20211111 - Review: Brave New World

Feelies and good times,\ perfect order from chaos.\ Absorbed in the All.

#HAIKUPRAJNA - Review: Brave New World

"What man has joined, nature is powerless to put asunder." 

Aldous Huxley's Brave New World is another ebook where about half of the script has been highlighted. 

During this reread, I again was absorbed in how the author conveyed their philosophy of the metaphysical idea; Huxley's dystopian society had transformed information into something no better than a pharmaceutical drug made in a lab, or a systemized object that affects the systems it is within; both being forms that were created, known and alterable. Examples of this include the injecting of reflexes such as being terrified while interacting with books and flowers, the tendency to judge monogamy negatively, along with Bernard's intoxication and withdrawal from fame where John being part of his system has effects described in the same manner as soma, the ultimate goal of which was to disrupt the "narrowing" of "impulse and energy" to spread that energy out over "every one else".

They not only had systemized ideas or energy, they had turned the idea into a living form through their ritualistic practices, which they refused to even call science, that would almost border on fantasy if it were not for it describing the metaphysical method of forming real-life ideas like corporations, books, characters, art and technology. A less abstract comparison can be made between the hypnopaedic suggestions and the Savage's mythical legends, where Bernard's habitual reciting was the same as John's ability to quote Shakespeare.

To Huxley, dystopian civilization meant a pneumatic system, as in airy or allowing air to pass through, as opposed to hermetic, or self-contained and independent from the outside. In such a system, one still needed naturally living humans and beings contained and segregated from the rest of the system so that society at large could just ignore the parts it failed to absorb, shipping them away, and continue on unhindered. But, is it for the comparison, the need to have an opposite to be defined by? Do the myths either created need someone to consume them?

Perhaps the only criticism to pass would be on a number of exposition dumps through dialogue and narration, but I thought they added to the unnerving factor of this ordered society due to their philosophical nature that, of course, could serve as a description for any reader's perception of modern life.

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Thank you for reading.

Until next time,

Allen W. McLean