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Thom posted a review at 2011-06-21 05:28:50.
(Language: English)
The crux of Huxley's Brave New World was by no means a new one at the time of its publication in the 1930's. Its emphasis on biological conditioning as a means to achieveing social equilibrium certainly owed much of its inspiration to a body of scientific and imaginative writing of the late-Nineteenth Century, of which Thomas Huxley and H. G. Wells were by far the most notable. However, Huxley's capacity to articulate a timeless problem in a contemporary format is not altogether unsuccessful. The rule in Huxley's work is still the same as that which would be articulated by Orwell over a decade later, complacency by cocercion. Only by removing man's most fundamental power, that of choice, could harmony be achieved, even if it is removed before they are born. As Rousseau aptly put it in The Social Contract, some men must be forced to be free. In Huxley's case, much to the Savage's chagrin, they must be forced to be happy.
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