/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.15194108]

Is Brave New World actually a dystopia?
I know the common arguments like you have no freedom and no higher meaning bla bla bla, but if you're happy who gives a shit?
Also, people are comparing the happiness in here to hedonism, which is true, but IRL you will inevitably experience the downsides of your tendencies if you overdo it. In BNW you can literally take soma for all of eternity and feel happy and amazing all the time.

[Anonymous No.15194164]

>>15194108
You're right, but the faggots here are going to "muh naturalism"

[Anonymous No.15194165]

>>15194108
I absolutely agree.

[Anonymous No.15194234]

Start doing heroin then. You would be happy.

[Anonymous No.15194269]

>>15194234
Read the last row. I said that IRL you will inevitably experience the withdrawal and pains of taking heroin, in BNW you never do.

[Anonymous No.15194295]

>>15194234
I also want to get laid

[Anonymous No.15194335]

>>15194234
Heroin is only rewarding for an extremely brief period of time

[Anonymous No.15194338]

>>15194335
Sex too

[Anonymous No.15194368]

>>15194338
Not to the extent of heroin, sex has long lasting mental and spiritual benefits

[Anonymous No.15194380]

>>15194234
There's a big difference between doing heroin now and being brought in BNW environment, you fucking retard. Nice way to completely miss the point.

[Anonymous No.15194398]

>>15194108
OP got filtered by BNW and is coming to 4chan for help instead of thinking about it himself (you can do it!)

[Anonymous No.15194424]

>>15194108
it's an actual, credible dystopia where the end of society isn't the cause of something outside of it, but society itself. It's a dead society, with nothing organic left: it's a life of mass-produced "happiness" constantly living with the shadow of life's anxieties right behind, kept away by massive drug use.

We're slowly getting there, and it's terrifying.

[Anonymous No.15194441]

>>15194398
Says the faggot that can't provide a counter argument to OP's point. Jesus Christ this board is stupid, I could literally go to Reddit and get a better argument.

[Anonymous No.15194501]

>>15194424
>natural fallacy
Holly shit, do any of you actually read anything?! OP's argument Is that you get the exact same thing but not through hedonism. "It's natural" isn't an argument, you cock sucker. Please explain why anything you said is bad, when we humans are apart of nature, therefore anything we create is apart of natures direction. Dumbass.

[Anonymous No.15194511]

>>15194424
Why is it terrifying?

I can call our society "dead" because so many people are dead inside.

[Anonymous No.15194543]

>>15194424
You would say classical human society is terrifying if you were a neanderthal

[Anonymous No.15194550]

I think the Native American-turned-Shakespeare self-flagellator is key to understanding this book. We intuitively flinch away from the society in BNW because it has lost a certain spiritual quality. They have lost struggle. It is a caste system with no hope -- and no reason -- to change, in this life or the next. (Note that the name Soma originates in a Hindu ritual drug.) It looks like the citizens have all the answers they need. Actually, what they have done is stop asking questions. Think of the girl that the main character brings along, she represents the average middle class citizen of this place. Any time something challenges her, she gets a headache, she rejects it, she anesthetizes herself.
The critique BNW offers is not a new one afforded by science fiction. It is simple, trailing all the way back to Socrates:
The unexamined life is not worth living.

[Anonymous No.15194571]

>>15194295

Heroin is better simp

[Anonymous No.15194601]

>>15194550
>The unexamined life is not worth living.

I believed this for a while, having lived an examined life for many years. But, as time went on, and I remained unhappy compared to the people who live unexamined lives, I tended to believe it less and less.

[Anonymous No.15194622]

>>15194501
If you actually read Brave New World, i think you'll remember society's fear of experiencing potentially unhappy or slightly discomforting feelings, to which the default answer is to pop a soma and restore the state of "happiness" produced by the drug. >>15194550 pretty much put into words what I had in mind. Remember how much Lenina gets scared when Bernard Marx goes all autismo and tries to summon some sort of weird middle-class romanticism.

