O brave new world, that has such people in't!

So some of you know this, but my job is in the slowest of the slow seasons. It will be about a month before thigns pick up and right now, at 7:30, with an hour and a half to go, it's me, the supervisor and one other temp left. No calls since around 5. GAAAAAAAAAH!

Moving on, I will be reading a LOT these weeks, so some book reviews will be going up. I'm not currently done, but Brave New World (which I read about half of today so far) is amazing. I am a sucker for satire, but this along with 1984 are among the kind of books that get better each passing day. Something about Huxley and Orwell that blow my mind is the fact that they wrote about the kind of things that were going on in their era, but are actually (with technological advancement) are also going on NOW. BNW is a little different than 1984 in it's view of society, but it hits upon many topics and taboos that happen now. The one thing that strikes me is the fact that since people are produced in this novel, the thought of family, and more specifically having a mother is laughed at and considered vulgar. Did Huxley know that the family is slowly spiraling into oblivion with the divorce rate growing ever larger? Did he know about the sexual and drug revolutions in the late 60s and 70s? Did he know about test tube babies, cloning and all that jazz that are issues of the modern world? This was all in the early 30s! His first edition was in 1932!

It's all to strange for me to read this, but this novel fits in with what I have been reading in philosophy texts in past posts. So I think that this is going to have to be the next point.

11. Technology as End of Society
Many of Huxley's ideas in Brave New World were sued in some films recently about technology taking over. Specifically, the idea of hypnopædia in the film The Matrix. Sleep learning, which seems more like conditioning through hypnotizing is a scary subject. Although the modern "New World" in the novel is pretty much a utopia, there is the void of family, art, literature and solitude that makes our moden society worth it. I have blogged before about artistry and it's importance in my life. I can't imagine a soceity where humans are produced to be certain classes and are hedonistic and drug users in order to be happy as a utopia. But what of this is actually science fiction? I see that most of what Huxley writes about has come true. Drugs, sex and money are all thigns that humanity takes as "happiness" and we forget how important family, rituals and art really are. Before I continue, I must finish this book, however, to see what comes of it all. But for the time being, think about these ideas or pick up Brave New World and check it out. It's going into the Top 5 unless it ends crappily and is triggering a new mix idea which will be unveiled in a later blog.