How is life as Aldous Huxley described it in the Brave New World similar to life in the United States today?
Here’s some ideas to get you all started: human life/death, love & marriage, art, consumption of good and services, use of drugs, pleasure/self-indulgence, and religion. How accurate were Huxley’s predictions? Thanks!
Related posts:
Way to accurate for comfort. this whole war thing is a distraction from what’s really happening, a lose of freedom. The patriot act is just a way to tap our phones and read our emails while making us to scared to stand up for our basic rights as american citizens. our jobs are making us work so much to be able to afford the few perks we can still afford. And we’re druged out of our minds from our water supply or all things and everyone that’s not happy 24/7 has to be on antidepressants to regulate our moods. Our society is fixated on material gain, and children are being created and born at an accelated rate because of infertility and drugs. Our lives are lived vicariously through the tv and magazines and we place celebraties on such high pedestals that it causes them to self destruct.
It’s been a while since I re-read it, but certainly the trends he extrapolated with respect to drugs, religion, and the consumer-comforts economy seem to be at least partially valid.
The social/economic stratification seems to me to be headed that direction, too, although there are still exceptions.
As to sexual mores, I think practices have not quite gone so far as Huxley’s depiction, although current portrayals in film and television tend to suggest a somewhat closer approach than in real life.
I think one of the scarier comparisons between the book and real life is the acceptance of things we once deemed unthinkable. Drug use, promiscuity, abolishment of religion, selective breeding and censorship of literature are quickly becoming more prevalent in our society. It’s not such a huge leap from acceptance of something to enforcement of the same thing. Drug use and promiscuity were once punished harshly. Now they’re accepted. Sometimes they’re encouraged. Is it too far fetched to consider that one day, they will be enforced?