- Heteronormativity is why we exist as sexually dimorphous creatures, in any century.
- Well queer people are able to reproduce too, actually. There is even less reason for heteronormativity in a setting like this, where artificial reproduction is not just possible but standard.
- Probably because Heternormativity IS the norm. Why would the World State go out of their way to remove this baseline (not even to mention also engineering people to be attracted to the same gender) when any fringe benefits from it are realized in other, much easier to accomplish, ways?
- In addition, just because queer people CAN reproduce doesn't mean they DO at a rate that could sustain any kind of civilization without Heternormativity, meaning the point that "Heteronormativity is why we exist as sexually dimorphous creatures, in any century." Is still 100% true.
- Heteronormativity is "the concept that heterosexuality is the preferred or normal mode of sexual orientation". To say that it's why we exist as dimorphous creatures is nonsense. It's a sociological concept, not biological, it didn't exist when we were developing into dimorphous animals because we didn't have the intelligence to comprehend sexuality.
- Well queer people are able to reproduce too, actually. There is even less reason for heteronormativity in a setting like this, where artificial reproduction is not just possible but standard.
Huxley's dystopia is a place where humans want for nothing, have nothing but feelings of mutual compliance and overwhelming happiness at all times, and no longer fear death. Their children dance and play around the bodies of those who will soon die, almost like Cherubim. This has come after a terrible conflict almost akin to the Rapture, after which the very notions of sin and suffering have been expunged.
Our sympathetic protagonist, John, a man who importantly has some degree of traditional Christian and religious ideals which include the idea of Heaven, is disgusted by this entire scenario. What at first seems like the most beautiful idea imaginable at a distance, feels so wholly alien and distasteful to him as a free-thinking human being that he can't stand to be a part of it. He realizes that an existence without scarcity, adversity and trials to triumph over has no meaning, and comes to reject it.
- It was really a satire of "heaven on earth", i.e. ideas of utopia common at the time. Specifically, it's a Take That! against H. G. Wells' Men Like Gods and other proposed utopias.
Some highly-placed officials of THRUSH have tried to throw the intrepid Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin off the track by claiming that their ideal society is based on Orwell's 1984, but the truth is even more insidious. This society - with all of humanity subjugated to the rule of a tiny oligarchy, strictly hierarchical, technological in nature (the more technology used to pacify the masses, the better, helped along by heaping helpings of sex and consumerism), with anyone over the age of 60 being deemed undesirable and removed with dispatch and any other "undesirables" not necessarily being executed but physically removed to remote islands where they can't disrupt society at large - neatly fits all of THRUSH's objectives.
People who are too smart or innovative are sent to islands. However, Mustapha Mond's comment of "Why, if we didn't have all these islands, we'd probably have to send them to gas chambers!" may make you a little suspicious about the exact nature of these "islands." Especially when Mond mentions the Cyprus experiment, specifically how Cyprus was "cleared of all its existing inhabitants". Cyprus was an island.- Alternatively, the inhabitants of Cyprus really were sent elsewhere; Bernard regards being sent to an island as a terrible punishment, but Helmholtz is quite positive about it; he specifically asks to be sent to an island or archipelago, such as the Falklands, with a lousy climate, so that he can have his creativity fired up.
- Mass-murder would go against the whole tone of the book. The whole point of Brave New World was to deconstruct a society that "oppressed" people without the need for any kind of violence or cruelty. Free-thinkers might be regarded as as a threat to society, but the Controllers of the World State don't hate them. They probably would kill them, if there was no other option, but the world is big enough, and the World State productive enough that maintaining a small population of dissidents in a number of isolated, but comfortable locales is entirely feasible. After all, allowing the existence of people who have the necessary mentality to kill their fellow humans for ideological reasons, still less putting them into positions of power, is also a threat to social stability. Exile allows for swift removal of troublemakers, without the risk of the Controllers growing too bloodthirsty. It also keeps out-of-the-box thinkers on hand, just in case an outside context problem ever turns up.
- It's mentioned that when the society was shaping up, they massacred numerous opponents, so it wouldn't be completely unusual. However, they might have viewed this as only necessary then and wouldn't needlessly kill people later on.
- The book does mention the Earth's population to be around two 'thousand million' note , so there are probably an abundance of these islands. Or, seeing as the novel is set in our, current population of seven billion, future, islands.
- That’s eight years.
- No, that's nine years. Count them.
- Even then it doesn’t work. The war began in 2049.
- No, that's nine years. Count them.
- Think about it: a world where nobody has any sexual taboos whatsoever, utterly depraved behavior is treated as normal, and nobody is psychologically capable of deciding not to have sex? Clearly they all take place in the early years of the World State, hence why the technological level is more like our own.
- There are plenty of erotic stories that do feature sexual taboos and depravity being treated as bad. They're just done anyway, because people do that in real life too.
- It’s always claimed he’s a Reasonable Authority Figure who would prefer a less-oppressive society but is forced into maintaining the system, but there is no real evidence at all. Yes, he sends Bernard and Helmholtz to an island instead of a labor camp, but that doesn’t make him not a tyrant. Exile was used as a genuine punishment for thousands of years. And when he defends his beliefs, his arguments are full of holes. In addition to the Fridge Logic regarding the Cyprus experiment on the main page, he is introduced telling Blatant Lies about 20th-century family life, making it sound much worse than it really is. Clearly he is not to be trusted. In the same conversation he says that the thousands of people the World State killed to gain power centuries ago deserved it, despite the fact that, as a Shakespeare fan, he’d have been first against the wall had he lived then. And of course, he lords over Bernard the fact that he is above the law but Bernard isn’t. He’s obviously trying to make the only would-be reformers believe there is no alternative so that they don’t realize that a true Enlightenment utopia should be striven for instead of the mockery that he calls “progress” and “civilization”. Because without the current system, he’d be just an ordinary man.
