On the world-wide trend of anti-establishment voting.

[dimreepr]

11 minutes ago, iNow said:

Don’t be so sure. Most people are working from a 2 year old perception of models that get logarithmically better by the hour, and now models can even fix edit and improve their own code.

I've got my fingers crossed, "BNW" without the genetics, I think it's best we can hope for...

I'm not convinced that Huxley wrote it as a dystopia.

Edited December 3 by dimreepr

[toucana]

57 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

I've got my fingers crossed, "BNW" without the genetics, I think it's best we can hope for...

I'm not convinced that Huxley wrote it as a dystopia.

Have you ever read Brave New World by Aldous Huxley ? It was one of two novels I first read aged 16 as a pair of set texts for my English Literature examinations - the other was 1984 by George Orwell - at a time when that date still lay some 15 years in the future !

Suffice to say that Aldous Huxley wrote BNW in 1931 at the height of the Great Depression, and did so as a direct satire and parody of novels like A Modern Utopia (1905) by H.G. Wells, or its sequel Men Like Gods (1923) which is a scientific fantasy set in a Utopia located in a parallel universe. BNW is completely dystopian in every respect

Do you remember what happens at the end of Brave New World ? John, the deracinated ‘savage’ rescued from the reservation winds up exiling himself from the ‘World State’ and living in a remote lighthouse following the death of his mother Linda. After a final disastrous encounter with Lenina Crowne, the foetus technician whom he was attracted to, John hangs himself in his lighthouse retreat.

Quote

 

"Slowly, very slowly, like two unhurried compass needles, the feet turned towards the right; north, north-east, south-east, south, south-south-west; then paused, and, after a few seconds, turned as unhurriedly back towards the left."

(Final line  -  Brave New World )

 

 

Edited December 3 by toucana
'at a a time' - line 2.

[dimreepr]

3 minutes ago, toucana said:

Do you remember what happens at the end of Brave New World ? John, the deracinated ‘savage’ rescued from the reservation winds up exiling himself from the ‘World State’ and living in a remote lighthouse following the death of his mother Linda. After a final disastrous encounter with Lenina Crowne, the foetus technician whom he was attracted to, John hangs himself in his lighthouse retreat.

TBH I read it a long time ago, so no I don't; but you know what they say about a double edged sword, So John hangs himself bc he couldn't get what he wanted; sounds like somer o'clock could have helped...

24 minutes ago, toucana said:

  Quote

 

"Slowly, very slowly, like two unhurried compass needles, the feet turned towards the right; north, north-east, south-east, south, south-south-west; then paused, and, after a few seconds, turned as unhurriedly back towards the left."

(Final line  -  Brave New World )

What do you suppose that means? Left is right?

[toucana]

14 hours ago, dimreepr said:

TBH I read it a long time ago, so no I don't; but you know what they say about a double edged sword, So John hangs himself bc he couldn't get what he wanted; sounds like somer o'clock could have helped...

What do you suppose that means? Left is right?

Well it’s not exactly a happy ending is it ? I think it symbolizes the pointless and random nature of human existence, and the futility of seeking perfection in human society.

[dimreepr]

9 hours ago, toucana said:

Well it’s not exactly a happy ending is it ? I think it symbolizes the pointless and random nature of human existence, and the futility of seeking perfection in human society.

It's a bit fatalistic to just give up the search, it can be better, especially in the context of this thread.

[toucana]

2 hours ago, dimreepr said:

It's a bit fatalistic to just give up the search, it can be better, especially in the context of this thread.

The views expressed were those of the author Aldous Huxley, rather than my own -  (You asked me what I thought the final line of BNW meant).

You may be curious to learn that Aldous Huxley later wrote another book called The Island (1962) in the final year of his life, which was about a Utopian island state called Pala located in the Indian ocean. This later novel expresses a rather more positive and aspirational vision of a future society which you might find more congenial.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Island_(Huxley_novel)

In 1946 Huxley wrote a new foreword to Brave New World which anticipated some of the themes in The Island

Quote

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

Huxley incidentally died on 22 November 1963, the same day JFK was assassinated in Dallas Texas, so his death went largely unnoticed by the press.
 

