"Brave New World" -- have you read it?

by AlmostAtheist 16 Replies latest jw friends

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  hamsterbait

  i found the book very upsetting (read it when i was 13)

  The fear, i think was from an unconcious realization of the futility of mere existence. NOW I also feel fear at the thought of the control the WTS would excercise in those circumstances.

  The picture of those in the know living their own lives and others the electronic druggy reality of physical pleasure, is too like the idea of a "New System" with rulers in Heaven whilst breeder creatures ate fed fucked and dug the soil in the name of the Almighty.

  HB
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  Aude_Sapere

  
  This book was required reading in High School for me. (My parents were told ahead of time of the content and surprisingly that allowed it.) I don't remember many details but do remember that Aldous Huxley was quoted in a few Watchtower articles.

  I also being surprised when a friend of mine was prescribed Soma for muscle spasms. Soma was the drug that was given out so freely. I bought several books at a book sale last year. This was one of them. It's about time for me to start reading this one again. Thanks for the thread and comments. I did not recall a JW correlation.

  -Aude.
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  doofdaddy

  His last book "Island" was written to give hope to humanity even though the ending is a (again) disturbing.

  Well worth a read. Kinda mixture between eastern philosophy and western science....
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  Midget-Sasquatch

  I read it in highschool english class and loved it. I too felt for "the savage" in the end. I think 1984 parallels the jdubs much more closely with that world's strictness with sexuality, crazy manipulation of information, evoking a seige mentality (by the supposed war), and demanding loyalty.

  IMHO, Brave New World is a world that takes an opposite approach. It lets people loose on sex and on physical pleasures so that they'd be easily caught up in it, even addicted to it. i.e. Soma. Being hooked on those things, one is less inclined to reflect on other matters. That makes them less informed and easier to be controlled by those in positions of power. They'd rather have their "feelies" than reflect on the unfairness of the caste system to the monkey boy in the elevator. Yeah I'm taking that part of the novel personally.
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  Krisiva10

  I love this book. The ending did make me cry though. Poor thing.
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  sir82

  There is a rather obscure novel by a Russian novelist named Zamyatin (or something similar) from the 20's named "We". It is also one of those "negative utopia" novels along those lines, and I believe even served as inspiration for Huxley & Orwell. I would recommend that one as well for all who enjoy the books noted here (if you can find it).
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  What-A-Coincidence

  • On psychological totalitarianism[2] (1959): "And it seems to me perfectly in the cards that there will be within the next generation or so a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing … a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda, brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods."

  • On social organizations: "One of the many reasons for the bewildering and tragic character of human existence is the fact that social organization is at once necessary and fatal. Men are forever creating such organizations for their own convenience and forever finding themselves the victims of their home-made monsters."

  • On heroin[3]: "Who lives longer: the man who takes heroin for two years and dies, or the man who lives on roast beef, water, and potatoes till ninety-five? One passes his twenty-four months in eternity. All the years of the beef-eater are lived only in time."

  • On words: "Words form the thread on which we string our experiences."

  • On experience: "Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him." – Texts and Pretexts, 1932

  • On chastity: "The most unnatural of the sexual perversions."

  • After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.- Music at Night, 1931

  • "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad."

  • "Liberty? Why it doesn't exist. There is no liberty in this world, just gilded cages." Antic Hay, 1923

  • "That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that History has to teach."

  • "Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored."

  • "Democracy and freedom will be the theme of every broadcast and editorial - but democracy and freedom in a strictly Pickwickian sense." - Brave New World Revisited

  • On religion: "You never see animals going through the absurd and often horrible fooleries of magic and religion. . . . Dogs do not ritually urinate in the hope of persuading heaven to do the same and send down rain. Asses do not bray a liturgy to cloudless skies. Nor do cats attempt, by abstinence from cat's meat, to wheedle the feline spirits into benevolence. Only man behaves with such gratuitous folly. It is the price he has to pay for being intelligent but not, as yet, quite intelligent enough." - Point Counter Point

  • "There isn't any formula or method. You learn to love by loving."