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Pleasures by Aldous Huxley (1920)
- boomskats 3y agoNote that this was probably written in 1923 rather than 1920, if the second paragraph is anything to go by.
- smallerdemon 3y ago"These effortless pleasures, these ready-made distractions that are the same for every one over the face of the whole Western world, are surely a worse menace to our civilization than ever the Germans were." Well... this aged like fine milk in retrospect to what was coming 20 years down the line.
- zer00eyz 3y agoConsidering how complacent everyone got in the interwar period about what was going on... I dont think any one at that point in time thought they would do it all over again, 20 years later, with Germany.
- randomburner99 3y agoIncorrect on multiple grounds, the first being that the Nazis were in part a reaction against the kind of society that Huxley sees developing.
- pizzafeelsright 3y ago[flagged]
- ulrashida 3y agoYes, because as we all remember there were no countries allied with Germany for any duration of the war.
- rexpop 3y agoThis is how you sound, to me: "Sometimes, I wonder if it took the collective organs to defeat one pathogen perhaps they were superior to all other organisms." If we must, there are other rubrics by which to judge "superiority" than capacity for destruction and domination.
- marviel 3y agoYou seem to believe capacity for destruction & dominance is the metric by which a society should be valued. I hope you take a moment to consider what the world would be like if all lived according to your implied ideals
- lm28469 3y agoTo defeat "one country" ? Do you have access to history books?
- mantas 3y agoIt aged very well looking at what was coming 100 years down the line.
- tryauuum 3y agoThis aged fine. Any war eventually ends but the stream of "the effortless pleasures" will be present in each day
- bee_rider 3y agoEh, is it a matter of aging? WW1 would be fresh in people’s minds… it seems like a bad quote then, too. I bet, for example, any reader who’d been in a trench for a week long bombardment would take the record player instead. It seems like a surprisingly weak essay, from an otherwise pretty thoughtful guy.
- gatane 3y ago"Do the democracies want music? In the old days they would have made it themselves. Now, they merely turn on the gramophone." "Kids these days bad, older times good!" - as far as humanity has existed.
- randomburner99 3y agoYes, that is how decline works. Technology constantly makes life easier: does this mean "better"? In a sense, yes. But the mind tends to atrophy.
- rexpop 3y agoHave we been in decline for 2,500 years?[0] 0. https://historyhustle.com/2500-years-of-people-complaining-about-the-younger-generation/ https://historyhustle.com/2500-years-of-people-complaining-a...
- overvale 3y agoIt is possible for the best aspects of a people/society to atrophy while they simultaneously expand their wealth/technology/etc. We can make the world an undeniably better place while also loosing vital things. It's not a zero-sum game. Have we been doing this for 2,500 years? Probably. It feels like a contradiction only if it's zero sum. But we generate more vital things than we lose, so it feels like (is) progress. But that doesn't mean we're not losing vital things.
- DylanDmitri 3y agoWe see clearly the flaws around us, but it’s non-obvious that {person} 400 years ago was flawed and lazy as well. Or sick with illness for 15 years, and we vaccinate those today.
- calderknight 3y agolonger
- 3y ago
- zer00eyz 3y ago>> Like every man of sense and good feeling, I abominate work. But I would rather put in eight hours a day at a Government office than be condemned to lead a life of "pleasure"; I would even, I believe, prefer to write a million words of journalism a year. I adore Huxley. Brave New World, The Doors of Perception, Those Barren Leaves... I think the overmedication facet of Brave New World is so very true. We know we have an opioid problem because people are addicted and then dying. I think it would be naive to think that we aren't doing the same with everything in psychopharmacology.