Edited December 4 by toucana
italicised 'The Island', corrected URL

[dimreepr]

24 minutes ago, toucana said:

The views expressed were those of the author Aldous Huxley, rather than my own -  (You asked me what I thought the final line of BNW meant).

You may be curious to learn that Aldous Huxley later wrote another book called The Island (1962) in the final year of his life, which was about a Utopian island state called Pala located in the Indian ocean. This later novel expresses a rather more positive and aspirational vision of a future society which you might find more congenial.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Island_(Huxley_novel)

In 1946 Huxley wrote a new foreword to Brave New World which anticipated some of the themes in The Island

Huxley incidentally died on 22 November 1963, the same day JFK was assassinated in Dallas Texas, so his death went largely unnoticed by the press.
 

And this argues my point, How?

[toucana]

6 hours ago, dimreepr said:

And this argues my point, How?

What point ?

[dimreepr]

On 12/4/2024 at 10:41 PM, toucana said:

What point ?

The point I assumed we were (just about on topic/relevant) discussing, i.e. the motivation and meaning behind Huxley's novel "BNW".

What were you discussing?

I'm sorry but that green 1 is undeserved, it's gotta go.

On 12/3/2024 at 1:11 PM, toucana said:

and did so as a direct satire and parody of novels like A Modern Utopia (1905) by H.G. Wells, or its sequel Men Like Gods (1923) which is a scientific fantasy set in a Utopia located in a parallel universe. BNW is completely dystopian in every respect

Did 'he' tell you that?

I'm struggling with the concept of a satirical take on a science fiction novel.

[toucana]

1 hour ago, dimreepr said:

 

Did 'he' tell you that?

I'm struggling with the concept of a satirical take on a science fiction novel.

Yes he did -  in a manner of speaking. Aldous Huxley himself gave that exact attribution in the course of an interview with Raymond Fraser and George Wickes which was published in a journal called the Paris Review in the spring of 1960 under the title  ‘Aldous Huxley, The Art of Fiction’.

https://web.archive.org/web/20100922002704/http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/4698/the-art-of-fiction-no-24-aldous-huxley

Its quite an interesting Q/A style interview that quotes Huxley’s replies without any paraphrasing. Here is the section of interest (although the entire interview is well worth your time reading)-:

Quote

 

INTERVIEWER

When you start out on a novel, what sort of a general idea do you have? How did you begin Brave New World, for example?

HUXLEY

Well, that started out as a parody of H. G. Wells’s Men Like Gods, but gradually it got out of hand and turned into something quite different from what I’d originally intended. As I became more and more interested in the subject, I wandered farther and farther from my original purpose.

 

 

Edited Friday at 03:33 PM by toucana
Italicised 'Men Like Gods'

[dimreepr]

22 hours ago, toucana said:

Yes he did -  in a manner of speaking. Aldous Huxley himself gave that exact attribution in the course of an interview with Raymond Fraser and George Wickes which was published in a journal called the Paris Review in the spring of 1960 under the title  ‘Aldous Huxley, The Art of Fiction’.

https://web.archive.org/web/20100922002704/http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/4698/the-art-of-fiction-no-24-aldous-huxley

Its quite an interesting Q/A style interview that quotes Huxley’s replies without any paraphrasing. Here is the section of interest (although the entire interview is well worth your time reading)-:

 

No he didn't, he said (I'm paraphrasing) "it gets very nuanced, the more you think about it"... 😉

What he didn't say is, it's a satirical novel.

You're not addressing my point, your hiding from it...

[toucana]

3 hours ago, dimreepr said:

No he didn't, he said (I'm paraphrasing) "it gets very nuanced, the more you think about it"... 😉

What he didn't say is, it's a satirical novel.

