/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.3870263]

>mfw people still don't realise this is utopia
>mfw they cling to some arbitrary notion of what makes someone human
>mfw they include in this notion aspects of life they spend their lifetime to avoid
>mfw when presented with success in this endeavour they panic

Why are people who are involved in progress ultimately against progress? Why don't they see that something like BNW is the logical end of our collective endeavours? Why don't they embrace it?

[Anonymous No.3870273]

Sorry but I'd rather not live in world where children fuck each other.

[Anonymous No.3870276]

>>3870273
Children fuck each other in every possible world, including this one.

[Anonymous No.3870277]

>>3870276
I meant it being the norm.

[Anonymous No.3870291]

>>3870277
There is nothing wrong with children fucking each other if you don't have Victorian sensibilities regarding sexuality.

[Anonymous No.3870297]

>>3870263
Because not everyone is so insipid as to equate the good life with the comfortable life.

/thread

[Anonymous No.3870299]

read notes from the underground

we do fucked up shit just because we can and to assert our own freedom even if it is irrational

[Anonymous No.3870306]

>>3870297
But in BNW they are, so that's no valid objection to it. Of course there are always exceptions, but there are solutions for that (the islands and the reservations).

[Anonymous No.3870309]

>>3870306
OP was talking about the readers of the book, not the characters.
>>mfw people still don't realise this is utopia

[Anonymous No.3870318]

>>3870297
What constitutes a better life then?

[Anonymous No.3870321]

It is utopian. To the people in that world it's the perfect life. The people who don't agree find it perfect are shipped to an island where they can live with other like minded people

[Anonymous No.3870341]

>>3870318
In the absence of a better answer it is constituted by the search for it, that is: by the philosophic life.

[Anonymous No.3870358]

>>3870341
So you're saying that BNW is a utopia since everyone who wants this can go to intellectual island while the plebs are perfectly happy doing their pleb things and the savages can savage to their heart's content?

[Anonymous No.3870363]

>>3870358
Also, you're saying comfort is a shitty goal in comparison to some possible thing of which you have no idea what it is that has yet to be found and should be sought out. Which doesn't make sense, since it doesn't have any defined qualities which can be compared with the goal of a comfortable and pleasurable life. It's really just a sort of intuitive dislike to the notion of seeking comfort. Emphasis on notion.

[Anonymous No.3870370]

I'm not entirely sure that it's intended as a utopia. But one man's heaven, as they say

And unlike happy families, there's hundreds of perfectly reasonable utopias that can be described by just making a few assumptions about human needs and desires. The utopias described in "Country of the Kind", and "Prowler in the City at the Edge of the World" are clearly utopian in most estimations, but also clearly not for everybody. in fact the "Starnager in Paradise" idea is one of the standard tropes of displying utopias, from el dorado to the world of "Autumn Angels". Brave New World is a good example of utopia as social commentary, just like 1984 served for dystopia, but neither of them are unique,

[Anonymous No.3870383]

>>3870273
I didn't read the book but children fuck each other in this world right now. At least I think 12-13 year old kids are children.

[Anonymous No.3870421]

>>3870383
You're right. They were adults in the nineteenth century, of course, but a lot has changed since then.

[Anonymous No.3870459]

>>3870358
>everyone who wants this can go to intellectual island
More like "everyone who wants this will live a frustrated and empty life". That´s what Bernard did, and he would have kept on with it forever, hadn´t it been for his accidental discovery of John.

>>3870363
>comfort is a shitty goal in comparison to some possible thing of which you have no idea
Oh, I have an idea of it. The joys of reading and understanding the works of the greatest thinkers are very real, and much better than anything else I have experienced. This is what I meant with the "philosophic life": that the mere search for the truly good life is much better (even in terms of pleasure) than the faux-ideal of the comfortable life.

>We cannot exert our understanding without from time to time understanding something of importance; and this act of understanding may be accompanied by the awareness of our understanding, by the understanding of understanding, by noesis noeseos, and this is so high, so pure, so noble an experience that Aristotle could ascribe it to his God.

[Anonymous No.3870528]

>>3870263
Human beings cannot achieve "utopia" because such thing is a childish fantasy. Humans only truly improve through adversity and any success in creating a world devoid of adversity would be catastrophic for humanity.

[Anonymous No.3870544]

>>3870459
>More like "everyone who wants this will live a frustrated and empty life". That´s what Bernard did, and he would have kept on with it forever, hadn´t it been for his accidental discovery of John.
The existence of such islands shows it was somewhat of a standard procedure to send intelligent dissidents there.

>Oh, I have an idea of it. The joys of reading and understanding the works of the greatest thinkers are very real, and much better than anything else I have experienced. This is what I meant with the "philosophic life": that the mere search for the truly good life is much better (even in terms of pleasure) than the faux-ideal of the comfortable life.
So yours is merely a more cerebral hedonism instead of a sensual one, which you would be perfectly capable of exercising on one of those islands.

