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 yesterday at 12:17 PM 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 yesterday at 01:13 PM 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 3 hours ago 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?