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<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5129.Brave_New_World?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=blog_review" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img alt="Brave New World" border="0" src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/photo.goodreads.com/books/1165517734m/5129.jpg" /></a> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5129.Brave_New_World?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">Brave New World</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3487.Aldous_Huxley">Aldous Huxley</a> 
 <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/19130197?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review"><h3>My review</h3></a>
 rating: 3 of 5 stars "Community, Identity, Stability" is the motto of Aldous Huxley's utopian World State. "The world's stable now. People are happy; they get what they want, and they never want what they can't get. They're well off; they're safe; they're never ill; they're not afraid of death; they're blissfully ignorant of passion and old age; they're plagued with no mothers or fathers; they've got no wives, or children or lovers to feel strongly about; they're so conditioned that they practically can't help behaving as they ought to behave. And if anything should go wrong, there's soma." Soma is a drug engineered to eliminate side effects of sickness, while promoting submission. 
 
 The revelation of Huxley's world, how it is created and how it functions leads to powerful messages about the purpose of humanity, the pursuit of happiness, the role of suffering and the need for individual human dignity and freedom. 
 
 It also illustrates Huxley's theory that the masses are more easily mollified by the power of pleasure than the threat of force. Huxley wrote, in a letter to George Orwell dated 21 October, 1949 about the differences between "Brave New World" and "Nineteen Eighty-Four": "Within the next generation I believe that the world's rulers will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging and kicking them into obedience."
 
 It is interesting that this book was published in 1932. Henry Ford is treated as a god in this world and most of the devices used to alter humanity are chemical, physical, psychological. Yet, many similar methods were used by Stalin, Hitler, and in contemporary North Korea to alter the thinking of masses of population - and eliminate those that don't fit with that population. I think if Huxley were alive to write this book today, his world also include DNA alteration/ genetics.
 
 Of course, in order for the world to function, you have to suspend belief in total depravity. But, even if you buy into Huxley's humanism, I think there is an important lesson in this work about purpose. The entire society is established in the pursuit of pleasure and stability - yet it is sterile and lacking, terrifyingly uncomfortable for one who has experienced so much more. Yet, how much time do we waste pursuing pleasure and stability instead of God? Yet this book shows the end game of such a pursuit: ultimately God, His existence, His role in people's lives, is eliminiated and the idea of living for God and others extinct.
 
 However, lacking any foundation for absolute truth, I did find the last section of the book a bit tedious, as it broke down into a religious experience uninformed by Scripture. Nonetheless, I found the ending (without giving it away) a probable outcome of the plot Huxley set in motion.
 
 I liked this book. I would recommend it to people who like to think about the philosophical ideas mentioned. I couldn't give it more stars, though, because I think it is easier to illuminate the evil or what is wrong with the world, and much more difficult to document the good, righteous and true and it is the second catagory that I find both more enjoyable and transformational.
 
 --- See also my review of Orwell's 1984 which references and compares this book.
 <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/1005834?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">View all my reviews.</a>

Ebookwormy's review
rating:
bookshelves: 1-character-forming, 3-caution, currenteventspolitics, fantasyscifi, fiction

"Community, Identity, Stability" is the motto of Aldous Huxley's utopian World State. "The world's stable now. People are happy; they get what they want, and they never want what they can't get. They're well off; they're safe; they're never ill; they're not afraid of death; they're blissfully ignorant of passion and old age; they're plagued with no mothers or fathers; they've got no wives, or children or lovers to feel strongly about; they're so conditioned that they practically can't help behaving as they ought to behave. And if anything should go wrong, there's soma." Soma is a drug engineered to eliminate side effects of sickness, while promoting submission.

The revelation of Huxley's world, how it is created and how it functions leads to powerful messages about the purpose of humanity, the pursuit of happiness, the role of suffering and the need for individual human dignity and freedom.

It also illustrates Huxley's theory that the masses are more easil...more "Community, Identity, Stability" is the motto of Aldous Huxley's utopian World State. "The world's stable now. People are happy; they get what they want, and they never want what they can't get. They're well off; they're safe; they're never ill; they're not afraid of death; they're blissfully ignorant of passion and old age; they're plagued with no mothers or fathers; they've got no wives, or children or lovers to feel strongly about; they're so conditioned that they practically can't help behaving as they ought to behave. And if anything should go wrong, there's soma." Soma is a drug engineered to eliminate side effects of sickness, while promoting submission.

The revelation of Huxley's world, how it is created and how it functions leads to powerful messages about the purpose of humanity, the pursuit of happiness, the role of suffering and the need for individual human dignity and freedom.

It also illustrates Huxley's theory that the masses are more easily mollified by the power of pleasure than the threat of force. Huxley wrote, in a letter to George Orwell dated 21 October, 1949 about the differences between "Brave New World" and "Nineteen Eighty-Four": "Within the next generation I believe that the world's rulers will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging and kicking them into obedience."

It is interesting that this book was published in 1932. Henry Ford is treated as a god in this world and most of the devices used to alter humanity are chemical, physical, psychological. Yet, many similar methods were used by Stalin, Hitler, and in contemporary North Korea to alter the thinking of masses of population - and eliminate those that don't fit with that population. I think if Huxley were alive to write this book today, his world also include DNA alteration/ genetics.

Of course, in order for the world to function, you have to suspend belief in total depravity. But, even if you buy into Huxley's humanism, I think there is an important lesson in this work about purpose. The entire society is established in the pursuit of pleasure and stability - yet it is sterile and lacking, terrifyingly uncomfortable for one who has experienced so much more. Yet, how much time do we waste pursuing pleasure and stability instead of God? Yet this book shows the end game of such a pursuit: ultimately God, His existence, His role in people's lives, is eliminiated and the idea of living for God and others extinct.

However, lacking any foundation for absolute truth, I did find the last section of the book a bit tedious, as it broke down into a religious experience uninformed by Scripture. Nonetheless, I found the ending (without giving it away) a probable outcome of the plot Huxley set in motion.

I liked this book. I would recommend it to people who like to think about the philosophical ideas mentioned. I couldn't give it more stars, though, because I think it is easier to illuminate the evil or what is wrong with the world, and much more difficult to document the good, righteous and true and it is the second catagory that I find both more enjoyable and transformational.

--- See also my review of Orwell's 1984 which references and compares this book....less

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