5 ms·

You don't find it dystopic because the Brave New World so frighteningly resembles ours. The people on the article actually behaves like the idiot mainstream inh

by wazoox 16y ago

You don't find it dystopic because the Brave New World so frighteningly resembles ours. The people on the article actually behaves like the idiot mainstream inhabitants of the Brave New World. That you don't even find it dystopic is probably another sign that it's actually the parody of the world we're living it; superficial, commercial, filled with porn and vulgarity, reality TV and shitty music, individualistic and thoughtless. We don't even need a Thought Police to enforce proper thinking.

roel_v 16y ago
You're ascribing all sorts of moral judgments to this world but don't make a case for why any of these things are bad, if they manage to make people feel (truly) content and happy. What's wrong with reality TV, Lady Gaga and advertisements if that's what people like? Do you honestly thing people would be better off if they didn't have those things and only had a Chopin record to put on at night? Maybe I'm reading your comment wrong but the pseudo-intellectual snobbery, not backed up with anything but an general contempt for anything that is mainstream, irks me. I guess in the same way the Brave New World did. (that said, calling the society of Brave New World to be similar to ours is hyperbole, and I'd pretty sure that it's not why I feel the way I do about the book. Don't forget that the 1930's had their own 'shitty music and vulgarity', in the form of jazz and skirts that showed ankles. It's so easy to make an extremely generalized case for why Brave New World resembles any society; hell I figure that some grumpy inhabitants of Pompei would make the same argument about their city 2000 years ago.).
- rbanffy 16y ago
  http://wilderdom.com/images/IQ.gif http://wilderdom.com/images/IQ.gif With one picture we can explain reality TV, crappy music, Chopin and Huxley.
- wazoox 16y ago
  > You're ascribing all sorts of moral judgments to this world but don't make a case for why any of these things are bad, if they manage to make people feel (truly) content and happy. Most probably sheep are perfectly happy in their pen. Being perfectly happy because you don't think about why you live and what you may be good for isn't in my opinion a good way to be happy. My opinion is that human being should aim higher than living an happy cattle life. These are personal values, but I think that some values are better than others, and that general relativism isn't good. And about the intellectual snobbery : I am a proud intellectual snob. Intellectual snobs know better, that's why I chose to be one :)
  - roel_v 16y ago
    "...a good way to be happy..." ... "...should aim higher than living an happy cattle life..." I'm not sure. Some other posters also brought up a similar argument. I'm not convinced that there is a moral ordering or ways to be happy, as long as the criteria are constrained to internal ones (i.e., as long as the criteria don't affect others - a society of 9 male rapists and one woman is presumably one where 90% of the population is happy, but that doesn't make it a just or right society) I don't agree that hardship and/or grief are required for great achievements. On the contrary, I think that most achievements are done by people who are already in the 5th layer of Maslow's hierarchy. It's subjective what 'great achievement' is, but in the trend of this site, let's take some big software companies; were Bill Gates, Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg living in mud huts, going to sleep every night feeling hungry? I don't know the details about any of them, but it seems from a cursory Wikipedia glance that all of them grew up in environments where the 'happy cattle life' was the norm, and it was some other internal motivation that drove them to create and not a desire to get away from hardship. Also, note that I didn't say 'intellectual snobbery', but 'pseudo-intellectual snobbery'. Being a rebel for rebellion's sake, agitating against everything that is mainstream, is not intellectualism, it's mostly a trait of wannabe students and hipsters who are still in their formative years and derive their self image from contrasting themselves with the rest of society. Now actual intellectual thought can also be contrary to mainstream thinking of course, but it needs to be backed up with solid reasoning from data, axioms etc. and not with 'most people are stupid, so what most people are thinking is wrong' (even leaving apart that by definition it's impossible for most people to be stupid, unless one sets the benchmark for stupidity at an arbitrarily high level, at which point it's just definition again).
    - wazoox 16y ago
      > I'm not convinced that there is a moral ordering or ways to be happy, as long as the criteria are constrained to internal ones ... This is an interesting and debatable matter. I'm probably not really convinced too :) > I don't agree that hardship and/or grief are required for great achievements. Neither do I, but I don't seem to have implied it.

