[irishcoffee]

Brave New World always gets overlooked. I understand why we gravitate towards 1984, however it sure seems like we are much closer to BNW. What is TikTok (read: all of the addictive parts of the internet/smartphones) if not a gramme?

[oliyoung]

BNW has proven to be far more prescient, and insidiously so, than 1984

[irishcoffee]

Yeah, that and Atlas Shrugged, but mentioning that book is a magnet for dissention.

Edit: I was correct, and I don't understand why. Was AS somehow twisted for political reasons? It's a great book.

[collingreen]

Atlas Shrugged (and the fountainhead) is like a superhero comic book where the almighty good guys fight the flat, faceless "bad guys" with pure and fully justified moral righteousness. The "bad guys" are a slobbering caricature of a boogeyman that everyone can easily despise - wanting to do nothing except take from others like a bridge troll or a grey goo disaster scenario.

Nothing wrong with that I suppose but the second someone implies it has something to say about real life capitalists or social welfare or anything else then it gets weird; that makes as much sense as any of the marvel movies helping you decide how to vote for exactly the same reason.

I expect it's for this reason you're being downvoted - these books are often used as a motte and baily to imply something about real life (or often to ironically excuse their own selfish/bad behavior) and they just don't hold up for that in my opinion.

[LM358]

Probably because the author was an insufferable person and that that very book was part of the basis for (not "twisted") her inhumane and pretentious pseudo-philosophical spin on libertarianism?

[gampleman]

I always thought if Orwell was quite prescient of the eastern block than surely Huxley was even more so about the western.

[pohl]

Huxley was plenty prescient. Soma is basically scrolling for dopamine hits and distraction.