Can't believe I finished a book with the quote "a deep-seated and almost universal feminine wish—the wish to be more attractive to member of the opposite sex" but here we are. Was so bad that it made me retrospectively change my rating for Brave New World (it was already a weak 4 starts but now it is decidedly 3 stars).

In this short book, Huxley talks about the fears of a future similar to the book "Brave New World", where there is no freedom and all human beings have no individuality.
Topics such as overpopulation, propaganda and brainwashing are treated in detail, illustrating as a "dictator of the future" could use various elements of the book "Brave New World" to keep people under control.
Beautiful food for thought about politics, social aspects and freedom. However, I found the book a bit tiring and repetitive.
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Neste pequeno curto, Huxley discorre sobre os medos de um futuro semelhante ao do livro "Admirável Mundo Novo", onde não há liberdade e todos os seres humanos não possuem individualidade.
Temas como superpopulação, propaganda e lavagem cerebral são tratados em detalhe, exemplificando como um "ditador do futuro" poderia usar vários elementos do livro "Brave New World" para manter as pessoas sob controle.
Belo assunto para refletir sobre política, aspectos sociais e liberdade. No entanto, achei o livro um pouco cansativo e repetitivo.

just further reinforcing my belief in how smart huxley is

Cesur yeni dünya'yı ilk okuduğumda yazarın hayal gücü çarpmıştı beni. Nasıl bunları düşündü diye kapa patlatmıştım. Olmayacak şey değil di de hani. Ama yine de kurgu işte diye içimi de rahatlatmıştım. Yaşamayı isteyeceğim bir dünya değildi çünkü. İnsanlık biraz da elinle bir mücadele demektir bence. Hayatta ters giden birşeyleri düzeltmeye uğraşmak, bir şeyler için gerçek hayaller kurmak. Bu yeni dünya gibi A'dan Z'ye planlanmış bir dünyada yaşam ne kadar tekdüze olurdu.
Meğer Aldous Huxley, ne çok araştırma yapmış, ne çok ölçüp biçmiş ve zamanındaki gelişmelerin gidişatını da çok ince ölçümlerle saptamış ve geleceği üç aşağı beş yukarı kafasında gerçeğe yakın
şekillendirmiş. Salgın sürecindeyiz şimdi. Birey olarak bizler yaşamı rölantiye aldık, ağırdan alıyoruz hayatı. Ama teknoloji hiç beklenmeyen bir hızla ilerliyor, Hergün yeni bir düşünce seli altında kalıyor beyinler. Yaşam tarzımız ve buna bağlı düşünce hayatımız bile farkına varmadan farklılaşıyor. Ya da ben bu kitabı okuyup da günümüzlde yaşananlarla kıyaslayınca birden ümitsizliğe kapıldım.
Neyse demem şu ki, Cesur Yeni Dünyayı okuduysanız, bir de bu eseri okuyarak bir ziyaret edin yeniden oraları. Çok şey ne kadar farklı olacak gözünüzde, göreceksiniz.

Many of the concepts in this book are relevant today - 61 years on - such as brainwashing by advertising and propaganda, mob mentality, reduced attention spans and too much TV, mind-altering drugs, etc. However, the writing style is not very interesting and the essays get repetitive pretty fast. I got the feeling that the author's tone was more of "What I think is right", rather than trying to be thought-provoking. There is also a substantial amount of condescension and ignorance towards 'other' cultures, 'other' meaning outside of Western Europe and North America.

Brave New World was published in 1931. George Orwell's 1984 was published in 1948. It is seen that the success of 1984 has prompted Aldous Huxley to publish this bo0k in 1958 to further elucidate and elaborate about his Brave New World. In the intervening period between the publication of Brave New World and Brave New World Revisited, there were earth shaking historic events like the rise of Nazism, a World War, dropping of two atomic bombs on Japan by USA and the excesses of communism under Stalin. So much happened that there had to be grim and dire prophesies of a world controlled by totalitarian regimes in near future. It was Alvin Toffler who correctly made the point that the dire prophecies of the entire world falling to totalitarian regimes would turn out to be wrong in view of the emerging technological breakthroughs which would make any such moves extremely difficult. Communism failed USSR and the USSR splintered to many countries. Democracy still flourishes even in many poor countries which got freedom after the WW II. Thus, to treat the novels Brave New World and 1984 as prophetic fables rather than as good literary works of pure imagination is not a correct approach. It is surprising that Aldous Huxley had to write a book extolling the merits of his future world over that of Orwell. Some of the points which Huxley make in this book are still relevant while some of his ideas are purely outdated and have even traces of racial superiority. Huxley's views about the ills of all pervading entertainment industry still hold good as the technological breakthroughs have made them more widely and freely available. Thus, instead of powerful Governments we have powerful social media corporates ruling the minds of people. Huxley got it completely wrong about the population explosion in western democracies. He was also wide off the mark about democracy not thriving in overpopulated poor countries. China remains steadfastly authoritarian and many super rich Middle East Countries are controlled by authoritarian regimes while there is democracy still thriving in many poor Asian and African countries. We live in a world with people of diverse identities. The culture and uniqueness of these diverse groups are preserved by a social media. Hopefully, such diverse identities will stand in the way of Brave New World emerging.