Personally I see philosophical inquiry as a temporary state which ultimately leads to scepticism. A lifetime of philosophical inquiry would require a very slow thinker.

[Anonymous No.3870555]

>>3870528
Improvement is only a necessity because of adversity. It has no inherent worth. Why would a world without adversity be catastrophic? Zoo animals don't live catastrophic lives.

[Anonymous No.3870573]

>>3870555
Humanity would atrophy to point that ANY disaster could wipe us out. Constant dull adversity means humans can be ready to survive most any situations.

The book also makes a point of saying that only the savages have any kind of harsh lives. It is extremely easy to see the savages becoming the barbarians at the gates while society further descends into decadence. There is a reason Rome fell while it was resting on its laurels buttfucking little boys and NOT when it fighting near constant wars of conquest.

As for your Zoo animal analogy, animals in Zoos tend to
1. be sick
2. be bored
or
3. refuse to breed
None of these are healthy for a species.

[Anonymous No.3870576]

>>3870544
>A lifetime of philosophical inquiry would require a very slow thinker.
It's too early to get rustled like this. Also if you actually bothered to read Island, you'd see that the islands just haven't been invaded and incorporated in to the system yet. Anyway, it's the destination, not the journey and while it might make a lot of sense from far away to fashion humanity after an ant colony, the individual (and this is what sets us apart from the ants and the termites. well this and our size) comes first and any attempt to make him serve the collective good rather than his own is futile, demoralizing and basically the opposite of everything that is good about being a man.

[Anonymous No.3870583]

>>3870555
>well-fed
>isolated
>no real decisions to be made
>confined to a ridiculously small space
>no meaningful interaction with anything
Sounds like a perfect metaphor.

[Anonymous No.3870585]

>>3870528
It is not wise to speak in absolutes.

[Anonymous No.3870588]

>>3870585
Only Siths believe in absolutes

[Anonymous No.3870591]

>>3870576
>It's too early to get rustled like this. Also if you actually bothered to read Island, you'd see that the islands just haven't been invaded and incorporated in to the system yet.

I've started on Island, but that book doesn't take place in the same universe. The are gin ads and cheating in the protagonists world. It's not BNW.

>t. Anyway, it's the destination, not the journey and while it might make a lot of sense from far away to fashion humanity after an ant colony, the individual (and this is what sets us apart from the ants and the termites. well this and our size) comes first and any attempt to make him serve the collective good rather than his own is futile, demoralizing and basically the opposite of everything that is good about being a man.
But the important part is that this tension between the collective and the individual is solved in BNW. There is no difference between the wishes of the individual and the collective. Individualism and freedom are already vague myths today, and have always been. The only difference is that the society in BNW is more effective at social conditioning than ours and succeeds in giving almost everyone what they actually want.

[Anonymous No.3870595]

>>3870585
Is not the idea that it is not wise to speak in absolutes an absolute in and of itself?

[Anonymous No.3870598]

>>3870595
Maybe.

[Anonymous No.3870602]

>>3870591
>I've started on Island, but that book doesn't take place in the same universe. The are gin ads and cheating in the protagonists world. It's not BNW.
For all intensive porpoises, it is a precursor to bnw and in many ways a response. It is interesting to see many of the same tools and techniques being used in similar ways but for entirely different ends.

Do you feel like you're giving up or have given up on something when you state that better social conditioning is the solution to all our problems? I've made the same arguments before but it always comes from a very bitter and disillusioned part of me that I'm really not ready to embrace yet. It is reminiscent of the wilting joy that I get when I watch 16 and pregnant. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I hope you know this is wrong or at least feel like it's wrong even if we can't articulate exactly why.

[Anonymous No.3870606]

>>3870591
>But the important part is that this tension between the collective and the individual is solved in BNW. There is no difference between the wishes of the individual and the collective. Individualism and freedom are already vague myths today, and have always been. The only difference is that the society in BNW is more effective at social conditioning than ours and succeeds in giving almost everyone what they actually want.

Except they didn't acheive this through social conditioning but by genetic engineering. They grew out of tubes a sub-species of human that seeks personal pleasure to a degree modern humans would find abhorent and called it "Utopia".

[Anonymous No.3870607]

>>3870573
The reservations are more like a well observed mob of Aboriginals or the cargo cult people in the Pacific, they would probably be blasted into oblivion once they get uppity. It would be safe to say they don't get the chance to prepare for war, nor do they have the means against the superior technology of the world government.

As for the zoo animals, they tend to be sick instead of dead and bored instead of killed. It's not such a shitty alternative. The people in BNW are neither sick nor bored though and fuck a lot, even though reproduction has been outsourced. They are in harmony with their situation because they are created for it. Perhaps domesticated farm animals would be a better analogy in that sense.

[Anonymous No.3870610]

>>3870606
>Except they didn't acheive this through social conditioning but by genetic engineering.
You're reading a lot into it that isn't there.