It's not a world that's alive, with ups and downs, changes, the kind of dynamic existence that defines the world as being in a state of movement. the fact that they're afraid of losing this bliss is proof of how much they've separated their lives and representations from the world. Any mature human being will accept the impermanent nature of "happiness" and learn to live with that fact. BNW's upper-class "people" won't accept it. This state of "perpetual happiness" that we're striving for today through tech, even with the seeming collapse of capitalist normalcy, is already reflected in the book and its characters use of soma reverence for Ford (the mass-techno-industrialisation of society).
It's the big reason why it's a better dystopia than small-brain manichean books like 1984.

[Anonymous No.15194627]

>>15194550
What do you mean by spiritual? To me, it just sounds like another word for natural.

[Anonymous No.15194648]

>>15194622
>Any mature human being will accept the impermanent nature of "happiness" and learn to live with that fact. BNW's upper-class "people" won't accept it.

They don't need to! Perpetual happiness literally exists in that world!

Your description is detailed, but it does not explain what the actual problem is with the society. Why would you not want to live there?

[Anonymous No.15194665]

>>15194622
The thing is that even though we live in a highly sedated and controlled environment by consumer-capitalism and a lot of people are doing drugs, they're still not happy. They may be happy in the moment, but it will wear off and they will have to deal with life. In BNW you can take soma til the end of time without any negative consequences and live in a perpetual state of happiness without any worries whatsoever, that's why I don't see it as a dystopia.

[Anonymous No.15194668]

>>15194622
Again, you have to give a reason to explain why that's worst than what BNW offers. For example, you mentioned "the mass-techno- of ndustrialisation society. Excuse me for my ignorance, but it just sounds like you're trying to conserve this natural state, which is an oxymoron because it will naturally progress to technology. Even uncle Ted lived in a cabin, which, is technology. In other words, you can't escape it.

[Anonymous No.15194672]

>>15194648
I just wonder if it truly is happiness.
We talk so much of the happiness of animals, who live in a state of "bliss" because they don't think: but the reason they don't think is because they completely invested in this world and its flow.

Are the characters in BNW living in the world? somehow I doubt it. Life in the world isn't happy in itself: but it's the understanding of our existence in the world that creates the sort of superior bliss we try to reach. The characters might feel "happy", but this happiness is one that isn't reached through existing, but rather through extracting oneself from the world's flow through drugs.

[Anonymous No.15194678]

>>15194627
Maybe a better word choice is ethereal. On paper, by all mathematical metrics, the world of BNW is sound, nearly perfectly planned. People will rate themselves 10 on a happiness survey. All that jazz. But beneath all that, you know something is intrinsically not right. None of it is progress. It's all obfuscation.

[Anonymous No.15194692]

What my female teacher took from the book is that some people (Bernard Marx) will always be unhappy even in paradise and that those people need antidepressants and are unwise for not taking them.
Was she right /lit/?

[Anonymous No.15194702]

>>15194692
Bait

[Anonymous No.15194711]

>>15194665
You seem to view utopia as the avoidance of suffering. We can accomplish the same thing with firing squads.
When reading BNW you should distinguish between superficial happiness, the kind they get when taking Soma that dulls their minds and helps them forget to think, and the lucid happiness, the self-satisfaction and self-actualization, that the main character pursues. It is a book about what it means to be human rather than cells in a body.

[Anonymous No.15194716]

>>15194692
Female materialist automaton teacher, driven only by the flesh....I bet she breeds with your peers

[Anonymous No.15194733]

>>15194108
dystopia is utopia

[Anonymous No.15194745]

Not a single person in this thread has mentioned a Brave New World Revisited which very clearly lays out the issues of an entirely sedate population.

[Anonymous No.15194758]

>>15194108
I think it's less a question of what happiness is natural or not -- if you're experiencing a kind of happiness, ignoring what got you there, it is still a natural happiness because your mind is a product of nature, which could not by definition produce unnatural happiness.

What BNW actually investigates is what makes you happy and why. Happiness comes from many, many things other than drugs, sex, even social unity -- the fundamental error those in BNW make is believing that their happiness is best secured in these things, rather than any of the number of other things life has to offer.

