Added DiffLines:
** (a) I always assumed that Alphas were in fact just run of the mill smartish people by today's standards, not genius level, (b) there is today a growing body of evidence that aside from actual genetic predispositions that bring down performance, all children function at what we regard as "genius" level until the restrictions of wealth, society, education constrict them down to "normal" levels of performance, ie, a person of "normal" intelligence is pretty thick compared to what they could achieve if they had an "optimal" upbringing. Just whether there are books in the house you grew up in will make a HUGE difference.
Added DiffLines:
** The World State isn't trying to produce happiness, it's trying to prevent unhappiness. Those who pursue real science, art, and experience can definitely still be happy (and in fact will almost certainly be happier than those still feeding of the infantile World State versions of these things), but they also have the potential to be ''un''happy, and that's what the World State won't accept.
Added DiffLines:
** Besides all of the above, there's also the fact that the pursuit and even the existence of things like science, philosophy and art actively require those pursuing such interests to engage with, think about and question the nature of the world one lives in. And that act of questioning everything around you immediately opens up the overwhelming likelihood of not particularly liking whatever answers or conclusions you might come to very much. The ''act'' of pursuing such interests might make a certain percentage of the population happy but the ''results'' of it, especially as these things tend to then be passed on and consumed by others, risk causing widespread unhappiness. So...ultimately it's better for the World State (which seems to thrive on selling relentless short-term pleasure and complacency above the actual human emotion of genuine happiness) if these things just aren't there beyond what they have immediate control over.
Added DiffLines:
** One of the problems here is this was written by a non-hedonist. So some of this logic doesn't hold up from the perspective of people who would want to build a Brave New World which considering the book is anti-hedonist is kind of the point. An engineered world state with reservations and islands without rules is very accurate to what a hedonist utopia would look like. The World State of Brave New World however clearly isn't peak happiness to most hedonists back then or today.
Changed line(s) 59 (click to see context) from:
* Why does John hate Popé? He seems to have been an al lright guy, acting similar to a long-term boyfriend. He doesn't seem to mistreat John in the little interactions they have and if he really was a long-term lover of Linda's, isn't it a better alliterative than her just being with random men? At least Popé was consistent.
to:
* Why does John hate Popé? He seems to have been an al lright alright guy, acting similar to a long-term boyfriend. He doesn't seem to mistreat John in the little interactions they have and if he really was a long-term lover of Linda's, isn't it a better alliterative than her just being with random men? At least Popé was consistent.
Changed line(s) 58 (click to see context) from:
* why dose John hate Popé? He seems to have been an alright guy, acting simlair to a long-term boyfriend. He doesn't seem to mistreat John the little interactions they have and if he really was a long-term lover of Linda's isn't it a better alliterative than her just being with random men? At least Popé was consistent.
to:
** On that note, accidents probably still do happen. Their main use may be 'crowd control'.
*why dose Why does John hate Popé? He seems to have been an alright al lright guy, acting simlair similar to a long-term boyfriend. He doesn't seem to mistreat John in the little interactions they have and if he really was a long-term lover of Linda's Linda's, isn't it a better alliterative than her just being with random men? At least Popé was consistent. consistent.
** I think it comes back to that OedipusComplex.
*
** I think it comes back to that OedipusComplex.
Changed line(s) 58 (click to see context) from:
** why dose John hate Popé? He seems to have been an alright guy, acting simlair to a long-term boyfriend. He doesn't seem to mistreat John the little interactions they have and if he really was a long-term lover of Linda's isn't it a better alliterative than her just being with random men? At least Popé was consistent.
to:
Added DiffLines:
** why dose John hate Popé? He seems to have been an alright guy, acting simlair to a long-term boyfriend. He doesn't seem to mistreat John the little interactions they have and if he really was a long-term lover of Linda's isn't it a better alliterative than her just being with random men? At least Popé was consistent.
Added DiffLines:
** The characters are able to rent planes as easily as we rent cars today, and the planes are apparently about as easy to operate. They could probably have one police unit for the entirety of Britain and just send them over in a fighter jet when needed.
Changed line(s) 54 (click to see context) from:
to:
** Communism tends to fail for two reasons as I understand it. 1) Resources are limited. 2) People are greedy. It seems the technology in this society is so great that they're living in post scarcity ie, resources are effectively unlimited (they say they can get by purely by synthesizing food but farm anyway for the heck of it). And then on the human element, everyone is obviously conditioned to be content with their place in the caste and desire no more than they have. They're also universally drugged with ecstasy to keep them from wanting basically anything at all. With those two factors in mind, a completely controlled economy doesn't seem far fetched at all (in fact, this troper assumed there wasn't even money and people got paid in Soma until John mentions having some cash at the end).
* By the time this book is set, Shakespere is over a thousand years old. It's already reasonably difficult to casually read by today's standards, it should be outright impossible for a home schooled layman to read it five hundred years from now. And it's not like the evolution of language was outlawed or anything, we clearly see that new words did come to fruition. Of course the language should still be massively different to modern English, but one can rationalize some translation convention, but not when direct quotes are being thrown out so liberally.