[Anonymous No.3870627]

>>3870602
For me it seems to stem from a doing away with romanticism and silly ideas such as freedom and humanity. I think most people feel intuitively appalled by BNW because of vanity. We like to think of ourselves as dramatic and heroic, not docile and complacent. But we already are, we just suck at it. I do feel disillusioned, but not in a bitter cynical way. I feel like I lost the vanity and pretension that required me to think of myself as a unique snowflake fighting an epic battle in a dramatic universe. I don't really feel afraid to lose the grand narrative people tend to have of themselves as a coping mechanism. All the concepts we hold dear as what makes us 'truly human' tend to fall apart when you think about them a little bit.

>>3870606
People getting what they want is pretty utopic, wouldn't you say?

[Anonymous No.3870628]

>>3870610
People were grown in test tubes. For fucks sake TWO of the main characters (one of which is the narrator) are different from normal people due to accidents in the growth process. What am I reading into exactly?

[Anonymous No.3870630]

>>3870627
>People getting what they want is pretty utopic, wouldn't you say?
I find that the chief want among people is that other people should be dead or their personal slaves so no.

[Anonymous No.3870631]

>>3870627
>People getting what they want is pretty utopic, wouldn't you say?
Not when you are actively going into their genetic code and CHANGING WHAT THEY WANT.

[Anonymous No.3870634]

>>3870628
Not the guy you're responding to but they are cloned, but the character instilled to them is mostly acquired after conception and birth by social conditioning. There's a heavy emphasis on this.

[Anonymous No.3870641]

>>3870627
I'm not sure it has to be an all or nothing thing, and I'm very obviously not living a grand or epic life filled with adventures or battles, but that doesn't mean I want to deny everyone any opportunity to do so. I guess I'm ok with some of the social safety nets bnw offers, like orgies and poverty and homelessness don't seem to be things in that world, but to drag down extraordinary people as well, just because I can't be one of them? It's just so... petty. Nothing really stands in the way if you want to live a trite and meaningless life today. I'm not sure why you feel like we should force everyone to, or make it any easier though since it's not really something to strive for. As far as I can remember, there wasn't even a ruling party or class in brave new world exploiting all the domesticized people. What would be the point of a utopia like that?

[Anonymous No.3870647]

>>3870641
>orgies
>don't seem to be things in that world

Uh...you might want to re-read the book.

[Anonymous No.3870649]

>>3870630
I think that's an overly grim view of your average human desires. But in BNW they are made to want to work and have a good time socialising, fucking, getting high and enjoying entertaining media. It's not that much different from what people do today.

>>3870631
Why would wanting what you want by accident be better than wanting what you want by deliberate action? A lot of our troubles stem from the wants of individuals being randomly determinated in a society where there is only a limited range of needs to be satisfied. We end up with serial killers and child rapists in a world where there is no place for them. I'm guessing many a paedophile would have gladly have had more appropriate needs to his or her circumstances.

[Anonymous No.3870651]

>>3870647
sorry i should punctuate better. the orgies are good and i wish r9k could have some, AND poverty and homelessness don't seem to be things. which is also good.

[Anonymous No.3870653]

Even though I'm sure OP is just fucking around, my favorite thing about Brave New World is that some people legitimately don't see what's wrong with that society. I used to worry myself over that shit but now I find it kind of amusing. Social conditioning is fucking crazy, and I'm a product of it as well even though I wouldn't want to live in the world the book portrayed.

[Anonymous No.3870658]

>>3870628
guys, don't get distracted by a plot device: If i said i changed people's intellectual ability and physical appearance and desires by genetic engineering, operant conditioning, peer pressure, vitamins or judicious application of meat-filled rabbit puppets to the back of the neck, it's just a kickshaw. The question is what effects would it have and are they worth the costs? See there's the trees, and then there's the forest.

[Anonymous No.3870659]

>>3870641
The essential point is that your objections would fall away in such a world since you wouldn't have them. A cow never regrets wanting to eat grass. The point of a utopia like that is that you would get what you want. Whether you want to be a great philosopher and succeed or you want to be a consumer doesn't really defer. The satisfaction is derived from getting what you want. The thing you want itself is arbitrary.

[Anonymous No.3870662]

>>3870651
Picturing /r9k/ is some collective orgy freaks me the fuck out. A bunch of fedora-donning chubby guys with Hawaiian Dragonball Z t-shirts fucking the only girl who browses that board, and she happens to be an acne ridden, greasy girl with cuts all over her arms. I guess I shouldn't judge though - I'm older than everyone on that board combined and still a virgin, but I don't think I'd be happy if people were having orgies everywhere.

[Anonymous No.3870664]

>>3870659
*or you want to be a consumer and succeed
*differ

Sorry, I'm a bit hungover because of this crude proto-soma.

[Anonymous No.3870665]

>>3870659
Oh, well yeah that seems like a simple and elegant solution when you put it like that. But then, so do most tautologies.

