Excellent essai politique que je recommande à tous ceux ayant bien évidemment lu le meilleur des mondes mais aussi à ceux ayant lu 1984. C’est fou de voir comment M. Huxley, en 2022, parvient à nous faire réfléchir sur des sujets qui sont autant pertinents, ou même plus, qu’ils l’étaient en 1958.

"Ironically enough, the only people who can hold up indefinitely under the stress of modern war are psychotics. Individual insanity is immune to the consequences of collective insanity."

If you can get past the first couple of chapters, where Huxley's remarks about Africans, Asiatics and the illiterate masses leaves me thinking he was a pretty big jerk, you'll proceed through some fascinating (and fairly spot on) commentary about totalitarianism and propaganda and democracy, to a final paragraph that bemoans kids these days and their lack of dedication to freedom.

So, it's overall a useful and interesting read, while being the product of its time.

"But I don’t want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin."

Kitap sadece 110 sayfa olmasına rağmen tam üç günde bitti.Yazarın Cesur Yeni Dünya’sını okumayanlara önermiyorum ama elbette bağımsız asla okunamaz diye bir şey de yok.Kitapta,yazar kendi distopyasını yazdığı tarihten nerdeyse 30 sene sonrasında ve nelerin gerçekleştiğinden yola çıkarak başlıyor.Bazı şeylerinde düşündüğünden daha hızlı ya da farklı gerçekleştiğiyle devam ediyor.Bütün bunları hem gözlemleriyle hem de bilimsel çalışmalardan yaptığı alıntılarla destekliyor.Sonuç olarak,ortaya dikkatle okunması gereken bir eser çıkmış.Bu arada başka bir kült eser,1984 ile kıyaslamalar yaptığı yerler de mevcut.Cesur Yeni Dünya’nın yazılışı 1931,yazarın bu kitabının tarihi ise 1958.Yıl olmuş 2019 ve ben bu kitabı okuyorum.Ne kadar ileri görüşlü olduğu zaten ortada.Ve insanlığın başı düşündüğünden daha da büyük dertte.Nüfus ve kaynaklar arasındaki ters orantı ile köyden kente göçün yarattığı olumsuz etkiler,yaşantılarımızı daha da çekilmez hale getiriyor.Bunun çözümü ise,bu sorunu yaratan da...Yani biz insanlar da...Yaşayacağız ve göreceğiz ama ben maalesef pek umutlu değilim...

Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (1931) transported readers to a deeply creepy nightmare-vision of the future, in which man had disappeared as an independent being, instead becoming the raw materials for a new, engineered hive creature. In Brave New World Revisited, Huxley shares his fear that the technocratic domination of society is proceeding much more quickly than he had anticipated, and then outlines reasons for concern and the vectors by which free minds could be compromised and manipulated.

The crux of the problem, says Huxley, is overpopulation. Viewing a global population of 3 billion in horror, Huxley anticipated not only only mass starvation, but the rise of tyranny across the world. Rising population would crowd more of humanity in cities, where disease both physical and mental would become an ever-greater threat. The rising misery, he believed, would have the effect of fraying civil society so much that Communist orders promising food for all would be imposed. Though not a libertarian, Huxley takes Lord Acton's appraisal of power and human nature to heart. Even an innocent desire for order, he argues, can carry the controlling authority away, resulting in creeping and then quickly-hardening tyranny. Eugenics is an obvious example, and the subject of his second chapter.

The bulk of the book, after the opening essays on population crises and eugenics, examines ways in which technology might begin to subjugate human psychology. His original novel was published in 1931, two years before Adolf Hitler took power and achieved the closest thing the world had seen to total technological command of a people; Hitler not only grasped how mob mentalities could be manipulated, he used the latest in communications technology to constantly convey his message. Huxley examines the tools of Hitler's trade, as well as others introduced in the decade after World War 2 that might be the stuff of future empires. These include chemical agents, sleep conditioning, emotional propaganda, and different forms of torture. In each section, Huxley mentions precursors of them already in-use, like pervasive advertising and the attempted creation of consequence-free feel-good drugs.

I knew nothing about Huxley before starting this, but he proves to have been a thoughtful and well-read man. Some of his concerns about overpopulation obviously seem dated, given that the global population is presently 7.6 billion, with consistent declines in starvation rates.Overpopulation means increased demand for everything, not just food, so it's still an issue to be concerned about -- whether your concern is resource wars or global warming. The pressure these populations put on governments to "do something" -- about a great many things -- has resulted in declining self-determination across the board, with all levels of government. Huxley's view of the city as a profoundly unnatural environment, one that induces mental diseases, is still argued -- see Desmond Morris' The Human Zoo.

Modern readers of this will find, then, some of it dated but a great deal still relevant, as far as human psychology goes; whatever one makes of shifts in our mores, human nature has not changed since 1958.

A book which i probably could and should have paid more attention to while reading, but it seemed appropriate to have it as book to read before going to sleep. Definitely a must read for people who liked Brave New World or just found it interesting because Huxley gives an updated analogy of the topics that the book touches upon within society.

Science-fiction written a long time ago does have this interesting notion when read in modern times where it can show what was expected and what actually happened and this book feels like a much needed inbetween since Brave New World could be regarded as such a drastic change of times yet it’s ideas are undoubtedly already within the frame of modern society.

I wonder how Huxley would analyze our current times, yet I would seem to believe it would be even more pessimistic as in this book. Mostly taking into account how even back in 1980 he was talking about mind-control of the people using relevions and advertising, not even knowing of concepts such as binge-watching and doomscrolling.