- whaleofatw2022 3y agoAgree on some level. Over my life I have found that some things, yes I do need medication for, but I -personally- do not need anti depressants to be happy... However people in society increasingly take the view of 'you need medication' rather than "maybe when this person tells me what is bothering them I should reflect on if I'm contributing to the problem"
- zer00eyz 3y agoI begrudge no one their medication. I have been blessed with some very dear friends over my life. My first brush with the ills of psychopharmacology was with a woman I knew whose mother had just passed. I went to visit her a few days after the funeral and she was rather spry. I, being a man of little regard for my own well being asked the probing question "You seem rather upbeat". It was met with a resounding "I know, and I can't even cry". She removed prozac from her life shortly after, went through a bought of horrid depression (putting off processing things means you pay later). Today she's happy, bright and successful... I have a current friend who is "suffering from anxiety and depression". Her life is hard, for a number of reasons. Medication makes her "happy" and she does not address the structural issues in her life. You can't help those who wont help themselves, I get that. But if you dont feel the pain how do you know to pull back from the fire.
- lm7272 3y agohonestly really do not think you understand SSRIs or anti depressants at all man. Never once encountered people being unable to cry or feel negative things whilst on anti-depressants. Even if you have, to disregard antidepressants as some evil big pharma mind control is so incredibly narrow minded.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y agoOn the other hand, maybe it would have been better to devote more effort to pleasure. In a few years from when it was written, Germany would be devoting the full power of a modern industrial economy, not to pleasure but to wipe out undesirable people. They would is the newly developing field of electronic data processing, not for pleasure to to better target people for death. Planes would be built not for people to travel on vacation, but to drop bombs. Factories would work around the clock, not producing goods for pleasure, but weapons of death. The greatest group of geniuses ever assembled, would be given an unlimited budget not to develop new forms of pleasure but to develop a weapon that could vaporize an entire city in a few seconds.
- readthenotes1 3y agoStore-bought pleasure, the opiate of the elite?
- al_borland 3y agoI have to believe there is a middle ground between devoting life to pleasure and trying to exterminate a race of people. That middle ground is most of what we call life today.
- cyber_kinetist 3y agoNo need for a middle ground; why not both? (ex. the US)
- shiroiushi 3y agoIt's not really "both" in the case of the US; as with most developed nations, the US devotes a certain percentage of its national budget to military stuff. With the US, it appears gargantuan, but that's because the US economy is the largest in the world by GDP as measured in USD, so of course it's going to look like a lot. But there's a big difference between how much the US spends today on the military vs. in WWII during its wartime economy, or Nazi Germany during that same time.
- dansiemens 3y ago> In place of the old pleasures demanding intelligence and personal initiative, we have vast organizations that provide us with ready-made distractions - distractions which demand from pleasure-seekers no personal participation and no intellectual effort of any sort This feels true in some sense for every generation; bemoaning the insolence of the current youth feels like a rite of passage. However, it also seems true that the youth of today have a lower barrier of access to “pleasure” than any other humans in history.
- rwasco 3y agoThis is a natural conseqence of copyright law. It is hard for local talent to compete against unnatural monopolies. We subsidized mass produced media at the expense of decentralized talent.
- zibzob 3y agoI might be missing your point, but I'm not sure abolishing copyright would make much of a difference, in terms of increasing the number of people who can professionally make media. Supply and demand doesn't work properly in mass media, because one movie can supply the demand of everybody in the entire world, pretty much. We don't need a singer in every town, we only need a handful of talented people who can supply the music demands for everybody in the world - it doesn't really matter who they are. I'm exaggerating a bit, but that's how I generally feel about it. (Having said that, this article is pretty much "old man yells at cloud" for me.)
- Super_Jambo 3y agoIf you didn't have copyright people could remix stuff I guess?
- QuantumG 3y agoQuite the opposite. Copyright is all about encouraging the production of "art" and has all these exceptions to ensure the exploitation doesn't restrict creation. Without copyright we'd have guilds that enforce secrecy and fidelity.
- parentheses 3y agoHuxley was talking about a time when most work was manual labor (tend the farm, smith the axe). While there was an intellectual element it was imbued into the physical aspect of the work. Today, work is more intellectual. It makes complete sense that pleasures are not so much so. It's a great abstract discussion. Increases in technology have made it possible to use human intellect to move society forward, but also make pleasure that much easier to attain. I don't really have a point here but I find the topic very amusing to think about. I feel guilty watching hours of TV during the week to unwind. At the same time, it helps me to relax. Pleasure that comes from physical work seems to always have a greater positive outcome for me. OTOH, mental pleasure sense to leave me depleted even more so. TV is an interesting mental pleasure that does help.
