[PhasmaFelis]

The thing that bugs me about Brave New World is that the world it describes actually appears to provide a much better life for the large majority of its citizens than our own. It has a lot of serious problems, but so do we; it's just that BNW's problems are weird and unfamiliar, where we've gotten used to our own problems and no longer truly see them.

[david-given]

BNW's society does make a concerted effort to maximize happiness for all of its members --- it does so in ways which we find abhorrent, but it does do so. It values empathy and individuality, too; people who obviously won't fit in in the World State hive culture are sent to the islands, partly because they're a destabilising influence, but also because they'll just be happier there. The society is reach enough to support them, so why not? And now there's a pool of talent the World State can draw on if it ever needs it.

So, yeah, simply branding it a dystopia is an oversimplification. It's much more nuanced than that. Fascinating book, and great fun to read too.

(I do have a few problems with the worldbuilding, which I think falls apart in a few places, but that shouldn't dissuade anyone from reading it. It is one of the great books of all time.)

[catscratch]

At the time that I read it, by the end of the book, it was clear to me personally that the large disconnect between the Utopian world and the world of the "natives" was the same disconnect that I felt at the time with the described Utopian world. People grown in test tubes, bred to do and believe specific things, using various levels of oxygen to control their intelligence, orgies and perfume water in sinks being a normal thing- these were disgusting to me. If that sounds like Utopia to anyone, then something is seriously wrong.

[golergka]

But it's only disguisting to you because you haven't been created for this world.

[catscratch]

But see, you had the intelligence to read what I wrote and write that.

What if someone were to have reduced the oxygen to your embryo so that you were an idiot and were happy but had no idea what I was talking about? That's ok to you?

BNW was not meant to be a template for a future society. It's a story to get the reader to try to adjust to the norm of morally reprehensible behavior and then at the end smack them back to cold, hard reality.

[PhasmaFelis]

The problem is that, on top of all the actual nastiness like deliberately impairing embryos, the "norm of morally reprehensible behavior" includes some really problematic things. In the Brave New World, you can have sex without fear of disease, unwanted pregnancy, or religious censure--and we're clearly supposed to understand this as awful and depraved.

[eli_gottlieb]

>What if someone were to have reduced the oxygen to your embryo so that you were an idiot and were happy but had no idea what I was talking about? That's ok to you?

You mean kinda like how they put lead in the water in Flint, Michigan?

[catscratch]

No, I was just stating part of the story from the book. Man, there are a lot of people here that haven't read BNW!