The last part was the most interesting to me, where he talked about the ways society could maybe halt this movement towards a world like Brave New World. In this part he doesn’t hold much hope, which is very understandable, mainly due to his idea that humans in their essence do not want freedom. His belief is rooted in the idea that humans have been conditioned to the point where they need struggle or not have full control of their life because they’ll have no one to blame. Part of me does agree, yet the part of me who idealizes living out my +40 years on a farm in Italy doesn’t. It’ll always be a question whether true freedom is even attainable though; who knows?

Increíble libro, de inicio lento pero que te clava con su historia y rápidamente se vuelve no solo comprensible, sino muy entretenido

I liked a lot this collection of essays by Aldous Huxley about his novel 'Brave new world'. I specially liked his explanations about Hitler's strategies to manipulate mass audiences, and also when Huxley writes about the freedom menaces. I think these menaces are pretty the same today. I recommend this book to everyone interested in social topics, and people who found interesting the novel 'Brave new world'.

Huxley was in his mid-sixties when he wrote this. It has all the characteristics of a rant by an elderly public intellectual who still had a captive audience. It does not stand up well today if only because the science and technology he depends upon have very much moved on - as have our political concerns.

It is a classical liberal take on society with a nice and simple view of the risks of totalitarian social control and manipulation from a man wanting not only his cake of freedom but to eat it as a member of the Anglo-American intelligentsia with a rather prescriptive mentality.

It is largely of antiquarian interest now. His original 'Brave New World' was a suggestive pioneering work of science fiction but, like 1984 and like most literary views of future political realities, it expressed fears of something that might be with little true understanding of what is.

Concerns laid out in literary terms translated less well as non-fiction over a quarter of a century later. We have here an opinion piece as transient as contemporary journalism, feeding into Cold War fears and prejudices, with a dash perhaps of barely suppressed hysteria about the way the world is going.

It is not a stupid book but it has become an irrelevant and dull book. The concerns in it are still those of many well positioned public intellectuals fearful of the ability to sustain their rather cosy world and certainly understandable from that point of view but that is, frankly, no longer good enough.

Huxley, nuevamente, me sorprendió. Es un manual simple, directo y educativo. Ilumina al ignorante y al sabio por igual. Demoré tanto tiempo en leerlo, no sólo porque era un libro que no sigue una historia y es más bien teórico, sino porque cada capítulo me dejaba pensando por días en las consecuencias de los actos de una sociedad, pero sobre todo, individual.
Explica el modo de solucionar las grandes plagas mundiales cada vez más proliferantes, como los gobiernos totalitaristas, la superpoblación, el comercio al por mayor (que ha ahogado a los micro negocios familiares.)
Da pautas claras de que gobernarse a sí mismo es un acto de democrático y obligatorio para con uno mismo.
En cuánto a métodos desenmascara la popaganda bajo dictaduras, o en sociedades democráticas. La persuación química, subconsciente, lavado de cerebros y varios más. Pero sobre toddo, reflexiona en cómo solcionar estas cuestiones de vida o muerte, ya que vamos camino (y no tan en un futuro lejano como se piensa) a la aniquilación de nuestra propia especie.
Recomendable totalmente, para entender en que planeta vivimos, y con que tipo de personas. Recomiendo sobre todo el capítulo "Educación para la libertad"

I fucking hate politics.

It's only useful in a very small amount of cases and in the rest of the time it's just a big pile of bullshit that is fed to people in order to keep them at their lower level.

I don't like governments and people that run countries and I really really don't like them in countries like mine or in countries like USA. Somewhere in this world there must be a good president or a nice prime-minister but in my country, that doesn't happen and in the USA it's all just a big scam. Or, at least, that's my opinion.

Huxley decided, in the late fifties, to "revisit" his work and comment on it, in order for a better understanding. He did a really nice job in this .. essay, let's call it, on commenting his book. He explained some things about it and he made an apology for other things that he thought were not good enough, or should have been written better about. He was just too young to know.

This explanation of his was a good way for me of finding some new things about this world and starting to think about new ideas that didn't occur to me before. He did a lot of comparisons with Hitler's regime, but I think that's because Hitler had just gone out of our world for a bit more than 20 years and everything about that tragedy was still recent in the minds of the people living then. The wound was still open and, apparently, it didn't want to close up.

I liked a lot of things that he said about our world and I do find it strange (or, to say, kind of amazing) that what he wrote in 1932 was available in 1958 and is available now, and what he wrote in 1958 is also true for nowadays. The same thing Orwell did in 1948, when he spoke of this idea - the ability of the rulers of our known little world called Earth to kill freedom before it is born. Now I'm not sure which of them did it better, because even though they are based on the same principles and mainly the same big idea, the details are very different and it doesn't come at all as a surprise that I can't pick my favorite.

Though I do have something to say against Huxley's work, when compared to Orwell's. 1984 is deeper, I think. It's much more of a philosophical dilemma than Brave New World is.

The thing that Huxley did and I didn't like throughout this work is comparing his book with Orwell's from 20 to 20 pages. They're just not the same, so you could be able to compare them! The message they speak about is the same, not the style, not the development! Yes, you can compare them on a personal level, like I did before, and say which of them you liked better, but you cannot speak of them with the same easiness in terms of technical specifications. Plus they are two different authors with two different views on our world, and that's to be seen in their books. One speaks of cruelty, the other of eeriness. One tells a story about fear and the other tells a story about not knowing what fear was. One is oppression, the other is the inability to know what oppression is.

Anyhow, this was a great book explaining Brave New World and I do think that it was a good idea of Huxley's to write this!