- stana 3y ago"menaces including the largest war and the stupidest peace known to history" Any context why 1918 peace would be considered 'stupid'?
- ido 3y agoMaybe forcing debilitating repartitions? In retrospect we know it was part of the cause for the rise of the Nazis.
- shiroiushi 3y agoThat alone wasn't the cause: what enabled their success (as far as their ability to rebuild their war machine) was the ineffectiveness of the enforcement of those reparations, and the victors simply allowing the German economy to build more war materiel. Debilitating reparations can be done, but you have to maintain military power and use it to prevent the losing nation from refusing to pay, or building up its military again. The victors failed to do this and the result was another war. Honestly, I'm not sure what they were thinking. It's like throwing people in prison with hard labor for a crime, and then leaving the prison doors and gates wide open and firing all the prison guards and expecting the inmates to not escape.
- maxilevi 3y agoThe intention of the treaty of Versailles wasn’t to make a peaceful Europe
- dudul 3y ago2 things come to mind: The astronomical reparations Germany had to pay. The lands taken from Germany ended up creating pockets of German speaking areas in surrounding countries. This was an amazing opportunity for the nazis to claim these lands and set up false flags operations.
- Amehle 3y ago[flagged]
- Jabrov 3y agoFuck right off
- kosolam 3y agoHere are the key points I took away from the excerpt of "Pleasures" by Aldous Huxley: - Huxley argues that the real threat to modern civilization is not external dangers like war, but the "auto-intoxication" of mindless pleasures and distractions. - He contends that pleasures and entertainments have become progressively more passive and devoid of intellectual effort. People now soak up ready-made distractions like movies, radio, and newspapers without thinking. - Huxley criticizes the sterility and sameness of modern distractions. The same movies and dances are consumed everywhere without local variation. - He sees the proliferation of effortless distractions as promoting boredom, atrophy of the mind, and decline of civilization. - The essay ends with a warning that the bored populace may eventually demand ever more violent entertainments, as happened in decadent Rome. Huxley fears we may "live to see blood flowing across the stage."
- QuantumG 3y agoKill Bill was good actually.
- Hit-squad-17 3y agoI tried to watch it a couple times . Thought it Sucked. Maybe I just was not ready .... I'll give it one more try someday . Same thing w LOST IN TRANSLATION.... Second try , turned out good.
- samplatt 3y agoAmerican Football today is almost as dangerous as the sport in Rollerball (1975). This is probably a better comparison to Roman circuses than Kill Bill.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Hit-squad-17 3y agoThank you
- sixhobbits 3y ago
- dr_dshiv 3y agoI was thinking that, perhaps, the better people feel, the more empowered, energetic and ambitious they become.
- da39a3ee 3y ago> The horrors of modern "pleasure" arise from the fact that every kind of organized distraction tends to become progressively more and more imbecile. Fuck me, imagine what he'd say if he had a silicon valley programming job and had to put up with HR-organized online parties and friends wearing animal onesies at social events.
- chapulin 3y ago“No participation”—-spot on. The brain evolved for social learning.
- sosodev 3y agoTo me it seems like this paper reveals two truths. 1) Many people are happy living life and never exercising their brain. 2) Some people, like Aldous, are not. Instead they choose to more often than not. I suspect that this has been true for a very long time. It also seems less frightening than he is making it out to be. Assuming the ratio of critical thinkers remains roughly the same then the world should continue to get objectively better, right?
- _ea1k 3y agoI find it interesting how accurately this sums up the press. It is a facade of informing, but ultimately just entertainment. I wouldn't have expected it to have been viewed that way back in 1920.