by wazoox 16y ago

roel_v 16y ago

You're ascribing all sorts of moral judgments to this world but don't make a case for why any of these things are bad, if they manage to make people feel (truly) content and happy. What's wrong with reality TV, Lady Gaga and advertisements if that's what people like? Do you honestly thing people would be better off if they didn't have those things and only had a Chopin record to put on at night? Maybe I'm reading your comment wrong but the pseudo-intellectual snobbery, not backed up with anything but an general contempt for anything that is mainstream, irks me. I guess in the same way the Brave New World did. (that said, calling the society of Brave New World to be similar to ours is hyperbole, and I'd pretty sure that it's not why I feel the way I do about the book. Don't forget that the 1930's had their own 'shitty music and vulgarity', in the form of jazz and skirts that showed ankles. It's so easy to make an extremely generalized case for why Brave New World resembles any society; hell I figure that some grumpy inhabitants of Pompei would make the same argument about their city 2000 years ago.).

rbanffy 16y ago
http://wilderdom.com/images/IQ.gif http://wilderdom.com/images/IQ.gif With one picture we can explain reality TV, crappy music, Chopin and Huxley.
wazoox 16y ago
> You're ascribing all sorts of moral judgments to this world but don't make a case for why any of these things are bad, if they manage to make people feel (truly) content and happy. Most probably sheep are perfectly happy in their pen. Being perfectly happy because you don't think about why you live and what you may be good for isn't in my opinion a good way to be happy. My opinion is that human being should aim higher than living an happy cattle life. These are personal values, but I think that some values are better than others, and that general relativism isn't good. And about the intellectual snobbery : I am a proud intellectual snob. Intellectual snobs know better, that's why I chose to be one :)
- roel_v 16y ago
  "...a good way to be happy..." ... "...should aim higher than living an happy cattle life..." I'm not sure. Some other posters also brought up a similar argument. I'm not convinced that there is a moral ordering or ways to be happy, as long as the criteria are constrained to internal ones (i.e., as long as the criteria don't affect others - a society of 9 male rapists and one woman is presumably one where 90% of the population is happy, but that doesn't make it a just or right society) I don't agree that hardship and/or grief are required for great achievements. On the contrary, I think that most achievements are done by people who are already in the 5th layer of Maslow's hierarchy. It's subjective what 'great achievement' is, but in the trend of this site, let's take some big software companies; were Bill Gates, Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg living in mud huts, going to sleep every night feeling hungry? I don't know the details about any of them, but it seems from a cursory Wikipedia glance that all of them grew up in environments where the 'happy cattle life' was the norm, and it was some other internal motivation that drove them to create and not a desire to get away from hardship. Also, note that I didn't say 'intellectual snobbery', but 'pseudo-intellectual snobbery'. Being a rebel for rebellion's sake, agitating against everything that is mainstream, is not intellectualism, it's mostly a trait of wannabe students and hipsters who are still in their formative years and derive their self image from contrasting themselves with the rest of society. Now actual intellectual thought can also be contrary to mainstream thinking of course, but it needs to be backed up with solid reasoning from data, axioms etc. and not with 'most people are stupid, so what most people are thinking is wrong' (even leaving apart that by definition it's impossible for most people to be stupid, unless one sets the benchmark for stupidity at an arbitrarily high level, at which point it's just definition again).
  - wazoox 16y ago
    > I'm not convinced that there is a moral ordering or ways to be happy, as long as the criteria are constrained to internal ones ... This is an interesting and debatable matter. I'm probably not really convinced too :) > I don't agree that hardship and/or grief are required for great achievements. Neither do I, but I don't seem to have implied it.