Brave New World

Aldous Huxley. My new favorite author! I started with a Brave New World and since then I've started his other book, The Perennial Philosophy. Brave New World is a great fictional story that was written in the 1930's. He wrote about what he thought the future would be like in 700 years, well only about 70 years later a lot of what he was predicting is already coming to fruition! In the 40's his opinions changed since he had written the book so instead of rewriting it, he revisited it. He wrote an additional 8 chapters describing what he would of changed or added in the book had he written in later in life. Although I enjoyed the book, and the theory's he puts forth in it, I enjoyed his revision even more! There you get to hear his personal thought on what the world is like, was like, and could be like, if we don't start changing our ways. It might be the most important book ever written for people to read, in my opinion.

What are some of the things that happen in the book??? Well, for one: no one breeds anymore. Everyone is born in a test tube and they only birth what they need. So there is no more over population. And sex is free and open for everyone. Everyone has sex with everyone. Because there are no mothers or fathers, boyfriends or girlfriends or siblings, jealously is an emotion people don't feel. A lot of negative emotions have been removed from society, in this utopia. And there are different classes of people that are breed. Alphas, betas , deltas, gammas etc... And from birth they are conditioned to want to be their caste, and not any other. Sayings like " Alphas work to hard, you don't want to be an alpha, and Deltas dress ugly(each caste dresses differently), you are so happy you are a beta." are repeated 1000's of times while they sleep. And if any negative feelings arise they have invented a drug Huxley calls "Soma" that has no harmful side effects. And in small doses you feel happy, medium doses you see things, and large doses it puts you into a blissful sleep like vacation for as long as you want. The perfect drug to make sure society is always happy.