If all you care about is being happy, then like >>15194234 said, go and do heroin. If we lived in BNW, then you could do it forever and you'd be happy. But would you be human? Is all of human life really supposed to be oriented towards achieving happiness through any means? Maybe. Maybe not. But it's up to you to decide -- unlike those in BNW, who have happiness PUSHED ON THEM by the powers-that-be. They aren't allowed to chose. They believe they have choice of happiness, and therefore freedom, but it is still very much a controlled society.

Also, who says people would be really happy taking drugs and fucking all the time? Maybe for a while, but I doubt, no matter how good, it'd last forever. We couldn't even stay in Eden, I don't think some girl's rockin' tits and shitton of LSD is gonna keep me in one spot for the rest of my life.

[Anonymous No.15194771]

>>15194711
It may be superficial but it's still happiness, the only reason why we don't overwhelmingly rely on drugs and other means of "superficial happiness" forever like in BNW, is because it will inevitably result in a come down. When you're on MDMA it's the best time of your life, the shitty part is the withdrawals. In BNW you can indefinitely pop soma pills and be fine.

[Anonymous No.15194781]

>>15194678
Something's "not right" here, either. Now, in the two situations which are "not right", which is the happier?

[Anonymous No.15194793]

Happiness is a buzzword

[Anonymous No.15194812]

Implicit in this reasoning is the idea that pleasure and the avoidance of pain are the ultimate good.

Perhaps your thesis is defendable if you hold a materialistic worldview, but from a more spiritual point it can be argued that the happiness granted by the drug is still not fully real, or at the very least incomplete in comparison to a situation where the spiritual need of someone is fulfilled aswell.

[Anonymous No.15194825]

How is the Christian afterlife different from brave new world?

[Anonymous No.15194852]

>>15194758
Is all of human life really supposed to be oriented towards achieving happiness through any means?
Of course not, but that's not the point. If we can be happy for the whole of our lives without any negative consequences then every fucking person would choose the soma pills. The difference IRL is that we LITERALLY can't function from these fast and easy dopamine boosts without destroying ourselves, in BNW you can. That's why it's such a good book. If soma had the withdrawals of any other drug IRL everyone would say it is a dystopia.

[Anonymous No.15194872]

>>15194108
love how the people who make these threads seem to forget about the slaves in bnw

[Anonymous No.15194874]

>>15194852
>"every fucking person would choose the soma pills"
You sure about that? What if a small group of people refuse?

[Anonymous No.15194913]

>>15194852
Again, though, that's eliminating choice -- which is what would make it a dystopia. Maybe more utopian on the surface than others, but no less terrifying. These people don't get to pick, they only get to be happy, but through no means of their own. They are deprived of any personal development and forever cocooned in happiness. If that's what you want, then you're in luck if you live in BNW. But nobody can WANT anything in BNW because it's all provided. What would it be like to live in that society, where your options are to either be happy forever on someone else's terms, or you're killed? I think that's the fundamental question at the heart of the book.

Maybe it's not necessarily saying that the society IS dystopian, but it's asking you to question what is the price of your happiness? And what makes you happy? Thunderstorms are fucking terrifying but they're also beautiful in their own right. So is death. But those aren't happy things. So they are ultimately experiences you don't get. You sacrifice all of life for one aspect of it in BNW. I don't think that's worth it; if someone else does, I won't stop them, but I wouldn't like them to force their decision on me. In BNW, the latter is EXACTLY what happens, carried out in a regimented, strict dogma by a ruling elite who knows how painful life can be and feels its their job to mediate between the people they govern and life as a whole. The dystopia doesn't come from being made happy all the time -- who wouldn't want to be? The dystopia comes from your inability to choose any other path, and the grave penalties for not immediately clicking "Agree" on the Terms and Conditions for the world you're born into.

[Anonymous No.15194988]

>>15194108
>is brave new world actually a dystopia?
Yes. And you're a disgrace to our race if you think it isn't.

[Anonymous No.15195011]

>>15194825
Asking the real questions.

