Though it was written several decades before hand, Brave New World is a disturbingly concise exploration of what the world today might look like if the hippies of the sixties had gotten their way. I cringe to think of retiring to a haze of soma, never to see my biological children who would have grown up in vats. Thank the Lord for Nixon Reagan.
My thoughts exactly (though I am too young for children or retiring). It's the ultimate culture of secular hedonism.
Reagan was just President at a good time. He was a good speech maker which allowed him to capitalize on the fall of the Soviet Union, something that has certainly given him a positive legacy. Not to say that he was a bad President, but Reagan could never match the genius of Nixon.
Regards,
John Doe
The reason why I replaced Nixon with Reagan (which started the Cold War discussion) had nothing to do with foreign policy whatsoever. In that regard, Nixon was a far superior president and placed into a terrible situation that he handled with more skill than any president since him. I would not even attempt to dispute your statement, not only because I agree, but also because you would know far more about the subject that I would. I chose Reagan for starting the new revolution of American social conservatism, despite being himself an unlikely man to do so.
But I also don’t think the Brave New World Society was much of a communist dysutopia because no one there is oppressed and no one revolts. For a more communist styled dysutopia, read 1984. One of the key elements of the shallow, hedonistic life in the Brave New World is that virtually everyone
consents to live that life. They consent to the idea that sex is exclusively for pleasure and should be practiced often and among different partners. They consent to the idea that the aging of the human body is purely a sign of weakness rather than strength and the death is preferable to it. They consent to the idea that recreational drug use of “soma” can render all problems unimportant by dulling the experience of failure and pain and covering them up like reality does not exist. They consent to the idea that religion is obsolete not by force but by indifference. It is the deepest case of removing every ounce of meaning from life I can find.
All in all, I see it as an exhibit of the worst elements of modern American social liberalism taken to the extreme. Now I realize there are pieces of the Brave New World that don’t completely fit that theme, mainly the castes, but all in all, I think it is a great dysutopia for the future of the US to try and avoid.
