Just a decade after a global backlash was triggered by Snowden reporting on mass domestic surveillance, the state-corporate dragnet is stronger and more invasive than ever.
Just a decade after a global backlash was triggered by Snowden reporting on mass domestic surveillance, the state-corporate dragnet is stronger and more invasive than ever.
I haven’t read it, what’s not dystopian about it?
The first thing Wikipedia says about it is “Brave New World is a dystopian novel” 😅
Maybe you not finding it especially dystopian says more about the state of the world right now than the book… 😅
Keep in mind that the book is very old, published in 1931. DNA hadn’t been mapped, information technology was limited, and so on.
In the book, people are born in factories. Working class people are born in from split cells, as quintuples if I remember correctly. Your role in life is largely determined by your genes - workers don’t have the psychology for anything but labor.
In spite of that, it’s not an especially oppressive society. There is a “perfect” drug, soma, which is sort of like a non-addictive, non-physically harmful heroin that can be delivered by gas. When there is unrest, security forces come in and get everyone high until they chill the fuck out.
Sex is open and easy, but always completely voluntary by everyone involved. When people are turned down they are sometimes surprised but never upset or aggressive.
Entertainment is presented as vacuous, but the people seem to enjoy it. There are movies, TV, and so on. Sports are engineered to require people take trains out of town to stadiums, and require deliberately-complicated equipment to play, in order to create demand for production.
So… is that a dystopia? There is no discussion of environmental damage, but overall it seems sustainable, not predicated on infinite growth. People are stuck in the role they were born to, but it seems like there are no artificial barriers to advancement… just that not everyone can be good at everything.
From the view of John the Savage, and to those who’s personalities align with John, it is a dystopia. This clean, orderly, and oppressive society removes the ability to experience real highs like love and real lows like sacrifice. The workers will only know shallow replacements. Furthermore, the workers no longer have the ability to choose. They cannot choose their role in society, and seemingly they cannot choose to leave the society either. Even John is seemingly stuck in the society, and in the end gives into the sensuality and group think after trying to flay himself.
From the view of the savage, and to those who’s personalities align with John, it is a dystopia. This clean, orderly, and oppressive society removes the ability to experience real highs like love and real lows like sacrifice. The workers will only know shallow replacements. Furthermore, the workers no longer have the ability to choose. They cannot choose their role in society, and seemingly they cannot choose to leave the society either. Even John is seemingly stuck in the society, and in the end gives into the sensuality and group think after trying to flay himself.