/lit/ - Literature

>>7096989
>how is this dystopian?
Well...

>abolition of natural reproduction (human embryos are raised artificially)
>an abundance of material goods
>people enjoy perfect health and youthfulness
>death is not feared
>lifestyle which readers may see as shallow and hedonistic (promoted by the ready availability and universally-endorsed consumption of the hallucinogenic drug soma, and by the promotion of recreational sex, often as a group activity)
>no dissatisfaction because each caste member receives the same workload, food, housing, and soma ratio

>>7096989
This and 1984 are both not dystopian. You've just got people who read them that way because it conforms to their preconceived notions of tyranny.

Essentially both books are about a world that gets screwed up and how civilization copes. In Brave New World, chemical weapons destroy the world's food supply, and they are controlling the population. In 1984 a nuclear weapon hits and they can't provide the basic needs for everyone anymore, the government is trying to maintain control by distracting everyone from how shit it is.

>>7097122
>chemical weapons destroy the world's food supply, and they are controlling the population
>a nuclear weapon hits and they can't provide the basic needs for everyone anymore, the government is trying to maintain control by distracting everyone from how shit it is

Sounds pretty dystopian to me m8.

>>7097193
Compared to the immediate past of both books, things have greatly improved. They're not dystopian because the civilization isn't doomed, it is recovering.

>>7096989

>pleasure over thinking
>nil progress
>no meaningful expression

You totalitarians make me sick.

>>7097221
>things are slightly better than absolute shit
>that means it's not dystopian

But what about Ennui?

>>7097122
When do these things happen in these books?

>>7097528
In a conversation you didn't read in the wiki m8

>>7096989
before you ask that question, examine first why those things you listed are.

>>7097547
and by/for what.

We get it, you're an angsty highschooler who hates humanism because his life is shit and he gets bullied

>>7097528

I haven't read them in awhile so I can only give you the general place where they occur.
For Brave New World it is the part where they talk about the History, chemical and biological warfare killing genetic diversity is a major part of that. For 1984, Winston is trying to remember whether Oceania had always been at war, and he off-handely remembers an atomic bomb being dropped on Colchester. It was part of a whole air raid, they nuked the shit out of what used to be Great Britain.

If that isn't good enough, go read the book. 1984 is one of those books people only pretend to have read.

>>7097233
>things are slightly better than absolute shit
>that means it's not dystopian
Yes. Do you even know what a dystopia is? If a Utopia is perfection, everything as good as it could possibly be, then a dystopia is a place where everything is as bad as possible.

The government in both is what is holding civilization together. Given the circumstance neither government is depicted as being objectively and totally awful, the main characters are just deluded and awful people.

>>7096989
They're both power structures that manipulate humanity's basic neural circuits to keep the status quo.

Brave New World satisfies everyone's Oral/first/reptile/survival circuit and tries to imprint everyone to focus on that circuit above all others with the exception of a few Alphas who are imprinted to also value their third/cerebral circuit just enough to do complex tasks but not to innovate. This is far from ideal for humanity because the population is still controlled through fear of losing their oral pleasures, and imprinting is controlled strictly enough that there is no hope of anyone breaking free from that fear.

1984's government uses the anal/territorial circuit to cow people into either fear of their leaders or brainwashing them into identifying with their leaders and fearing rejection by those leaders. Any sign of an individual leaving that fear behind is met with violence and traumatic re-imprinting.

In short, both worlds not only use fear to control the populace (even existing governments do that) but they limit themselves to one kind of fear and so exhibit a frightening amount of control over most people and create an absolute hell on earth for anyone whose imprinting doesn't go correctly.

>>7096989
People are reduced to the state of cattle.

People don't like this.

>>7097765
But people aren't controlled by fear in BNW. If you are an outlier you are free to go live with other outliers.

>>7097594
I have actually read it, except I am bit older than your average /lit/ poster, I have the right nit to remembet this stuff.

>>7097617
>The government in both is what is holding civilization together.
This is such a facile empty thing to say. Civilization can't but be held together, the government and civilization being contributory to another. You fuckwit.

>>7097931
The islands where they send outliers are a secret, so if you don't manage to become a personal case of your local controller you could never know they exist.

>not controlled by fear
Check out the reactions of the well-conditioned people to anything like alienation from entertainment and soma. Just hanging out and looking at the ocean is enough to make Lenina suspect Bernard is dangerously insane.

>>7096989
Hi Last Man.

>>7096989
Why would anyone write about a dystopian society when we already live in one?

