually dislike the book because you think the society seemed good and you didn't realize why Huxley viewed it so critically?

>>5436055
I liked it, the meaning of life is to have peace when all other desire has shown its true fruits which are fleeting. the writer is really arguing against things that go against his morals not higher social responsibility.

>>5436044
Freedom?, why should care for freedom in its self? Is not what freedom entails which is that actual draw? which is peace.

>>5436065
either this is an insanely good troll or you're autistic. not like the 4chan definition of autistic, like actually completely unable to understand others' emotional states.

>>5436078
>>5436065
>>5436051
>>5435985

>>5435985

How can you even speak of morality?

How can you even speak of a 'one' when your entire world is constructed for you by an external agency?

>>5436034

The tragedy was that there really was no way to not be a part of it. Bernard had already been pretty much seduced by it. He had already internalized its values. Bernard and Helmholtz both had an inkling of something 'more' to life. But these are older gentlemen. It was already too late for them.

John had the misfortune of reading shakespeare, which is anti-polyamorist propaganda. Many of shakespeare's plays deal with male monogamous jealousy in some way, something for which there is no place in this brave new world. The new world doesn't even allow for people to flirt with the idea of exclusive love. It still exists in society today, at least people 'flirt' with the idea. But there's no question that it's on its way out. People don't love that way anymore. They meet you on the internet on a website that generates personality matches to assign you a partner algorithmically, they fuck you once and then tell you not to get attached because that's not proper, (really it's because they don't feel anything anymore).

>>5436097
I understand that people have misconceptions of what they actually want.

>>5436104
Can you put that a little more clear.

>>5436106

I saw the article recently about how online dating personality tests "don't work." Wow imagine that!

But just imagine what will happen if they come up with something that does work? Kind of creepy.

>>5436116
It never will in subject. Personality doesn't exist as singular entity.

>>5436116
It "doesn't work" for the same reason the other poster said. Most people on those sites aren't looking for anything but sex to begin with. The algorithm can't work if the people aren't using it properly.

>>5436144
Still no, personality is a superficial part of the mind.

>>5436106

It's interesting that we've gone through this shift where the sexual liberation freed people from the 'kitsch' of propriety and passionless marriages. The way I see it, the loosening of marriage was supposed to allow for more love.
But now people are just emotionless robots.

>>5436202
Emotionless robots, I am not so sure about that.

Huxley was a visionary.

What you can take from the book is exactly the debate that has spawned in this thread.
You can either submit and say "it ain't so bad", resist and fail, or try to avoid the horror by opting out.

>>5436202

Houellebecq kinda explores this in his books.
How the sexual revolution brings us back to the survival of the fittest.
We live in a world where a big chunk of dudes will only get their genitals touched by prostitutes or their own hands and another portion will just go ahead and date girls oblivious of this demographic.

>>5436233
Actually there are other factors to this argument that would need deeper analysis in the story. From what I am hearing the government has made it so that the populace has contentment, at the cost of freedom. The question to a person who has not read the book is if it is really that flawless. If it simply what has been said, fighting would be short sighted.

anyone got the imadge where it compares huxley to the other guy who feared us being forced to conform?

>>5436213
Not really emotionless, they more don't know their emotions. They act, but they don't know why they act that way. Easily influenced by any gully wash you can feed them.

imo atleast.

>>5436106
Goddamn. This post hits pretty hard.

>>5435942
RIP Sides
2003-2014

>>5437179
it compares huxley and orwell, i am willing to bet money it's probably on google images if you just type "huxley vs orwell"

Damn, the book is almost too accurate. It even mentions how black people have alot more babies.

>>5436106
op here.

I think I understand it now.

Wow that's depressing.

>>5436005
Because Huxley was already talking about the present.

>>5436009
Nah, it implies that he learned how to fly, check the book again.

>>5436034
Because there isn't a real MC, it's a book about the society not a single person in it. That's why a lot of people prefer 1984 since it's focused on a single character who is good and easy to identify like any good propaganda would.

>>5436213
>>5436202

The people from BNW aren't emotionless neither, they just have the emotions that benefit the more the higher classes.

>>5436251
Read the book, is really short and quick.

>>5436106
This is an interesting reading and certainly valid but narrow. Shakespeare deals with a wide range of human emotions, not just exclusive romantic love. John's ability to empathize with Shakespearean characters showed that his range of emotions was not yet dulled by social structures and Soma. But the rest of the world regarded someone like that as insane and dangerous.

This book is essentially "speculative fiction". You could compare it to a lot of Atwood's works too. They seem plausible, considering the current conditions of society, but nobody can predict the future exactly, yada, yada, yada. Anyway, Huxley is presenting, in this book, a society where the populous is given the distractions of pleasure (soma, sex, etc.) and entertainment in order to lull them into a sort of submission. It's like 1984 in that society doesn't have a say in what's happening on a grand scale, but it is unlike it in that this is not being directly "enforced" upon society. Society is readily accepting this state in exchange for all the material things they desire. They could care less about reading books or talking politics because they have soma. The characters aren't meant to be sympathetic because Aldous Huxley wrote this novel as a warning of a future he saw. He wanted you to find the characters participating in this society deplorable.

>>5438919
>The characters aren't meant to be sympathetic because Aldous Huxley wrote this novel as a warning of a future he saw.

To be honest, it sounds like a rather good future; I want to live in the matrix.

>>5435847
you have to be pretty dumb to not understand this book's message

>>5437179

>>5439714
Which would all be cool if we had competent government.

>>5440040
"The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist."

>>5440253
It is mutually destructive, they really are that stupid.

>>5435942
fucking sides are gone

>>5438919
This may seem redundant, but Soma is essentially equivalent to any recreational drug there is today. Whether it be Weed, Cocaine, LSD, etc. Soma and its extensive usage shows us that if we are stimulated mentally and physically, it renders us useless for the time being and it makes us not question our surroundings and what is happening with the world, and due to this, people just don't care to look at the world in a different light because they are stimulated. In BNW, that affect may also be a side-effect of people being bred via Hatcheries, but still it makes sense to say so.

Also, Soma can be used to parallel Gaming, TV, etc. People are so hooked on the "pleasure" of sitting down and watching Jersey Shore for ten hours straight, but yet they don't do anything else. That is all they do, they watch J-whore or whatever their names are get fucked like a horse getting ridden by a gorilla because its better than trying to help others out or trying to make a difference in society.

BNW is truly a prophecy of how this world and our society, Western Society, is going to fall to shit in the next 50 years or so.

>>5435942
at last i see

>>5436005
>not reading the pretext about post war perpetual militaristic totalitarian states

2spooky. he pretty much predicted the cold war and the war on terror.

From memory this book originally came about as something of a rebuttal to an earlier spate of sci-fi novels which posited a similar society to that pictured in Brave New World, but painted them as utopian rather than distopian. Basically Huxley was saying "No no, if you try and make that kind of society, THIS is what you end up with." Now, I could be wrong, but I think Orwell was one of the people writing the kind of story this was rebutting.

>>5442384
>its better than trying to help others out or trying to make a difference in society.


....why would you need to help others or make a different to society if society is already as good as it gets?