[Anonymous No.15195038]

>>15194825
you wont be a slave

[Anonymous No.15195401]

>>15194872
You mean the lowest caste?

[Anonymous No.15195554]

>>15194108
Only a thinking person would have a problem with it. A life that has a purpose is not being found in such a world, and as such an artificial solution is being proposed. There is nobody to live for, nothing to die for, no values to affirm, only indulgence and if there is dissatisfaction, artificially it should be solved rather than what actually cause such problems. Relationships aren't relationships. You won't know what love is, you won't know what real happiness is, you'd never find real meaning in your life. If you'd kill yourself, there would be little argument against it. After all, people would give 0 fucks. In our world you'd say that there is someone to live for, a cause to put your life up for, so that would drive you toward not doing that. Why is it so bad for animals to live at the ZOO? After all, their lives aren't full of suffering, they can get food, their lives aren't in danger. Same applies here.You'd have to ask yourselves - are these people human? What is their value, when you think of it. Simply they contribute to science, labor, the system. That is it. Their value has been reduced. They became less distinguishable from robots, cogs in a machine, living their life to sustain a system. They became less human.

[Anonymous No.15195629]

>>15194648
How can they truly be happy if they have no idea of what its really like to be unhappy?

[Anonymous No.15195644]

>>15195401
the gammas, deltas and epsilons

[Anonymous No.15195673]

>>15194108
Begone weak Hedonist! You would drown us all in an indefinite world of sensuality, but a man is a great man only insofar as he can make his soul reflect everything with indifferent precision like a mirror of polished steel!

[Anonymous No.15195686]

>>15194108
What if I don't wanna take the drugs?

[Anonymous No.15195701]

>>15194269
Okay so take NEETdom to new heights. Go all the way with VR technology, sex machines, creatively exploiting welfare and growing your own weed.

You could have your own primitive pleasure machine set-up in a year. Keep fine tuning and experimenting with your operation and maybe you'll invent a real pleasure machine.

[Anonymous No.15195782]

>>15194872
They would probably say its fine because the slaves are happy, completely ignoring how fucked up it is to limit the potential of another human being, slavery is still wrong even if the slave is happy

[Anonymous No.15195799]

>>15195554
You're so used to coping that the idea of a world that wouldn't require coping scares you

[Anonymous No.15195924]

My painting professor a few years ago saw me reading BNW and would ask me about it from time to time.

His opinion on the ending was that the reason the Native kills himself is because he was the only truly human character in the story.

[Anonymous No.15196255]

>>15195924
this is unironically correct

[Anonymous No.15196266]

I...I didn't even know this was a discussion. Of course it's a dystopia.

[Anonymous No.15196273]

>>15194108
this is why happinessfaggots are pathetic niggers and not human, sadchads will previal.

[Anonymous No.15196286]

>>15194108
Humans in BNW were conditioned to conform and enjoy their environment/society. Only the midget guy and his friend did not like it, because they were "errors" in the system.

[Anonymous No.15196325]

>>15194108
there is a very fundemental dillema about being human in here. on the one hand, you are right in every way. some makes life better. on the other hand, its an idea thats repulsive and against the human spirit for no reason at all. its like the opposite of music, there is no reason for us to enjoy music and yet we do a lot. humans are stupid, but in a way that makes us interesting. so i suppose i value interesting more than pleasure. you might argue that soma makes everything feel interesting but again, that wouldn't be an interesting idea to my current self so i wouldn't take soma.

[Anonymous No.15196359]

Doesn't Lenina also not like her existence? Of course Bernard doesn't, because of a chemical error when he was being made, but isn't the whole point that Lenina - a supposedly normal citizen - is also deeply unhappy?

[Anonymous No.15196397]

>>15194108
Lack of freedom
/thread

[Anonymous No.15196411]

Technocracy bad
Midwits bad

[Anonymous No.15196415]

>>15194874
Then they would be sad. And they would probably live on an island like in BNW.

[Anonymous No.15196424]

>>15194913
I DON'T WANT TO BE SAD ANYMORE AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

[Anonymous No.15196448]

>>15195629
They know when their soma starts to run out. Then they can pop another.