You're not addressing my point, your hiding from it...

Dystopian and Utopian works of fiction typically rely on both satire *and* parody to achieve their aims.

Quote

 

Satire is defined as “the use of humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize people’s stupidity or vices, particularly in the context of contemporary politics and other topical issues.” Compare that to the definition of a parody: “a literary or musical work in which the style of an author or work is closely imitated for comic effect or in ridicule.”

https://copyrightalliance.org/faqs/parody-considered-fair-use-satire-isnt/

 

 

Aldous Huxley quite clearly explained in the interview that Brave New World  began as a parody of Men as Gods by H.G. Wells. He didn’t specifically say that it was satirical as well, for the simple reason that he didn’t feel the need to explain something so blindingly obvious to two experienced literary critics.

As you seem to be struggling with this topic, here are some notes:

- Dystopia is from the Greek δυς Τόπος meaning a “bad place”. It’s an antonym of Utopia which was coined in 1516 by Sir Thomas More, and came from the Greek  ού Τόπος meaning “not a (real) place", because More’s novel described an imaginary island society in the New World with near perfect qualities .

- Thomas More’s Utopia (which was written in Latin not English) is cast in the form of an epistolary exchange between More and other scholars who discuss reports about the customs and lifestyle of this strange island nation somewhere in the new world - customs which incidentally include institutionalised slavery. The entire content of Utopia is perceived as being intrinsically satirical in intent by most literary critics e.g:

Quote

 

One of the most troublesome questions about Utopia is Thomas More's reason for writing it. Most scholars see it as a comment on or criticism of 16th-century Catholicism since the evils of More's day are laid out in Book I and in many ways apparently solved in Book II.[12] Indeed, Utopia has many of the characteristics of satire, and there are many jokes and satirical asides such as how honest people are in Europe, but these are usually contrasted with the simple, uncomplicated society of the Utopians.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utopia_(book)

 

 

- This satirical fictional tradition continues in works like Gullivers Travels (1726)  by Jonathan Swift set in the fictional land of Lilliput, and Erewhon (1872) by Samuel Butler which was written as a satire on Victorian society - and one of the first to explore ideas of artificial intelligence. (Do I need to explain that Erewhon is an anagram of ’Nowhere’ spelled backwards ?).   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erewhon

- Modern dystopian fiction is said to start with:The Time Machine (1895) a novella by H.G Wells, a short story called The Machine Stops (1909) by E.M. Forster which predicts a type of internet, and continued with a trilogy of classic dystopian novels -  Brave New World (1932) by Aldous Huxley, 1984 (1949) by George Orwell, and Fahrenheit 451 (1953) by Ray Bradbury. Other dystopian novels such as A Clockwork Orange (1962) by Antony Burgess, and Blade Runner (1968 aka ‘Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep’) by Philip K. Dick have of course continued to be written to this very day.

Quote

You're not addressing my point, your hiding from it...

You haven't made any valid points that I could address. You don't seem to be familiar with this book or the genre.

Edited Saturday at 05:01 PM by toucana
corrected - 'A Clockwork Orange'

[dimreepr]

21 hours ago, toucana said:

Aldous Huxley quite clearly explained in the interview that Brave New World  began as a parody of Men as Gods by H.G. Wells.

No, he clearly said that it began as that and then it turned into something else, ergo not a parody...

21 hours ago, toucana said:

As you seem to be struggling with this topic, here are some notes:

- Dystopia is from the Greek δυς Τόπος meaning a “bad place”. It’s an antonym of Utopia which was coined in 1516 by Sir Thomas More, and came from the Greek  ού Τόπος meaning “not a (real) place", because More’s novel described an imaginary island society in the New World with near perfect qualities .