* Near the end the characters are arrested by the police. Why exactly does this world have a police system? I can't imagine there being nearly enough irregulars causing trouble to justify their existence.
* By the time this book is set, Shakespere is over a thousand years old. It's already reasonably difficult to casually read by today's standards, it should be outright impossible for a home schooled layman to read it five hundred years from now. And it's not like the evolution of language was outlawed or anything, we clearly see that new words did come to fruition. Of course the language should still be massively different to modern English, but one can rationalize some translation convention, but not when direct quotes are being thrown out so liberally.
* Near the end the characters are arrested by the police. Why exactly does this world have a police system? I can't imagine there being nearly enough irregulars causing trouble to justify their existence.
Deleted line(s) 1,3 (click to see context) :
(Both the Franchise/{{Pokemon}} fanfic and the Huxley novel of this title point to this Headscratcher page.)
!! For The Book:
!! For The Book:
Deleted line(s) 46 (click to see context) :
Deleted line(s) 52 (click to see context) :
Deleted line(s) 56 (click to see context) :
Deleted line(s) 61 (click to see context) :
Changed line(s) 9 (click to see context) from:
** They aren't using magic, tampering with fetuses, using a drug that stimulate pleasure and all the weird conditioning is gonna kill someone in the late years. Epsilon making it to sixty in perfect health is a miracle giving they engineered birth defects.
to:
** They aren't using magic, magic; tampering with fetuses, using a drug that stimulate pleasure and all the weird conditioning is gonna kill someone in the late years. Epsilon making it to sixty in perfect health is a miracle giving they engineered birth defects.
Changed line(s) 45 (click to see context) from:
to:
*** Moreover, one function of the islands may be to act as seeds for the rebuilding of civilization if necessary. Should the main society totally collapse, you have the islands full of men and women who are intelligent, at least partially capable of functioning without the World State, biologically capable of reproduction (and with the free will to overcome those taboos, if necessary), and possess the technological resources to sustain themselves at a fairly high tech level.
** They aren't using magic, tampering with fetuses, using a drug that stimulate pleasure and all the weird conditioning is gonna kill someone in the late years. Epsilon making it to sixty in perfect health is a miracle giving they engineered birth defects.
** They are doing orgies where everyone probably fucks everyone, they don't care because sexuality is just blowing off some steam to them, that's why they put you on a list of mates with the person you want and might get a reprieve if you keep going with the same one. And they already took care of childbirth control, only one who got pregnant was lost in the woods everyone else is monitored to make sure that doesn't happen.
Changed line(s) 16 (click to see context) from:
* In the Island experiment, everyone was an Alpha citzen and all the islanders considered themselves above tasks for the lower classes, and things went downhill … and fast. However, wasn't that experiment ''already'' doomed to fail even before it began? I kept thinking: all Alpha citizens are conditioned since birth to behave like '''exactly like that''', relishing their inteligence while priding themselves as above those of the lower classes, ''even if those jobs needed to be done''.
to:
** As the DHC said to Marx, be a kid or leave. They only give short term happiness, sex, drugs and leisure, everything else is prohibited. It's too keep people happy not persons.
* In the Island experiment, everyone was an Alphacitzen citizen and all the islanders considered themselves above tasks for the lower classes, and things went downhill … and fast. However, wasn't that experiment ''already'' doomed to fail even before it began? I kept thinking: all Alpha citizens are conditioned since birth to behave like '''exactly like that''', relishing their inteligence intelligence while priding themselves as above those of the lower classes, ''even if those jobs needed to be done''.
* In the Island experiment, everyone was an Alpha
** They were Alphas like Bernard and Helmhotz, filling they could do better than this society and starts living for themselves, they just realized it's harder than they thought and gave up. Sure it was expected to fail but that means Helmholtz and Bernard are also doomed to fail since they won't live like that either even if they think they can.
Changed line(s) 25 (click to see context) from:
** In his first appeareance, Mond talks about Freud, but the students imply he is just mispelling "Ford". It's implied that some people, like Freud (who studied not just family relations, but majorly individuality) are hidden and forbidden. All the names that are accepted are about people whose ideas revolve around coletivity.
to:
** In his first appeareance, Mond talks about Freud, but the students imply he is just mispelling "Ford". It's implied that some people, like Freud (who studied not just family relations, but majorly individuality) are hidden and forbidden. All the names that are accepted are about people whose ideas revolve around coletivity.collectivity.
** It's not necessary to remove it and they keep some stuff from the old world if they feel like it.
** It's not necessary to remove it and they keep some stuff from the old world if they feel like it.
** The gadgets user are Delta, more Deltas instead of Epsilon is dumb since they might be smart enough to get pissed if you make too much of them.
Changed line(s) 44 (click to see context) from:
to:
** Not necessarily smart, they might give them plenty of protein and stuff to make sure they are strong and tall.
Changed line(s) 51,52 (click to see context) from:
to:
Showing 15 edit(s) of 110