A timeless and prophetic work by one of the most brilliant literary and sociological thinkers of the 21st century, who presaged the brave new world of malleable reality and mutable memory that we currently live in.

Where to begin? Over the course of a few hundred pages, this singular mind has summed up the socioeconomic underpinnings of the last century of history, while laying down a blueprint for the next century.

With its timeless insights into the nature of human frailty, democracy, tyranny, propaganda and the forces "historical, economic, demographic and technological" which impede our ability to exercise reason, claim rights "and act justly within a democratically organized society" (plus a whole lot more), Brave New World Revisited captures the articulations of a brilliant mind, fully developed, at the height of its powers, operating at full steam, and might as well have been written to address the Trumpist times we currently live in.

A follow-on essay published in 1957 to explore the themes first raised in his 1932 novel Brave New World, Brave New World Revisited stitches together all my observations of the past decade into a contiguous, beautifully-composed whole. A far-reaching essay on the implications of the science, politics and art interacting against a backdrop of population-resource pressure, cultural decay, technological change and social disruption, this essay should be made required reading for all students, innovators and politicians.

I originally started reading this when I was 23, gave up because it didn't feel relevant, and then returned to it almost a decade later. My oh my, what a difference the passage of time has made. One helluva read man! I feel like I went down a deep rabbit hole into the inner workings of human nature, with an omniscient voice in my ear patiently explaining the hidden intricacies and interconnections between various branches of human knowledge to me. This book is the equivalent of a bachelor's degree, and more. The start of universal education in its own right, the kind of renaissance-style of interdisciplinary analysis which might have once been more common on college campuses before the advent of industry-inspired specializations.

In just a few hundred pages, Huxley has manage to touch upon and summarize so many wide-ranging avenues of thought and research, weaving them into a contiguous whole to present a startling vision for humanity and society. For instance: the link between language and morality, biology and social freedom, economic organization and totalitarianism, media manipulation and caste systems, medieval tyranny and modern marketing, and that's just for starters.

Imagine stumbling upon an intensely intellectual conversation where great insights and even greater avenues of thought are hinted at in passing, leaving you thrilled and excited with their possibilities. If you can get through its tedious prose, it's brilliant, with the precision and soul of a great machine slowly stirring to life.

Authors such as George Orwell, Margaret Atwood and Aldous Huxley scare me. How can these authors who write dystopian fiction or social commentaries 30, 40, even 50 years ago be so accurate in what is going on in today's society? This book is no exception. Huxley is basically summarizing the first book in this collection: Brave New World of which was published over 15 years before this one. Some quotes that I've extracted from this book which ring true for today are:

"If over-population should drive the underdeveloped countries into totalitarianism, and if these new dictatorships should ally themselves with Russia, then the military position of the United States would become less secure and the preparations for defense and retaliation would have to be intensified."

"In spite of new wonder drugs and better treatment, the physical health of the general population will show no improvement, and may even deteriorate. And along with a decline of average healthiness there may well go a decline in average intelligence."

Huxley compares his work with George Orwell's 1984 and also goes into some scientific philosophy on mind-manipulation and hypnosis.
To me, this book should be in every high school curriculum across the nation. It would give our future generations a foundation to correct what is wrong with our society.

A profound and insightful extended essay by Huxley that I had to read in one sitting. Written in 1958 and yet so very relevant today. That is truly exceptional, but it is a testament to its accuracy of analysis to the problems plaguing mankind and the suggested mechanisms or thoughts in how to go about resolving them. In light of the ridiculous successes of populist governments, this book is a wakeup call for all those sleeping to the demise of our humanistic heritage. Written at a time when communism was on the rise, as well as social control and propaganda, Huxley does not only accuse the eastern sphere, he equally demonstrates the faults of western capitalism, consumerism, oligarchical power of media and wealth... Do you see the brilliance? There is no right or wrong to our human situation as it was and as it is... it is just simply wrong. Abusing the Earth, abusing fellow humans, and abusing oneself, that is simply wrong.