- Thomas More’s Utopia (which was written in Latin not English) is cast in the form of an epistolary exchange between More and other scholars who discuss reports about the customs and lifestyle of this strange island nation somewhere in the new world - customs which incidentally include institutionalised slavery. The entire content of Utopia is perceived as being intrinsically satirical in intent by most literary critics e.g:

Thank you for your concerns, but I've never suggested that "BNW" was a utopia, the best you'll get, is my suggestion that if AI replaced genetics, as a source of workers, then "BNW" is the closest we'll get to that no-place.

You have yet to pursuad me that the novel is entirely (your word) dystopian...

[dimreepr]

23 hours ago, toucana said:

Dystopian and Utopian works of fiction typically rely on both satire *and* parody to achieve their aims.

Present your evidence, if you can... 🙄

"1984" didn't seem that funny... 😉

[CharonY]

Neither satires nor parodies need to be funny- they tend to be extrapolations and exaggerations that could have an comedic effect, but don't have.

1984 is clearly a satire on totalitarianism. It follows a tradition satire where fictional exaggeration is applied to critique current societal situations. That being said, some parts of the books are potentially meant to be humorous, though they are written so realistically that it might not appear as such. For example, one could argue that the part where folks were confronted with a switch with whom they have always been at war with and the ensuing bewilderment how their banners were all changed by traitors could be seem humorous. However, especially in the light of current developments, it might just feel too realistic to be funny.

[TheVat]

8 hours ago, dimreepr said:

You have yet to pursuad me that the novel is entirely (your word) dystopian...

No one is tasked with persuading you of anything. Of course BNW is dystopian.  So much so that it is often used as an exemplar of the genre. 

If you want to keep trolling, perhaps you take on other obvious facts and insist they are wrong.  Julius Caesar isn't a tragedy, it's a wacky and farcical comic romp through Rome!  Mies van der Rohe wasn't a Minimalist, bur rather a gaudy and ornate retro Victorian!  Jackson Pollock was a realist in the baroque tradition of Dutch Masters!  Rembrandt was an abstract expressionist!  Moby Dick is a sex farce with bathtub toys!

[dimreepr]

On 12/3/2024 at 11:58 AM, dimreepr said:

In a "BNW" it was genetic engineering that provided the worker's and AI is a long way from that level.

This is what started this 'discussion'.

 

On 12/8/2024 at 10:39 PM, TheVat said:

No one is tasked with persuading you of anything. Of course BNW is dystopian.  So much so that it is often used as an exemplar of the genre. 

If you want to keep trolling, perhaps you take on other obvious facts and insist they are wrong.  Julius Caesar isn't a tragedy, it's a wacky and farcical comic romp through Rome!  Mies van der Rohe wasn't a Minimalist, bur rather a gaudy and ornate retro Victorian!  Jackson Pollock was a realist in the baroque tradition of Dutch Masters!  Rembrandt was an abstract expressionist!  Moby Dick is a sex farce with bathtub toys!

I hesitate to reply, bc you don't seem in the mood to discuss anything.

This is worth a look, if you can (give it 10 mins and you'll probably see it through).

I think BNW is a fairly accurate analogy of the western world ATM, I wonder how many of us think we're living in a dystopian novel?

[dimreepr]

On 12/8/2024 at 8:15 PM, CharonY said:

it might just feel too realistic to be funny.

It's just a switch away from being gallows humour...

[dimreepr]

On 12/4/2024 at 3:32 PM, toucana said:

In 1946 Huxley wrote a new foreword to Brave New World which anticipated some of the themes in The Island

Quote

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

I missed this, it's seems to add weight to my initial argument:

On 12/3/2024 at 12:14 PM, dimreepr said:

On 12/3/2024 at 12:04 PM, iNow said:

Don’t be so sure. Most people are working from a 2 year old perception of models that get logarithmically better by the hour, and now models can even fix edit and improve their own code.

I've got my fingers crossed, "BNW" without the genetics, I think it's best we can hope for...

I'm not convinced that Huxley wrote it as a dystopia.