In a culture in which algorithms control the content we consume—what movies to watch, what goods to buy, what news to listen to—the choice to read a book whose philosophy opposes our own and questions our sacred assumptions is nothing short of revolutionary. “I choose novels that let me turn my brain off,” a student [...]
Aldous Huxley cautions modern folk, who think or assume that they can continuously redefine or reconstruct primary forms of human relationship without risk, that their actions may lead to unintended, unanticipated, and unwanted consequences… Editor’s Note: The following is excerpted from Rallying the Really Human Things by Vigen Guroian (325 pages, Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2005) The theme of Brave [...]
We were keeping our eye on 1984. When the year came and the prophecy did not, thoughtful Americans sang softly in praise of themselves. The roots of liberal democracy had held. Wherever else the terror had happened, we, at least, had not been visited by Orwellian nightmares. But we had forgotten that alongside Orwell’s dark [...]
For the last week our televisions and newspapers have been taken up with commemorations of the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. As I write this, we are just an hour away from bells tolling across the land. It is right that we pause and remember the event that changed so [...]
Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932) is commonly seen as an indictment of both tyranny and technology. Huxley himself described its theme as “the advancement of science as it affects human individuals.”[1] Brave New World Revisited (1958) deplored its vision of the over orderly dystopia “where perfect efficiency left no room for freedom or personal [...]
“This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but a whimper.” These lines from T.S. Eliot’s “The Hollow Men” are often quoted, but seldom taken to heart. Even those of us who consider ourselves students of Eliot’s work on civilization’s decline tend to overdramatize what is really a quite tawdry cultural age. [...]
Over the years I’ve seen countless book lists and there are two books on “must read lists” that speak to the modern world insightfully, but in differing manners. As dystopian works, people have tended to see them both as “prophetic” and yet, of the two, most think that the one literary vision was closer to [...]
C. R. Wiley It is unclear which was lost first, the cosmos or God. With hindsight it appears they came as a package, lose one and you lose the other. People still speak of the cosmos, but they either do not know what they are talking about or they mean something very different [...]
Aldous Huxley ‘But I like the inconveniences.’ ‘We don’t,’ said the Controller. ‘We prefer to do things comfortably.’ ‘But I don’t want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.’ ‘In fact,’ said Mustapha Mond, ‘you’re claiming the right to be [...]