This amazing insight, so eloquently explained and argued, in just over 100 pages, was actually his thoughts on his own novel A Brave New World. But like all honest and timeless literature, it is as relevant today as it was 80-something years ago. While I would say that is a mark of genius, I equally say it is a marker of sadness that our species fails to evolve into an ethically conscious whole.

Huxley nos presenta sus reflexiones años después de haber escrito su icónica distopía. Paradójicamente, en los años 50 y 60, los rasgos fuertes de ese mundo distópico ya están presentes y su preocupación por la prevalencia de la libertad humana, son cada vez mayores.

Troublant de réalisme… Huxley était vraiment un visionnaire! La description de l’avenir, c’est écrit en 1957, correspond pile poil à un reportage du piètre état de notre Terre.

In 1931, Aldous Huxley wrote his magnum opus 'Brave New World' - a prescient masterpiece dealing with what the author termed as 'a fable dealing with de-humanization employing techniques of over organisation'. This prophetic anti-utopian novel ranks alongside George Orwell's '1984' as one of the most influential books penned on the swift and forced erosion of independent thought and freedom of choice. Using a combination of centralised control of reproduction and neo natal programming, a dictatorial regime in 'Brave New World' deprived an entire subservient mass of human beings of their free will and usurped their freedom of choice, thereby gaining their unquestioned loyalty and devotion to the workings of the regime.

Twenty eight years after the publication of 'Brave New World', Huxley undertook a searing examination of the world affairs to identify glimmers (if any) of the disquieting phenomena which he has predicted would be the woes of the world in the distant future; a future he termed 7A.F (7th century After Ford). To his astonishment and chagrin, Huxley realised that the age of mental coercion and dangerous proselytization was already upon our age much faster than the rate at which Huxley had predicted it to happen. In this lucidly thought out review Huxley leads us through a range of options employed by many dictators such as Hitler and Stalin to win over the minds of vulnerable people with the sole aim of furthering discord and disharmony. Taking advantage of economically weak factors such as an uncontrolled growth of population and acute food shortages, many regimes exploited a depraved populace to channel their angst and anger towards violent acts and attitudes.

Huxley also introduces us to the methods prescribed by various Communist regimes to brainwash Luddites and break their mental reserve before finally succeeding in making them succumb to the tenets of the Communist Manifesto and Marxist ideologies. This objective was achieved without having a need to take recourse to physically assailing or torturing the unfortunate victims. Indoctrination through spiritual subjugation and mental humiliation were the chosen weapons of conversion. Novel methods such as Chemical persuasion (making available the use of certain drugs that act on the chemical properties of the brain, akin to the famous drug 'Soma' of 'Brave New World') and sub conscious persuasion such as influencing the sub conscious of the target by continuously emitting a drone of propaganda just before she dozes off into a state of deep sleep are also discussed by Huxely in startlingly clear fashion to demonstrate the plethora of tools that are available in the arsenal of a dictator to wield with wanton indiscretion and frequency.

The beauty of this book lies in its understated practicality. Huxley with a calmness that is terrifying and with a clarity that is frightening, lays out the irreversible perils that imperil mankind as the a rampant progress of technology, engulfing all that appear in its wake, threatens to make mere automatons of mankind and in the process, bestowing a portentous opportunity to aggressive political aspirants for assuming unopposed control over a weak and intoxicated mass of citizens. Huxley also frequently draws parallel to George Orwell's '1984' to point out the direction in which the world is heading and concludes that the more rigorous and uncompromising methods adopted by Orwell's ubiquitous 'Big Brother' would not even be needed in an age where the ends may be accomplished by resorting to more sophisticated and ingenious means. Huxley concludes by arguing that the only means to nip this insidious trend in its bud would be through an education that lays emphasis on furthering one's free will. The concluding passage in the book strikes a dire note of warning as Huxley encouragingly exhorts us to believe that all is not lost - yet!

He says "Meanwhile there is still freedom left in the world.....But some of us still believe that without freedom human beings cannot become fully human and that therefore freedom is supremely valuable. Perhaps the forces that now menace freedom are too strong to be resisted for very long. It is still our duty to do whatever we can to resist them".

United States of America and Mr. Donald Trump, are you listening?

If 'Brave New World' was one for the ages, 'Brave New World Revisited' goes even beyond!