[Anonymous No.3870666]

>>3870628
>People were grown in test tubes. For fucks sake TWO of the main characters (one of which is the narrator) are different from normal people due to accidents in the growth process.
None of this points to genetic engineering, in fact it's often specifically not genetic engineering but but a change in the growing conditions that are used to produce certain kinds of people, like oxygen deprivation or lack of cloning/budding of the egg. IIRC there's some mention of genetic engineering wrt early maturity for the lower castes, but it was a failure.

[Anonymous No.3870669]

>>3870664
>crude proto-soma.
fair enough. if opiates were legal and affordable i'd probably play along with the brave new world too.

[Anonymous No.3870675]

>>3870627
>For me it seems to stem from a doing away with romanticism and silly ideas such as freedom and humanity. I think most people feel intuitively appalled by BNW because of vanity. We like to think of ourselves as dramatic and heroic, not docile and complacent. But we already are, we just suck at it. I do feel disillusioned, but not in a bitter cynical way. I feel like I lost the vanity and pretension that required me to think of myself as a unique snowflake fighting an epic battle in a dramatic universe. I don't really feel afraid to lose the grand narrative people tend to have of themselves as a coping mechanism. All the concepts we hold dear as what makes us 'truly human' tend to fall apart when you think about them a little bit.

I have never heard such a line of bullshit. Who were the great men of yesteryear? The Napoleans, the Ceasars, the Tokugawas, and the Kahns? were they simply docile and complacent? Every civilization on the planet before the renaissance answered to a single king/emperor/tribal cheiftan. They were led by respected or powerful INDIVIDUALS. To say that humanity is inherently collectivist is to reject the fact that a SINGULAR leader sat at the top of every major human social group before the modern times.

Humanity is a stickier subject but my argument boils down to this: Humanity has a history of being huge fuckups in regards to advancing technology and occasionally even current technology. Do you really want them tampering with their own genetic code? ANY mistakes could ruin our DNA for the rest of our existence as a species, and even if it works do you really want a couple guys in white lab coats determining what genes do and don't get to make it into ze ubermensch? There is zero guarantee that they will be responsible in their choices or that they would have anyone's best interest but their own in mind.

[Anonymous No.3870676]

>>3870675
>Every civilization on the planet before the renaissance answered to a single king/emperor/tribal cheiftan.
Such a line of bullshit.

[Anonymous No.3870677]

>>3870662
Except if you were created and raised to fucking love orgies. Then you would.

>>3870665
I don't think there remains any objection from this perspective though. There's only the vain notion of not wanting to be someone who is happy with something our current selves would consider beneath ourselves. When someone says to you "imagine you fucking love everything about wearing Crocs and you get a life supply of them" that would obviously be a good deal, but we can't suppress the self-awareness and ego that, despite all logic, screams 'I wouldn't be caught dead wearing those things!' When we get rid of this self-scrutiny BNW seems very pleasant.

[Anonymous No.3870683]

>>3870677
I agree, accepting the premise that you can be made to like whatever you have, then whatever you have will be something you like. The rest of the book is about what happens when you're still not happy with the emperor's new outfit, and don't want to wear the crocs.

[Anonymous No.3870689]

>>3870675
Take it easy, Ragnar.

>were they simply docile and complacent?
Yes, they adhered to the notions of success and greatness of their societies. They tried to play by the rules as successfully as possible. Great men are considered great precisely because they adhere so well to the values of the people. Obviously they were far from individualists, since they constantly engaged in collective endeavours. Being top conformist doesn't make you special. if you want anything approaching individuality you have to look for the shaman and the hermit, not the chief. Your notion of pre-modern history as that of absolute rulers is flawed, by the way.

> Humanity has a history of being huge fuckups in regards to advancing technology and occasionally even current technology.
As opposed to who? Chimps? Aliens?

[Anonymous No.3870696]

>>3870676
Yes my brain momentarily seized up and forgot about the Greeks and early Rome. No it doesn't invalidate my point.

[Anonymous No.3870697]

>>3870683
Yes, but those cases seem to be one in a million and even then they are given a place in the world where they get a decent amount of leeway to live as they like and are helped in achieving the satisfaction of their more random and chaotic desires in a much greater way than we have today. Almost everyone is destined to happiness, and the very few who aren't are nevertheless assisted in their quest. Which leaves me to consider BNW considerably closer to a utopia than a dystopia.

[Anonymous No.3870700]

>>3870676
yes, this is a bullshit assertion, but he raises a valid point. In BNW they're tampering with the genetic code but keeping a lot of "wild types" to breed back into the stock if needed and also as a fallback if they make too many wrong moves. Now imagine that they didn't: here's a basis for a utopian novel. You have a society where you have edited out tendencies for violence, selfishness, rape, greed, sloth pretty much every vice. Also made the poepl healthy and automated everything. Then, either deliberately or through an accident, you get an atavism. Like in "Country of the Kind" , but maybe he's also a killer and power hungry/manipulative. he uses his perspective and the weakness of society to try to make himself emperor or something. Then the people have to make one of their on into something that can fight him. maybe through some sort of matrix like virtual training, imposed on the body of a cryogennically preserved super-soldier from the bad old days, maybe just using conditioning techniques. or they revive a person from modern times. doesn't really matter. The point would be that you could prtray the risks and tradeoffs of altering human nature as your viewpoint character experienced it, and have a utopia/dystopia contrast. Think "demolition man" or "magnus, robot fighter"

[Anonymous No.3870701]

>>3870696
You also forgot the Germanic Thing and a shitload of other arrangements like it. Even officially absolute rulers are under constant negotiation and stress with their servants. There is no magic protecting the ruler. He can only rule to such a degree as his subjects allow him to without mutiny. There is no person catering to the collective as much and as intensively as the ruler. He is the ultimate non-individual.

