Brave New World Revisited

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In 1982, Polish author Antoni Smuszkiewicz, in his analysis of Polish science-fiction Zaczarowana gra ("The Magic Game"), presented accusations of plagiarism against Huxley. Smuszkiewicz showed similarities between Brave New World and two science fiction novels written earlier by Polish author Mieczysław Smolarski, namely Miasto światłości ("The City of Light", 1924) and Podróż poślubna pana Hamiltona ("Mr Hamilton's Honeymoon Trip", 1928). [59] Smuszkiewicz wrote in his open letter to Huxley: "This work of a great author, both in the general depiction of the world as well as countless details, is so similar to two of my novels that in my opinion there is no possibility of accidental analogy." [60]

Brave New World (1932) is one of the most bewitching and insidious works of literature ever written. Huxley implies that by abolishing nastiness and mental pain, the brave new worlders have got rid of the most profound and sublime experiences that life can offer as well. Most notably, brave new worlders have sacrificed a mysterious deeper happiness which is implied, but not stated, to be pharmacologically inaccessible to the utopians. The metaphysical basis of this presumption is obscure. Thus one of the tasks facing a mature fusion of biological psychiatry and psychogenetic medicine will be to deliver enriched well-being and lucid intelligence to anyone who wants it without running the risk of triggering ungovernable mania. MDMA(Ecstasy) briefly offers a glimpse of what full-blooded mental health might be like. Like soma, MDMA induces both happiness and serenity. Unlike soma, MDMA is neurotoxic. But used sparingly, it can also be profound, empathetic and soulfully intense. Translations of the title often allude to similar expressions used in domestic works of literature: the French edition of the work is entitled Le Meilleur des mondes ( The Best of All Worlds), an allusion to an expression used by the philosopher Gottfried Leibniz [12] and satirised in Candide, Ou l'Optimisme by Voltaire (1759). The first Standard Chinese translation, done by novelist Lily Hsueh and Aaron Jen-wang Hsueh in 1974, is entitled "美麗新世界" ( Pinyin: Měilì Xīn Shìjiè, literally " Beautiful New World").Livni, Ephrat (19 December 2018). "A woman first wrote the prescient ideas Huxley and Orwell made famous". Quartz . Retrieved 28 October 2020. Thus BNW doesn't, and isn't intended by its author to, evoke just how wonderful our lives could be if the human genome were intelligently rewritten. In the era of post-genomic medicine, our DNA is likely to be spliced and edited so we can all enjoy life-long bliss, awesome peak experiences, and a spectrum of outrageously good designer-drugs. Nor does Huxley's comparatively sympathetic account of the life of the Savage on the Reservation convey just how nasty the old regime of pain, disease and unhappiness can be. If you think it does, then you enjoy an enviably sheltered life and an enviably cosy imagination. For it's all sugar-coated pseudo-realism. Huxley uses his erudite knowledge of human relations to compare our actual world with his prophetic fantasy of 1931. It is a frightening experience, indeed, to discover how much of his satirical prediction of a distant future became reality in so short a time." — New York Times Book Review

Reuben Rabinovitch, the Polish-Jew character on whom the effects of sleep-learning, hypnopædia, are first observed.In an article in the 4 May 1935 issue of the Illustrated London News, G. K. Chesterton explained that Huxley was revolting against the "Age of Utopias". Much of the discourse on man's future before 1914 was based on the thesis that humanity would solve all economic and social issues. In the decade following the war the discourse shifted to an examination of the causes of the catastrophe. The works of H. G. Wells and George Bernard Shaw on the promises of socialism and a World State were then viewed as the ideas of naive optimists. Chesterton wrote: In 1965, a Maryland English teacher alleged that he was fired for assigning Brave New World to students. The teacher sued for violation of First Amendment rights but lost both his case and the appeal, with the appeals court ruling that the assignment of the book was not the reason for his firing. [48] In general, Huxley warns his readers that they may be talking themselves into accepting a world that they would reject, if only they were fully conscious of its nature. But, distracted by consumerism and pleasure, people seldom truly engage the reality they are living, just as the citizens of the brave new world seldom recognize the restraints of their society. Unconscious manipulation through language — propaganda — keeps individual minds open to any suggestions, even the most inhuman.

It must be noted that this right is not immediately in jeopardy. Huxley, however, evidently feels that the threat of compulsory well-being is real. This is reflected in his choice of a quotation from Nicolas Berdiaeff as BNW's epigraph. "Utopias appear to be much easier to realize than one formerly believed. We currently face a question that would oth As perfect pleasure-drugs go, soma underwhelms. It's not really a utopian wonderdrug at all. Soma does make you high. Yet it's more akin to a hangoverless tranquilliser or an opiate - or a psychic anaesthetising SSRI like Prozac - than a truly life-transforming elixir. Third-millennium neuropharmacology, by contrast, will deliver a vastly richer A. Huxley in Sanary 1 - Introduction". www.sanary.com. Archived from the original on 11 January 2017 . Retrieved 27 September 2019.

T o t a l i t a r i a n

Huxley, Aldous (1998). Brave New World (First Perennial Classicsed.). New York: HarperCollins Publishers. ISBN 0-06-092987-1. Mitsima, an elder tribal shaman who also teaches John survival skills such as rudimentary ceramics (specifically coil pots, which were traditional to Native American tribes) and bow-making. Martine de Gaudemar (1995). La Notion de nature chez Leibniz: colloque. Franz Steiner Verlag. p.77. ISBN 978-3-515-06631-0.