[ExI] "Brave New World" is a nasty book

John Clark jonkc at bellsouth.net
Wed Jan 27 07:40:12 UTC 2010


On Jan 27, 2010,  Lee Corbin wrote:
> 
> Very unlikely, IMO, that other species would have followed
> our trajectory closely enough to foster anything as
> recognizable as Brave New World.

I think any intelligent being is going to have something like a happiness-sadness scale, and if we had complete control of it there would be great perhaps overwhelming temptation to open our personal preferences control panel and push that happiness slide switch as far right as it will go. And rather than accomplish something important to get that agreeable feeling of pride and satisfaction just crank up that feeling directly and don't bother accomplishing anything at all.

> The anti-tech and anti-humanist and especially anti-H+
> nature of Huxley's book

I think that's unfair to Huxley, he's not anti anything he's pointing out a valid problem.

> is described by our man Dave
> Pearce very well at
> http://www.hedweb.com/huxley/bnw.htm

I stopped reading when he said "John the Savage commits suicide soon after taking soma". The Savage never took soma.

 John K Clark
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