[Anonymous No.3870704]

>>3870697
It is certainly an interesting approach since they just simplify the problem instead of coming up with a suitably complex solution, but I would not consider it a human utopia since the "people" who enjoy that world would be utterly alien to and distinctly separate from the people who actually exist.

[Anonymous No.3870705]

has anybody in this thread read the machine stops? just out of curiosity because i always equate them together

[Anonymous No.3870711]

>thinking Brave New World is a utopia

R u stupid. A utopian society is inherently contemplative and values philosophy and the arts as well as freedom. The people in the book are lobotomized, castrated slaves to consumption.

[Anonymous No.3870718]

Is the dodo happier than the pigeon? Well yes it probably was.

[Anonymous No.3870720]

>>3870704
I'd say most people already are roughly like the BNW citizens. People tend to care about having a job, a satisfying social life and entertainment. That's generally it really. A few of us like to tangle ourselves up in concepts and such, but most people don't seem to. Even those who like to engage with lofty pursuits could be said to be the same, only engaging in more complex mechanisms to increase our pleasure (the notion "my pleasure is better than their pleasure" heightening the pleasure, the notion of uniqueness being good heightening the pleasure etc.). I don't think intellectuals are different in their needs, just more obscure and complex in their pursuit of them.

[Anonymous No.3870721]

>>3870711
>a longer leash is freedom

[Anonymous No.3870723]

>>3870701
.....and in BNW they created a society where a ruler(s) becomes a super individual(s) by molding society to match his/her/their desires.

[Anonymous No.3870736]

>>3870720
I'd say you hold a pretty dim view of most people, for someone who is trying to unromanticize intellectualism. I don't think I'm better than other people, I think other people are better than what brave new world has to offer.

[Anonymous No.3870737]

>>3870718
the dodo was a pigeon.

[Anonymous No.3870742]

>tfw no pneumatic gf

[Anonymous No.3870744]

>>3870736
I'm not sure if it's really all that dim. There's no shame in having simple needs.

Which redeeming traits would you say contemporary people have over the people of BNW? Perhaps keeping in mind the following:


>"My dear young friend," said Mustapha Mond, "civilization has absolutely no need of nobility or heroism. These things are symptoms of political inefficiency. In a properly organized society like ours, nobody has any opportunities for being noble or heroic. Conditions have got to be thoroughly unstable before the occasion can arise. Where there are wars, where there are divided allegiances, where there are temptations to be resisted, objects of love to be fought for or defended–there, obviously, nobility and heroism have some sense. But there aren't any wars nowadays.

[Anonymous No.3870747]

>>3870291
>if you don't have Victorian sensibilities regarding sexuality
I think you mean if you're depraved sack of shit.

[Anonymous No.3870749]

>>3870742
lel

[Anonymous No.3870751]

>>3870744
My simplest need is to be me. I don't think I'm alone in that, and I don't think any amount of conditioning can really beat it out of us. It would be a very hollow victory if it could.

[Anonymous No.3870753]

>>3870747
>can't into seeing the relativity of his own values

>>>/pol/

[Anonymous No.3870764]

>>3870751
But the people of BNW are also them. They aren't less authentic, they're just more deliberate. Or perhaps just more effectively deliberate, since we are formed by society as well. Just not in such an effective and consistent way.

[Anonymous No.3870772]

>>3870753
There's nothing relative about the biological fact that sexually immature organisms shouldn't be fucking.

[Anonymous No.3870776]

>>3870764
They are far less authentic. They have everything that would make them a person drilled out from birth until there is nothing left. You may as well just build machines at that point and do away with the messy and fragile biological bits all together.

[Anonymous No.3870779]

>>3870764
>Claiming people are a product of societal shaping
That only works if you buy into the "Tabula Rasa" theory that the human mind is a blank slate at birth waiting to be shaped by society. A claim only supported by a small minority of psychologists.

[Anonymous No.3870786]

>>3870779
I don't think bnw assumed people are blank, but only that what you're born with can be sandblasted away and then lacquered over with a thick coat of industrial strength happiness

[Anonymous No.3870787]

>>3870753
>guize it's all relative, am I deep yet
No you aren't, you're just the norm during the last step of an empire's decadence.