And happiness doesn't work like that. People who fall in love describe it as an infinite happiness. There is no counterbalance for them.

[Anonymous No.15196455]

>>15195701
>VR Technology

Not advanced enough yet.

>Sex machines

Cannot replace the heights of real sex.

>Creatively exploiting welfare

Will not get you the funds you need for BNW-level happiness

>Growing your own weed

Weed is not good enough.

[Anonymous No.15196465]

>>15196325
I think this is the only good "why BNW is a dystopia" answer given here. Thanks!

[Anonymous No.15196541]

>>15195038 You would in fact be a slave to Jesus, as stated in the gospel of Luke IIRC

[Anonymous No.15196568]

>>15194108
I dunno, by that logic why not just on neetbux & do heroin all day? How is that not the same thing?

[Anonymous No.15196697]

>>15196568
Already addressed. Either think about it for 5 minutes, or read the rest of the thread.

[Anonymous No.15197069]

>>15194543
It kind of is terrifying.

[Anonymous No.15197084]

>>15194543
all society and civilization is terrifying

[Anonymous No.15197103]

>>15194108
It's a dystopia because for that world to exist you need that fucked up Alpha/Beta hierarchy enforced by essentially artificial selection, cloning, eugenics and a whole slew of shit considered unethical by our current standards. So even if everyone is happy, the base of that society is "unethical".

Also, I read this a long time ago so maybe I'm misremembering, but aren't some people described in the book as being totally catatonic from soma overuse? Like I remember some scene where they are watching some woman in a hospital bed or something being totally out of her mind. She didn't seem happy, more numb or doped out. We already have that now and it doesn't seem that great.

[Anonymous No.15197104]

>>15194678
But does a society where everyone is happy need progress?

[Anonymous No.15197110]

>>15195038
Yeah just a sheep.

[Anonymous No.15197143]

>>15194108
That's great OP. You'll fit right in with our company. If at any point you feel pain or depression please just choose from a variety of Pharma approved "life enhancers" and please consume enough entertainment to be "Happy".
I'm glad we agree that's not dystopian.

[Anonymous No.15197208]

>>15194424
Except for the vast majority it actually does make them happy. Soma works for almost everyone. Epsilons, Deltas, and Gammas are all happy because they’ve been specifically bred for the work they do. Betas are generally happy, but are a bit smarter so a few might feel discontent, but soma usually works for them. Alphas, ditto. The ones who want freedom to rebel even have an environment they can escape to and be themselves. The Savage is miserable, but he’s stupid. He’s a satirical, pretentious cross between what clueless academics and “traditionalists” think is an “Indian” with a hippie who bases all his ideas on Shakespeare whom he barely understands— he’s a caricature of the kind of people who embrace BNW as a dystopia. And even he could have been happy if he would’ve gone back to his squalor, but he was too much of pretentious, self-flagellating romantic to understand this.

[Anonymous No.15197223]

>>15197103
Only a few people being miserable is still preferable to a vast majority being miserable.

[Anonymous No.15197229]

>>15197084
So is nature.

[Anonymous No.15197233]

>>15197208
>>15197223
That defeats the purpose.
If soma actually existed, none of that book actually makes real sense.
Literally everyone would just be hooked to a soma machine and not move a finger their entire life.

>Oh no you need money to buy soma and you need work to have money.
Welcome to our current world.

[Anonymous No.15197235]

>>15194108
Why would I want to be happy?

[Anonymous No.15197240]

>>15194108
That’s the beauty of it. Unlike 1984, which is an unending cartoonish nightmare, Huxley peppers his world with so many positives it becomes seductive and often may even be preferable to real society. This raises a lot more questions and it’s harder to wrestle with.

[Anonymous No.15197259]

It's not earned happiness, and in fact, happiness is overrated. What matters more to a HUMAN BEING is purpose.
Also, key fact is that the "people" in Brave New World are "happy" in the way that a cattle or a lobotomized person is "happy". Theirs is not a happiness that has arisen from a genuine understanding of being human, or of knowing the world, but from shutting off those parts that seek to know either. They're "happy", because their perception of reality has become obscured so that only the most shallow and superficial aspects of existence remain.

