A Not-So-Brave New World
The Future is now, and the ethical implications of our technical progression need real, rooted answers.
“Oh, wonder! How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world, That has such people in ’t!”
- Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Act 5 Scene 1
It’s been many years since I’ve read Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, but many of its themes have stayed with me. I recently attempted to watch the 2020 television series based on the book, but it’s a bit of a slog so far, and I’m not eager to return to it. Wikipedia informs me that there’s a line in Huxley’s novel Chrome Yellow (which I’ve never read) that prefigures this awkward utopia. A character named Mr. Scogan lays it out:
"Even your eloquence, my dear Gombauld," he was saying--"even your eloquence must prove inadequate to reconvert the world to a belief in the delights of mere multiplication. With the gramophone, the cinema, and the automatic pistol, the goddess of Applied Science has presented the world with another gift, more precious even than these--the means of dissociating love from propagation. Eros, fo…
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