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[igotthisguitar]

Brave New World is a 1932 dystopian novel by Aldous Huxley. The book anticipates developments in reproductive technology, eugenics and mind control that combine to change society.



The world it describes could in fact also be a utopia, albeit an ironic one: Humanity is carefree, healthy, and technologically advanced. Warfare and poverty have been eliminated, all races are equal, and everyone is permanently happy.

The irony is, however, that all of these things have been achieved by eliminating many things; family, cultural diversity, art, literature, religion and philosophy, generally considered integral to being human.

Brave New World is Huxley's most famous and enduring novel. The title comes from Miranda's speech in Shakespeare's The Tempest:

"Oh wonder, how many goodly creatures are there here, how beautious mankind is,
O brave new world,
That has such people in't!"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_new_world



Nineteen Eighty-Four (often 1984) is a political novel written by George Orwell. The story takes place in a nightmarish dystopia where the omnipresent State enforces perfect conformity among members of a totalitarian Party through indoctrination, propaganda, fear, and ruthless punishment.

The novel introduced the concepts of the ever-present, all-seeing Big Brother, the notorious Room 101, the ubiquitous thought police, and the bureaucrats' and politicians' language Newspeak.

Many commentators draw parallels between today's society and the world of 1984, suggesting that we are starting to live in what has become known as Orwellian society. The novel was successful in terms of sales, and has remained one of the most influential books of the 20th century.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four

[Summer Wine]

From my readings and discussions with people, it is 1984 for those who fall on the wrong side of the line and the opposite for those who don't.

[Kuros]

1984 is overrated, but I am a fan of Brave New World. For that matter, the world might be resembling a Brave New World with its emphasis on the importance of the free market and its love for new technology. But really, this world resembles neither.

[khyber]

A man named Neil Postman wrote an AMAZING book called "Amusing Ourselves to death: Education in the Age of Show business" talking about TV in GREAt detail.
The introduction and first chapter deal SPECIFICALLY and almost exclusively with this question 1984 or brave new world.

He argues, and i'm BOUND to agree with him, that it's most definately brave new world...for a couple reasons.

1) There is little to no doubt that TV bears an incredibly spooky resemblence to soma (BNW's drug).
2) Soma was a drug that was meant to keep the average person under some type of "control" (or perhaps, to sedate them from reality).

The one major difference he noted in the book was this:
BNW's populace EMBRACED soma....they loved and wanted soma in their lives
1984's Big brother was forced upong that populace.

So the major difference is that the BNW crowd chose to live that life while 1984 had it thrust upon them.

I am paraphrasing from the book...it's been a couple years since i read it.....but really, if you're interested in the topic, go check out even just the introduction..fantastic!

[in_seoul_2003]

...

[Kuros]

[joe_doufu]

I was flipping thru my new Korean dictionary today and noticed "so ma" means urine!

[Moldy Rutabaga]

BNW is one of my favorite novels. Like most utopian novels, though, it's as much a satire of its time period as prediction; Huxley was parodying Ford's assembly-line thinking by applying it to human relations. Orwell parodied Soviet Russia's hypocrisy-- in pure communism, government is supposed to 'fade away' and the opposite was happening; 1984 reversed is 1948, the year he wrote.

I've always liked BNW better; maybe there's something seductive about the idea of boinking girls on the grass all day while others worry about all the problems. 1984 seems too chilling and violent to me, maybe because some of it's too real from reading the newspapers.

I voted for a synthesis of the two novels. One of the directors in BNW talks about the origin of the world state, saying that people were willing to give up their freedoms when anthrax bombs "were popping off all over the place", and there are stories of massacres of "simple lifer" communes and other coercive methods. The difference is that the directors in BNW value efficiency, and they eventually decide that making everybody eternally happy teenagers is a better and cheaper method of efficiency than raw force. The rulers in 1984 don't seem as though they want to give up anything; they want to abolish the or-gasm instead of enshrining it. Their highest value is power.

One way of comparing is looking at information and media in the two novels. In BNW, all news is trivial pablum to amuse people; in 1984, it's all lies to deceive people. Do we want to watch Fox or CNN?

Ken:>

[Paji eh Wong]

The quick and trite answer: neither.

Things are going to be like Neuromancer.

[Bulsajo]

or Snowcrash.

[mack the knife]

[Moldy Rutabaga]

[AbbeFaria]

When I first started reading BNW I was horrified by the ideas it presented. As an American, where freedom of choice and the belief in one's own importance is practically hardwired in to our psyche, the idea that those things could be taken away before I was even born really freaked me out.

Then as I got in to the novel and read how society behaved, I thought 'it really wouldn't be so bad'. Everyone has a purpose. Everyone is completely happy with that purpose and wants nothing more out of life. You always hear things like 'if you can find a job doing what you love then you're luckier then most'. But if you're born to love what you do, even if you don't get to choose, isn't that basically the same thing? Even the ones who we would consider getting the shaft in that book, the epsilon morons, the ones just a few chromosomes above a monkey, loved their job and wanted nothing more from life. I'd consider that a fair trade-off.

I don't think life is headed towards either book. Atleast not in this country. Social Conservatives have much to strong a hold on our system to allow such 'free love' and everyone belonging to everyone else. However, if the Radical Right, the hard-core bible thumpers, have their way, it would be much like 1984 in that the Church would control all instead of the State. Which terrifies me much more then the future-world of BNW.

An example:

I had a discussion with a woman I used to work with, a christian of a church that calls themselves 'Sanctified', about why prayer shouldn't be mandated in public schools. Why seperation of church and state was important. She believed this is why our society is crumbling. I asked her 'well, okay, so which church do we follow then? who decides what type of religion is worshipped by all?' Her answer was her religion. Anyone not following it would be imprisoned. So I drew a parrellel of everyone in her religion, who followed her specific beliefs, imprisioned because it wasn't the religion mandated by the state. Of course this was wrong and bad. But she failed to see why her view of things, that would lead to the exact same thing if she had her way, was equally wrong. If you didn't agree with her religion then to bad for you. Either convert or die, essentially.

I tried to explain to her that even under the current system, children can pray in school all thay want, it just can't be taught or run by the public school system. This was extremely unacceptable to her. Religion needs to be pumped into their blood as soon as humanly possible. Anything else is the devil. And I gaurentee she's not alone in her mind-set. It's terrifying that these types of christians have the ear of this government. It makes me that much more eager to leave the country.

I really don't like religion sometimes. It seems to rob people of very basic logic and reasoning.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not bashing christians, religion does some great things in this world for a lot of people. I just don't like the ones that think it's okay to cram it down other people's throat, whether they want it or not. In my view that's not any different the Islamo-fascists that want to convert me to islam or cut my head off. Same thing, different religion.

-S-

[Bulsajo]

[Bulsajo]