![]() ![]() First, this is apparently a dystopia, but Huxley seems not so sure. So this is a test case for utilitarianism, but like all test cases for big ideas, it's somewhat inconclusive. Some of these ideas had previously been synthesized by Bertrand Russell in The Scientific Outlook (1931, particularly chapter 15), which Huxley liberally borrows from. If we harness the power of society to employ available technologies to really focus on making people happy, what would the result be? This is Huxley's thought experiment, drawing on the latest thinking (and a bit of sci-fi projection regarding possible future advances) in mass-production techniques (via Henry Ford, whose thought is treated as religion by the society the novel depicts), behaviorist conditioning, education (including sleep learning), embryology (he predicated cloning), eugenics, pharmacology (the drug soma, that has no negative side effects), and psychotherapy (including removal of troublesome parental relations and encouragement of childhood sex play). ![]() On Aldous Huxley’s 1932 dystopian novel, recorded on stage with an audience Q&A at Manhattan's Caveat on 4/6/19. ![]() ![]() Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:38:40 - 90.4MB) ![]()
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