[emidln]

Not the universal usage of a euphoria-inducing, pacifying drug covering large-scale psychological manipulation and inudstrialist domination of society? Brave New World is a dystopia because it shows a fully satiated and socially occupied doesn't care that it is being manipulated and repressed. You don't care about your caste,or the atrocities committed to others, or learning to better yourself because you take another hit of Soma and join an orgy.

Did we read the same book?

[coldtea]

>Did we read the same book?

Yes, and the engineered factory humans is part of the dystopian point it makes. The dehumanization begins at that, it's not just the soma.

Which is also why the normally born people (in the wildling "reservation"), the regular aging, the regular pregancy, are also in the book as a antithesis to the dystopian society (but one which they can not belong as outsiders, like we can't be "natives", only LARP it).

[spondylosaurus]

I don't think we have to take a nearly century-old work of fiction's viewpoints seriously unless we want to. The book can argue that IVF or artificial gestation is horrific and we can in turn argue "well, I don't think that's true."

[coldtea]

>I don't think we have to take a nearly century-old work of fiction's viewpoints seriously unless we want to.

I want to. And the book's age has nothing to do with whether it's points are valid or not.

Literature doesn't have an expiration date. And some ideas about what it means to be human aren't meant to be transient - though their adoption might be.

[spondylosaurus]

I mean, I think its age is a valid consideration in the sense that IVF was literally not possible 100 years ago. Whereas it is now, and... it turns out IVF babies are normal humans too.

But I was also trying to convey that "this piece of literature argues X, therefore X is true" can't possibly hold up for every given work of literature. You can find an author for any viewpoint! They can't all be true at once!

[kanzure]

Generally speaking, when it comes to _Brave New World_, the answer is no - people did not read the same book: https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/10.1089/crispr.2019.0046

[trey-jones]

Well it's definitely possible to have different takeaways from the same book. I can't remember what I took away as a high school student, but when I read it again in my late 30s (I think) it blew my mind a little bit because I had adopted a sort of libertarian view that anything that doesn't directly impede the happiness of someone else should be legal. Coming down to the idea that personal happiness is ultimately what I want (not just for myself; for everybody). Brave New World (which is almost 100 years old at this point) says, "OK, here is a world where everyone can be happy all the time. What do you think?" And as a reader, of course I'm on the side of John Savage. The Soma holiday and ignorance (bliss) is not what I'm after. And of course, without contrast against strife and unhappiness, how can there be happiness at all?

[aaomidi]

> You don't care about your caste,or the atrocities committed to others

Totally not our society!

But yeah this invention is a good thing