I want the right to be unhappy, to be filled with destructive emotions and insatiable passions. I want struggle and pain, because I want a reason to exert my potential against something, anything, FOR something.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWIcKoLUHZk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnpwuRlXbhk

[Anonymous No.15197265]

>>15197233
Not if you were also conditioned to do a job you found fulfilling, too. When the conditioning starts to weaken you take the soma as a vacation. Then when you’re recharged you go back to work, happy. If you’re programmed to fluctuate between two (or more) states of artificial bliss you won’t get addicted to only one state or as burned out as quickly. In a warped way, it’s very epicurean.

[Anonymous No.15197291]

>>15197259
Then you can go and hang out with Bernard Marx on one of the islands, or go to the Reservation, or hang yourself like John Savage. In BNW, everybody always wins!!!

[Anonymous No.15197293]

>>15194108

Read this as a teenage and said "works for me" (my friend Joe who is pretty smart, agreed). But like many Ayn Randers et al, you realize, when I was a child I thought and spake like a child, but now I am an adult I have put away childish things (cheap paraphrase).

John's obsession with Shakespeare is a clue. Huxley doesn't really judge, he just shows how worlds can be so very different.

[Anonymous No.15197302]

>>15195924
>he was the only truly human character in the story.

from a world that no longer existed

[Anonymous No.15197366]

>>15194692
>>15194716
BNW is ultimately extolling old masculine virtues. I'm surprised women "get" it.

[Anonymous No.15197400]

>>15194108
The brave new world is one of total slavery, where mankind has been reduced to an ant colony. There is no individuality, all people are built to statistical averages, and expected to produce a certain increase in productivity over their mandated lifetime. Humanity is a great collective, where exceptional individuals are punted off somewhere they can't harm the main colony, but where any productive work they do can be reaped for the colony's benefit.
In the brave new world you cannot be happy, or sad, or angry, or contemplative because any large enough deviation from the norm will be chemically corrected. There is no YOU in the brave new world.

[Anonymous No.15197552]

>>15196448
Except they have an unlimited supply of it so they don't know what its like to experience true unhappiness

No a split second doesn't count.

[Anonymous No.15197577]

>>15194692
or maybe bernard was upset because he didnt fit in with the other alphas? youre teacher is a dumb cunt

[Anonymous No.15197634]

>>15196541
>>15197110
>calling christians sheep
mkay

[Anonymous No.15197643]

>>15197291
the only person who wins is the reader who understands the meaning behind BNW

[Anonymous No.15197648]

>>15194368
>sex has long lasting mental and spiritual benefits
As?

[Anonymous No.15197749]

We actually tried to manipulate the reward center of mice brains through electro stimulation to make them eternally happy.
The result was that they literally did nothing because they were so fucking content with everything. They had to be force fed even or they'd die

[Anonymous No.15198014]

>>15194108
You have to have certain understanding and mindset to enjoy BNW. I, personally, believe it is of more relevancy than 1984.

[Anonymous No.15198078]

>>15194758
This one gets it.

[Anonymous No.15198090]

>>15194108
I would rather have the freedom and misery thst comes with an authentic experience of life than be a happy, ignorant slave.

[Anonymous No.15198207]

>>15194672
Brave New World is just the natural conclusion of an ontology which renders this narrowly defined pursuit of happiness as the sole purpose of being.

[Anonymous No.15198229]

>>15194692
Isn't the whole meta-narrative in the biblical story of Eden essentially just that? That even in paradise, man will still be dissatisfied, and will pursue this bottomless pit of desire to his own peril?

[Anonymous No.15198449]

https://discord.gg/FFwRXKq

[Anonymous No.15198583]

>>15194108
Do you remember how the book fucking ends? Yes it's a dystopia and this take is astonishingly less interesting than you think it is

[Anonymous No.15198912]

>>15194108
Asking this question proves, not only that it was, but that Huxley was right.

[Anonymous No.15199097]

>>15198090
You wouldn't though.