[Anonymous No.3870794]

>>3870787
Are we still on that kick? Anyway I've been telling people for years that I am the proud decline of western civilization. Have fun trying to stop the flood of decadence with your huffy and puffy righteous indignation.

[Anonymous No.3870799]

>>3870786
So........they are genetically engineering away undesired traits? and you don't think this is dystopia? I have this wonderful new philosophy called eugenics you might be interested in.

[Anonymous No.3870801]

>>3870799
No....... I'm on your side. I was just pointing out that you don't need to start with a blank slate when your only ambition is to paint a smile on everyone's face.

[Anonymous No.3870809]

>>3870794
yeah, but decadence, at least the moral kind, is a sign of health in a civilization.

[Anonymous No.3870812]

>>3870809
What makes eating five hundred cheeseburgers more morally decadent than sodomizing a little boy once in a while?

[Anonymous No.3870824]

>>3870809
Since when exactly? A poster further up said it pretty well>>3870573
>There is a reason Rome fell while it was resting on its laurels buttfucking little boys and NOT when it fighting near constant wars of conquest.

[Anonymous No.3870835]

The society in Brave New World is inherently immoral. According to the ethical philosophy of hedonism, the ultimate moral good is the acquisition of pleasure and the avoidance of pain. Mill wrote that the intellectual pleasures far outweigh the pleasures of the body, because those who have experienced both would say that. The society in Brave New World is based around denying people the pinnacle of pleasure while inflicting spiritual pain on those who desire it. ATo paraphrase Mill, "It's better to be a human dissatisfied than a pig satisfied."

[Anonymous No.3870866]

>>3870824
so what's not decadent about fighting wars of conquest, exactly?

[Anonymous No.3870922]

>>3870772
>implying all sexual activity is fucking
>implying teleology in evolutionary biology

Lel.

>>3870776
So being a person depends on the amount of you that is coincidental instead of conditioned? Neglected children are more authentic than carefully raised ones? One is authentic to the degree that one does not conform?

The people in BNW are not like machines. They are self-aware and enjoy their lives very much in general.

>>3870779
I didn't claim that, but certainly a person is influences by it's environment and culture.

>>3870787
I might well be, but that doesn't make ethical values less relative.

>>3870835
That was just his way of weaselling his elitism into his utilitarianism, securing it with his 'if you don't agree ur dumb' reasoning.

[Anonymous No.3870928]

>>3870866
Absolutely nothing. Like it or not before the advent of modern armaments warfare was one of the most cost effective was to have economic growth. Rome pioneered both the idea of the professional army and it remembered by historians for this and other achievements like the proof of concept for a republic form of government and indoor plumbing. The problem was that Romans were murdering each other over what sports team they liked, burning people alive for public lighting, and being more concerned with bread and circuses than actual societal problems. The real problems started when they had a period of several hundred years of non-stop assassination of emperors. Emperors only ruled for week at a time before being assassinated. Eventually the empire stabilized under constantine who moved everything worth saving to turkey because Rome was a shithole, barbarians sacked the place and the rest is history.

[Anonymous No.3870953]

>>3870922
>So being a person depends on the amount of you that is coincidental instead of conditioned?
No, but having the humanity deliberately conditioned out of you does make you less human.
>Neglected children are more authentic than carefully raised ones?
That doesn't really seem relevant to the discussion at hand. People in brave new world were not carefully raised individuals, they were manufactured automatons who came out of factories and off assembly lines.
>One is authentic to the degree that one does not conform?
And now you're just putting words in to my mouth which were never there. How authentic one is, is entirely dependent on one's own impulses, dispositions and desires, and how closely their actions are aligned with them. If you're taken from a very young age and have someone else's desires motivations and intentions imprinted on you, is it possible to be authentic at all?

[Anonymous No.3870972]

>>3870928
i'm glad you agree that absolutely nothing is not decadent about wars of conquest, It's usually a harder sell. I have to point out to people that the very emperors who are mocked and deride for being decadent and letting the roman traditions go are the ones that had the most decadent and dissipated characters. You only get a counter argument when you get to the "adopted emperors". indeed, decadence seems to be a prerequisite to martial superiority. Don't forget it was the decadent, slave owning, esoteric religious practising, pederastic and incestuos spartans who help the ground at thermopylae and won the peloponessian war over the educated, civil, philosophy worshipping Athenians. And the slothfull, hedonistic, vulgar and superstitious spaniards who wiped out the mesoamerican empires. And don't even get me started on what the burger chomping, beerswilling, cigarette smoking cursing barbarian americans did to the stark, severe and regimented Japanese, Italians and Germans during world war two.

A little bit of decadence is exactly whats called for when you're building an empire.

[Anonymous No.3870976]

>>3870922
>That was just his way of weaselling his elitism into his utilitarianism

Not even remotely. That was his way of justifying why a human life was more valuable than a pig's, for instance. Early hedonists like Epicurus had several arguments for why intellectual pleasures trumped sensual pleasures.

