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Brave New World (is Here!)
New York Post ^ | April 28, 2012 | KYLE SMITH

Posted on 04/29/2012 9:16:09 AM PDT by DogByte6RER

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To: DJ Frisat

I think, DJ, that your original logo is the single best use of Obama’s I have yet seen. Excellent work!


21 posted on 04/29/2012 1:54:35 PM PDT by jobim (.)
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To: jobim

Thanks for your comment. Sadly, ‘soma’ has taken on so many different meanings in recent years that the original use of the term in Brave New World is lost on a lot of people.


22 posted on 04/29/2012 4:56:33 PM PDT by DJ Frisat ((optional, printed after my name on post))
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To: DJ Frisat; elcid1970
Just for grins, I Binged ‘Soma’ and the bra ad is what popped up first. BTW, there is an actual pain drug called ‘Soma’ ... http://www.rxlist.com/soma-drug.htm
23 posted on 04/29/2012 4:58:34 PM PDT by shove_it (just undo it)
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To: jobim
That is a splendidly-written comparison of Huxley’s vision with our present-day world. I don’t know Kyle Smith, but I will keep an eye out for him now. Huxley’s book is extraordinarily prescient, and Smith relates these parallels convincingly.

omg what are you kyle's mom pretending not to be?

It was readable, but "splendid?" Chesterton was "splendid." This is 8th grade essay stuff.

24 posted on 04/29/2012 6:13:39 PM PDT by the invisib1e hand
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To: shove_it

When it comes to Soma, I’ll take the bra ad. That gal is so Catherine Zeta-Jones.

By the way, does CZ-J know that she is the pinup girl for FReepers?

;^)


25 posted on 04/29/2012 6:16:06 PM PDT by elcid1970 (Nuke the Aswan High Dam, then nuke Mecca. Death to Islam means freedom for all mankind.")
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To: shove_it

Yep. I think there’s either a band or a song called ‘Soma’, too. As I said to another poster, it’s kind of lost its meaning because of all the new, different references.


26 posted on 04/29/2012 8:01:00 PM PDT by DJ Frisat ((optional, printed after my name on post))
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To: the invisib1e hand
Huxley also foresaw a disturbing partnership between the state and capitalism but didn’t anticipate how little need for government collusion sophisticated marketers would need to reorder society.
And again: The cycle of challenges confronted and mastered, the flow of meaningful work, has largely been taken away from Huxley’s world citizens.

Not only is the syntax here well above 8th grade, the ideas indeed are.

I like your reading list on your personal page. Intrepid and Orthodoxy make any list worth taking note of. And yes, splendid is a word that Chesterton would use either satirically or in reference to something outstanding, such as an essay by Newman. Perhaps I was watering it down by using it here, in comparison with Newman, or Chesterton himself. But then again, I never claimed that Smith soared aloft with those superlative writers, did I?

Pretending to be Smith's mother? Are you serious about that accusation, even if lodged hyperbolically? I stand by my contention that it was a laudable essay, and to my mind covered major points in Huxley's book accurately.

I am more interested in your response. I am fascinated by someone who cites Chesterton and "omg" in the same response. You would seem to be of a supercilious nature, and if I am wrong, I apologize in advance. Maybe you just had your 5th Manhattan. Been there myself.
27 posted on 04/29/2012 10:54:18 PM PDT by jobim (.)
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To: the invisib1e hand

The Invisible Hand? Bueller? Bueller? Invisible Hand? Anybody? Anybody?


28 posted on 05/01/2012 1:25:20 AM PDT by jobim (.)
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To: jobim
Piss off, asshat.

meditate on that.

29 posted on 05/01/2012 7:11:40 AM PDT by the invisib1e hand
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To: the invisib1e hand

I pity your wretched state of mind, and will gladly end this fruitless dialogue.


30 posted on 05/01/2012 9:07:49 AM PDT by jobim (.)
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To: DogByte6RER

“Community, Identity, Stability”...


31 posted on 05/01/2012 9:13:19 AM PDT by GOPJ (Had a Christian minister yelled at a bunch of gay students - the New York Times would have covered i)
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To: DogByte6RER
Interesting article in last month's Commentary, "How Highbrows Killed Culture":

In 1931, as Huxley was composing Brave New World, he wrote newspaper articles arguing that “we must abandon democracy and allow ourselves to be ruled dictatorially by men who will compel us to do and suffer what a rational foresight demands.” It was Huxley’s view that “dictatorship and scientific propaganda may provide the only means of saving humanity from the misery of anarchy.” Many of the elements in the “brave new world” that contemporary readers find jarring actually appealed to Huxley. The sorting of individuals by type, eugenic breeding, and hierarchic leadership were policies for which he had proselytized. The problem with the world he created is the lack of spiritual insight, spiritual greatness, on the part of its leader.

Most of our teachers probably took Huxley as a good democrat concerned about elitism and the evil effects of technology, but according to this, Huxley was an elitist and an enthusiast for reproductive technology who only wanted the guardians and new technologies to reflect older spiritual values.

I guess you could find a similar ambivalence in Orwell, who was enthusiastic for the "classless society" he saw in wartime Barcelona but repelled by Stalinist dictatorship. Huxley, though, was apparently a far more conflicted character than Orwell. Maybe his book was a success and has lasted because it wasn't simply a tract attacking modernity, but reflected a deep ambivalence about what was going on and what he expected from the future.

32 posted on 05/03/2012 4:03:23 PM PDT by x
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