>>7097956
>The islands where they send outliers are a secret, so if you don't manage to become a personal case of your local controller you could never know they exist.

What do you think happens to these outliers if they aren't the main character? You think they kill them? You think they even know how to kill? The entire reason Mustapha Mond's position exists is to oversee the system and deal with any kinks the machinery within can't. I am sure anyone conspicuously otherly will be sent to him or one of the other Controllers one way or another.

If endless pleasure is available and normal, anyone who rejects it is for all intents insane.

>>7097964

HE JUS' WENT THERE!

>>7097964
not quite edgeboy

>>7097221
>>7097617
>guys it's not dystopian!
>civilization is recovering!
>government is holding civilization together!
>in 1984
>neither government is depicted as objectively and totally awful
>IN NINETEEN EIGHTY-FUCKING-FOUR

Ebin.

>the main characters are just deluded and awful people

Those scamps! Why can't they just love Big Brother?

>>7097122
>1984
>not dystopian

Most people don't understand this novel. But the real scary thing about the book is that there is literally nothing wrong or scary with the society it describes. It merely appears scary to us.

In fact is the progression towards higher efficiency is not a mere possibility, it is the only possibility. All civilizations inevitably converge to a singularity of the ultimate efficiency: that of unlife.

>>7098097
how is unlife the singularity of the ultimate efficiency?

>>7098062
>this is what Marxists actually tell themselves
have fun with your hivemind

>>7097226
Think about the lowest common denominator of society. You may believe they have some great freedom and right to knowledge. In reality only an extremely small % of these people ever make use of the knowledge or education available to them. In fact, often times the knowledge only causes them to hate their position in society, or they form misguided/incomplete opinions and are worse off than being completely ignorant. Also the highest tier of society has access to plenty of knowledge, albeit they are denied an accurate version of history.

>>7098190
So it sucks for the only people capable of caring, which is pragmatically the same as sucking in general.

>>7098135
I'll give you an example


Why do you eat? to nourish yourself and to feel good are two reasons. But it's still ineficient because the nutritional content of the food is tightly coupled with its taste and texture and mass which is coupled with its energy and so on.

What if technology advanced to the point where you can just eat a pill that'll fulfill your day's nutritional requirements and then spend of the rest of your day eating good tasting food that is undigestable and passes right through? What if you apply this concept to all other areas of life?

At this point you've evolved into a Class II techno-hedonist civilization, which is higher on the scale, but it's not there yet.

What if you no longer need to eat at all to satiate your desires? What if you directly simulate the parts of your brain to release the same chemicals that ingesting good tasting food does?

Now you're a Class I techno-hedonist civilization.

Still not efficient enough.

What if you remove the need to feel desire at all?

Now you have achieved nirvana.

>>7098190

>everyone's ignorant but me

What's your point, gringo?

>>7098200
This is the ultimate goal of all intelligent life.

Only anti-Fordian neo-luddites believe otherwise.

You see the Brave New World civilization is higher up on the scale than us, but still very far from the singularity.

They still have the need to manufacturer unecessaary jobs for the betas and gammas that machines have wholly replaced. They do this because even with soma and 3 day work weeks, they do not yet have the means to maintain complacency in their populace without giving them some arbitrary busywork to do.

Their next logical step up is to have a completely automated machines do ALL the work and have everybody on soma 24/7.

Now to them that kind of life would seem as ridiculous as their life would seem to us. But it is inevitable.

>>7096989
it's dystopian because the author says it is

>>7096989
the point isn't that people are unhappy—it is that they are insane.

>>7098200
>>7098227
if you get there why not just keep going and kill everyone?

>>7098242
but insanity is relative, they would see us as insane.

>>7098268
This. The only reason anyone is alive is that someone is deriving pleasure from ruling them. This is pretty much the entire point of 1984.

>>7098268
Because death is not the same as unlife.

To kill yourself would defeat the purpose of life and is the opposite of efficiency.

All of humanity will have to remain in a dreamless comatose state while automatons run things for us.

In my mind that was exactly what the novel was trying to say, it exposes the reader as a hypocrite for expressing disgust about its world while the characters in it express the same disgust about ours.
The conclusion of course being that life is meaningless and we shouldn't act so high and mighty about our own civilisation being more "natural" because in the end it doesn't matter.

The question is: Does Huxley himself see the book as a parody of "muh generation" type hypocrisy or does he think it's some kind of social commentary and warning about the future?