[Anonymous No.3870979]

>>3870928
also, rome didn't actually fall until religion got involved. The barbarians you have to remember, weren't decadent at all. But the Byzantines were to the point that's it's almost a synonym.

[Anonymous No.3870999]

>>3870953
>No, but having the humanity deliberately conditioned out of you does make you less human.
Which 'humanity' would that be? It seems like some fixed essence people ascribe qualities to in an almost religious way. Humans change. They always have. There is no eternal holy humanness that can be damaged. A lot of what people call essential to being human are modern quirks instead of stable features witnessed throughout the ages. And even if there are such features, what makes them holy? Does this protection of what makes one human lead to calling evolution beyond a certain point immoral?

>That doesn't really seem relevant to the discussion at hand. People in brave new world were not carefully raised individuals, they were manufactured automatons who came out of factories and off assembly lines.
It's merely a more extreme form of control. We do the thorough state conditioning seven hours a day from age four to eighteen for example. They do it from the start. There really isn't much of a difference except intensity and effectiveness. We force children to obey rules. They make them like obeying the rules. It's more elegant but much the same.

>And now you're just putting words in to my mouth which were never there. How authentic one is, is entirely dependent on one's own impulses, dispositions and desires, and how closely their actions are aligned with them. If you're taken from a very young age and have someone else's desires motivations and intentions imprinted on you, is it possible to be authentic at all?
I don't see why one would be any less authentic. What you want is still what you want, despite of why you want it. We are also conditioned by happenstance and circumstance, authenticity doesn't really exist. There are no clear lines between 'being oneself' and being made to be something. We have no more of a choice in being who we are. Would you also say the existence of a Creator would prohibit authenticity? A teapot is no less authentic than a rock.

[Anonymous No.3871003]

>>3870972
I'm afraid that i've made a typo no thanks thanks to your oddly worded question. Let me state what I meant. There is NOTHING decadent about wars of conquest. At least not in antiquity anyway.

I'm also truly grateful for you being absolutely racist. It makes you far easier to ignore and discredit.

[Anonymous No.3871005]

>>3870976
Based on the assumption that ones own pleasure in X is the same as another's pleasure in X, which is baseless. I like reading books a lot and my neighbour loves football. There is no reason to assume that I'm enjoying myself more because like football less than reading. The existence of such a thing as tastes makes the establishment of such a hierarchy in pleasures impossible.

[Anonymous No.3871013]

>>3870999
You're right. I wish someone had trained me better when I was growing up so that I could be a more deliberate, authentic and happy human being today. I have to go play disc golf now, but it has been a very edifying discussion and I want to thank you for having it with me. If this is still around when I get back in a few hours I will try to more thoroughly address each of your current points so that we can maybe continue having it.

[Anonymous No.3871026]

>>3871003
hey, nothing racist in what i said. culturist, maybe. I don' think i even mentioned race.

And I still maintain that wars of conquest seem to go better under decadent societies. or any war for that matter. The decadent Romans conquered everywhere, the decadent spartans stomped everybody. Alexander the great was a posterboy for all the vices of the ancient world. And what about ghenghis khan? King david and his harems? All throught the twentieth century the nazis and fascists and imperial japanese and communist chineses and russians kept spouting about the decadent west, which casually kept kicking their asses and spreading the western lifestyle everywhere. and who talks about the western decadence now? crazy muslims hiding in caves making homemade bombs.

People who claim decadence is bad are a bunch of reactionary wishful thinkers. decadence rules.

[Anonymous No.3871057]

>>3871005
You're right about that instance. However, that's not what Mill and I are saying. Athletics are somewhat of an intellectual pleasure, and we all know that Plato valued them highly, and there is no basis upon which to conclude that one intellectual pleasure is greater than another. By sensual pleasures I'm referring to animalistic pleasures like sex, food, etc. Would you trade your life and cognitive faculties for a dog's with all its needs satisfied? Removing from the equation its effect on other people, do you believe that a happy pig's life is more valuable than your own?

The people in the book are often called "dehumanized" not because they're ultra-conditioned to be robots or anything, because fundamentally we're all robots who just process information and respond accordingly, but because they've robbed themselves of the cognitive pleasures that define the human experience.

[Anonymous No.3871085]

>>3870263
because family is good! And humans want to be unique!

Oh! Don't forget to buy the new kindle to read the book in when you go to your job every day.

And a trip to paris will be great too, in the best hotel

[Anonymous No.3871104]

>>3871057
For me the important point is not having the 'higher pleasures' but a wider range of them. That's what I enjoy about being human, the sensibility to derive pleasure from such a wide range of sources. I'm not sure if those intellectual pleasures I experience now would or would not be compensated by soma and feelies though. I would not fear being 'dehumanized' apart from being able to enjoy myself less.

[Anonymous No.3871118]

>>3871104
Yes, you'd ultimately achieve infinitely less pleasure and satisfaction in your life due to the society depriving you of it while inflicting spiritual pain on those who desire higher pleasures. Ergo, by the hedonistic doctrine, the society is immoral.