- dkalola 3y agoThis essay by Huxley said exactly what I have always felt but never articulated. The problem is far worse today than it was in his time. So much of recreation today consists of binge-watching Netflix. In addition, because Netflix has global reach, the world often watches the same content, devoid of local meaning. I have realized that active recreation, although requiring overcoming a certain threshold of activation energy, is far more compelling and fulfilling than passive recreation.
- jacknews 3y ago"To-day, the inventions of the scenario-writer go out from Los Angeles across the whole world. Countless audiences soak passively in the tepid bath of nonsense. No mental effort is demanded of them, no participation; they need only sit and keep their eyes open." lol, still so true.
- SergeAx 3y agoTreaty of Versailles turned out to be a real menace to civilization, BTW.
- lynx23 3y agoKarl Kraus saw it coming. Huxley apparently not so much.
- devilcius 3y agoIt reminds me of an advertising sign I once saw outside a store, which read "Movies, Couch, and Ice Cream." It seemed to me like an apt epitaph for our civilization.
- justanotherjoe 3y agoMaybe we shouldn't focus so much on predictions made in 1920. Surely living in the future, allows us to have a better understanding than Aldous Huxley ever could?
- sixhobbits 3y agoInteresting that 100 years later I think > has resisted the combined attacks of these enemies wonderfully well applies to the 'dumb pleasure seeking' he warns about in this article too. Society has not collapsed and in spite of pleasure-at-the-push-of-a-button being more than Huxley could ever have imagined and > the democracy of the future will sicken of a chronic and mortal boredom still being an ever-present topic I think the 'bark worse than bite' still holds, for now..
- radiator 3y ago> To-day, the inventions of the scenario-writer go out from Los Angeles across the whole world. Countless audiences soak passively in the tepid bath of nonsense. No mental effort is demanded of them, no participation; they need only sit and keep their eyes open. Wow this is exactly true today, more than one hundred years later.
- r0s 3y agoSports are the metaphor. Regular people intellectualize the game and are derided. No one needs to fight, we can all see the game happening. We incorporate all the functions of pleasure into our identity. Huxley cant recognize the social progress, calling it dumb. Smug enough to be funny, oblivious to the irony.
- echtroipolemos 3y ago"There have always been fourth-rate writers and dramatists; but their works, in the past, quickly died without getting beyond the boundaries of the city or the country in which they appeared. To-day, the inventions of the scenario-writer go out from Los Angeles across the whole world." Not only did Orwell predict the total surveillance state, but his French teacher Huxley foreshadowed the necessity of the opioid crisis in maintaining the existence of such a society.
- srid 3y ago> ‘One summer day, 40 years ago or so, I was walking along a residential street when an rich, earthy scent wafted my way and triggered, as smells are wont to do, a vivid recollection. Like Dorothy, stepping out of her front door into the Technicolor Land of Oz, I remembered another summer’s day when I was 4 years old, playing in a bank of warm, black dirt in the back yard of my home. I had a little red toy car for which I’d made a road slanting up the face of the dirt bank and, in my recollection, I was ‘driving’ the car up this mountain road while making motor noises. That’s all there was, no real action, yet the memory, in the few seconds before it faded away, was redolent with the smell and feel of the warm dirt, the bright colour of the toy, the hot sun – with simple but intensely pleasurable sensory experience. When I read Aldous Huxley’s account of his mescaline experience, of his feeling that the colours, shapes, and textures of his books on the shelves across the room were as intense an experience as he could bear and that he dared not look outside at the flowers in the garden, I thought of my brief revisitation of my childhood’. -- Chapter 1, ‘Happiness: The Nature and Nurture of Joy and Contentment’; David Lykken.
- DavidPiper 3y ago> And if they want literature, there is the Press. Nominally, it is true, the Press exists to impart information. But its real function is to provide, like the cinema, a distraction which shall occupy the mind without demanding of it the slightest effort or the fatigue of a single thought. Welp, time for a re-read of Amusing Ourselves to Death. Pretty sure Neil Postman quotes Brave New World at least once.