I honestly can't tell

>>7097949
You're missing the nuance of the transitory character of government. The government in each novel collapsed and, instead of civilization falling into disorder along with it a new order was pieced together, to maintain civilization(also meaning here the opposite of barbarism) in a condition which it otherwise could not exist.

>>7098052
>Those scamps! Why can't they just love Big Brother?
Bernard is depressed and unintelligent man who spends the whole novel dehumanizing John and abusing his only friend to inflate his sense of self-worth.
Winston is a violent and paranoid sociopath

>classic examples of dystopian novels "aren't dystopian"
>being this fucking edgy

>>7098365
Bernard isn't even the main character you fuck, John is

>>7098365
>>7098375

and there is also very little evidence that the governments in 1984 and Brave New World are a result of societal collapse

>>7098368
If you think Brave New World is dystopian then you better be consistent and say our world is dystopian to some more conservative culture 200 years ago.

Hell, even something like convenience of the internet has luddite paper lovers decrying the death of the library and people whining about the dilution of interpersonal relationships thanks to online social networks.

And that's just within the last 20 years.

>>7098382
but isn't that the entire reason that the novel is dystopian? Because it's parodying the type of culture that we have become and are moving towards?

The definition of dystopian isn't "the worst possible thing." It's "creation of an utterly horrible or degraded society." I think the society in Brave New World is pretty degraded

>>7098398
just openly admit we're living in a brave new world right now and I'll agree with whatever you have to say

>>7098398
>I think the society in Brave New World is pretty degraded
And the inhabitants of said society think ours is degraded, so calling it a dystopia is a bit of an over-simplification

>>7098400
compared to 200 years ago? Yeah we absolutely are. But some aspects of our culture have also improved, just like some aspects of the culture in Brave New World have improved. So it's basically an exaggeration of how we developed

>>7098402
and the citizens of North Korea think our society is degraded. It doesn't really matter what they think, North Korean society is objectively more degraded than ours, and so is Brave New World's

>>7098368
John, you mean the character whose defining motivation is the right to be unhappy? The miserable fuck who kills himself. Both he and Bernard are shitheads
>>7098381
There is direct textual evidence. See : >>7097594

Also, I'm done trying to explain this to you hive-minded plebs who blindly follow the common interpretation created to enforce the dominant political ideology of the day.

>>7098411
>>7098411
>aspects of our culture have also improved

What aspects are you talking about?

Let's look at some of the aspects most people think has improved

>more liberal society, more individual rights,


Higher divorce rates? Casual sex seen as weakening the traditionally sacred bond between man and woman? More acceptance of casual drug usage as a form of escapism?

>more connected society
The word "friend" now basicalyl means "acquaintance"? How many facebook friends would you risk your life for or heck even lend a thousand dollars to?


>more accepting of personal expression and opinions

So now instead of reading carefully worded newspapers, we read reddit comments about online news articles. We rarely consume literature anymore because good writing takes too much mental effort to parse, and honestly I feel quite satisfied here reading the thoughtless comments of amateurs such as you and others (and myself included) on a belgian beer forum.

I think a crucial point of the book is that convenience itself is intrinsincally decadent, and everything good in life requires effort. But there's nothing we can do about it. It's just a natural progression. And if you deny that then you're just taking it to the opposite extreme, which is "everything good in life requires pain and suffering". You can say it's easy to maintain a balance but the progression is extremely gradual and subtle so we are constantly being renormalized to accept it as the new standard of living and will see nothing inherently wrong with it until we look 200 years back.

>>7096989
We>>>>> BNW>>1984

>>7098349
Underrated post.

I couldn't really sympathize with the protagonist because iirc there isn't anything actually stopping you from enjoying the aesthetic beauty of the world or whatever you faggots think is important.

The only thing is "well other people think i'm weird" but irl lots of people would feel like that and it wouldn't be weird. Book is kinda unrealistic in that sense imo.

>>7098349
To live while maintaining an internal state of contradiction is the only way to live.

>>7098411
200 years ago we just finished getting our capital burned to the ground.

>>7096989
BNW's society is a railroaded pleasure park, which sounds like a grand ol time if you think maximum stimulation of your dopamine and serotonin receptors is the ultimate goal of life. But if you've reached a stage in your life where you realize that what's important isn't pleasure but authenticity, you'll quickly see why BNW is a dystopia. When everyone is guaranteed a "pleasurable" life it destroys a necessary struggle, adventure, and the narrative component of life, but perhaps what's even more tragic is that such a society doesn't let its inhabitants reach a stage where they can realize this.