[Anonymous No.3871137]

>>3871026
>Nazis
>Sexually abused Jewish girls before sending them to the gas chamber.
>Japanese
>Raped all the women in an entire city they conquered
>Italians
>Having a right to tell anybody they are decadant
>Chinese
>Not having cannibalism in the streets during the cultural revolution
>Russians
>Vodka

Those crazy muslims also seem to be doing a good job considering they have sunk the U.S. military into a quagmire of their own blood with nothing more than a few AK-47s and well placed IEDs

Genghis Khan on the other hand respected all rules of diplomacy, promoted his officers based on merit, and provided security and policing of crime that would only be equaled by the modern world.

The Spartans are HORRIBLY overrated, and Alexander did absolutely nothing other than rock up to an already crumbling persian empire, conquer their capital, and have the rest of persia capitulate by default.

You also seem to misunderstand what decadence actually is:
decadence (countable and uncountable; plural decadences)

A state of moral or artistic decline or deterioration; decay
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/decadence

[Anonymous No.3871154]

>>3871137
>sunk the US military
No, we did that ourselves. Thank you. Also, what do you do fighting women and childten who strap themselves with C4? Motherfuckers who have no fear of death are a deadly enemy indeed.

[Anonymous No.3871159]

>>3871154
>into a quagmire
Do you not know what a quagmire is or something?

[Anonymous No.3871169]

>>3870291
>There is nothing wrong with children fucking each other if you don't have Victorian sensibilities regarding sexuality.
They fucked children much more than they do now.

[Anonymous No.3871179]

>>3870573
>Rome fell while it was resting on its laurels buttfucking little boys
Romans never fucked boys. You're confusing them with cradleofcivilizationiggers.

[Anonymous No.3871185]

>>3870555
>Zoo animals don't live catastrophic lives.
Actually, zoos are horrible on animals. Not in some anthropomorphic way, but in a very real animal-suffering way.

[Anonymous No.3871188]

>>3871137
actually, i'm kind of trolling a little, I'm sorry. My point is that one man's moral steadfastness is another man's utter degeneracy. And the idea that sybaritic excess, which can cause problems for an individual, is projectable into the "virtues" of a commonwealth or empire. Look at it from enough perspectives and you'll see that every single culture that ever existed is irretrievably decadent, while simultaneously absolutely virtuous. The bad romans and the bad popes, the good romans and the good popes, all just artifacts of culture, and remember that the bad popes are the ones that brought the rennaissance. (not that I'm trying to imply that the renaissance and the enlightenemnt, with their revivals of pagan forms and thought and disregard of orthodoxy to the point of mockery weren't the absolute height of decadence.)

[Anonymous No.3871191]

>>3871185
zoos are way way ahead of nature in their treatment of animals. Hell, meat farms are for the most part.

[Anonymous No.3871201]

>>3871179
uh.......
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pederasty
>From the early Republican times of Ancient Rome, it was perfectly normal for a man to desire and pursue boys.[49] However, penetration was illegal for free born youths; the only boys who were legally allowed to perform as a passive sexual partner were slaves or former slaves known as "freedmen", and then only with regard to their former masters. For slaves there was no protection under the law even against rape.[50]

>The result was that in Roman times, pederasty largely lost its function as a ritual part of education and was instead seen as an activity primarily driven by one's sexual desires and competing with desire for women. The social acceptance of pederastic relations waxed and waned during the centuries. Conservative thinkers condemned it — along with other forms of indulgence. Tacitus attacks the Greek customs of "gymnasia et otia et turpes amores" (palaestrae, idleness, and shameful loves).[51] The emperors, however, indulged in male love — most of it of a pederastic nature — almost to a man. As Edward Gibbon mentions, of the first fifteen emperors, "Claudius was the only one whose taste in love was entirely correct" — the implication being that he was the only one not to take men or boys as lovers.[52]

>Other writers spent no effort censuring pederasty per se, but praised or blamed its various aspects. Martial appears to have favored it, going as far as to essentialize not the sexual use of the catamite but his nature as a boy: upon being discovered by his wife "inside a boy" and offered the "same thing" by her, he retorts with a list of mythological personages who, despite being married, took young male lovers, and concludes by rejecting her offer since "a woman merely has two vaginas."[53]

[Anonymous No.3871209]

>>3870720
Not only that, but being non-social, adverse to certain types of entertainment (it doesn't even have to be lofty, but you could consider video games too easy today and that would make you a bitter neckbeard), and being unable to go through the standard job system make you 'undesirable' and broken.

[Anonymous No.3871237]

>>3870263
>dying
>utopia
Nope

[Anonymous No.3871253]

>>3871237
what's wrong with dying?

[Anonymous No.3871271]

I'm not sure if it's a utopia, but it surely is better for most people than our current world.

[Anonymous No.3871380]

>>3871253
It's scary and permanent.

[Anonymous No.3871439]

>>3871380
just like ur virginity #rekt #ownage

[Anonymous No.3871616]

>>3871179
Pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo.