3.7 KiB
| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brave New World | 8/9 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_New_World | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T14:53:04.886890+00:00 | kb-cron |
If I were now to rewrite the book, I would offer the Savage a third alternative. Between the Utopian and primitive horns of his dilemma would lie the possibility of sanity... In this community economics would be decentralist and Henry-Georgian, politics Kropotkinesque and co-operative. Science and technology would be used as though, like the Sabbath, they had been made for man, not (as at present and still more so in the Brave New World) as though man were to be adapted and enslaved to them. Religion would be the conscious and intelligent pursuit of man's Final End, the unitive knowledge of immanent Tao or Logos, the transcendent Godhead or Brahman. And the prevailing philosophy of life would be a kind of Higher Utilitarianism, in which the Greatest Happiness principle would be secondary to the Final End principle—the first question to be asked and answered in every contingency of life being: "How will this thought or action contribute to, or interfere with, the achievement, by me and the greatest possible number of other individuals, of man's Final End?"
Brave New World Revisited (Harper & Brothers, US, 1958; Chatto & Windus, UK, 1959), written by Huxley almost thirty years after Brave New World, is a non-fiction work in which Huxley considered whether the world had moved toward or away from his vision of the future from the 1930s. He believed when he wrote the original novel that it was a reasonable guess as to where the world might go in the future. In Brave New World Revisited, he concluded that the world was becoming like Brave New World much faster than he originally thought. Huxley analysed the causes of this, such as overpopulation, as well as all the means by which populations can be controlled. He was particularly interested in the effects of drugs and subliminal suggestion. Brave New World Revisited is different in tone because of Huxley's evolving thought, as well as his conversion to Hindu Vedanta in the interim between the two books. The last chapter of the book aims to propose action which could be taken to prevent a democracy from turning into the totalitarian world described in Brave New World. In Huxley's last novel, Island, he again expounds similar ideas to describe a utopian nation, which is generally viewed as a counterpart to Brave New World.
== Censorship == According to American Library Association, Brave New World has frequently been challenged in the United States due to insensitivity, offensive language, nudity, racism, drug use, conflict with a religious viewpoint, and being sexually explicit. It landed on the list of the top ten most challenged books in 2010 (3) and 2011 (7). The book also secured a spot on the association's list of the top one hundred challenged books for 1990–1999 (54), 2000–2009 (36), and 2010–2019 (26). The following include specific instances of when the book has been censored, banned, or challenged:
In 1932, the book was banned in Ireland for its language, and for supposedly being anti-family and anti-religion. In 1965, a Maryland English teacher alleged that he was fired for assigning Brave New World to students. The teacher sued for violation of First Amendment rights but lost both his case and the appeal, with the appeals court ruling that the assignment of the book was not the reason for his firing. The book was banned in India in 1967, with Huxley accused of being a "pornographer". In 1980, it was removed from classrooms in Miller, Missouri, among other challenges. The version of Brave New World Revisited published in China lacks explicit mentions of China itself.