The "Perfect" Society Is An Epic Disaster
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- čas přidán 3. 09. 2020
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Aldous Huxley’s 1932 novel Brave New World has finally gotten the TV treatment it deserves. The Peacock original series of the same name clings pretty tightly to Huxley’s original story, and the few modern additions make a lot of sense.
Brave New World shows us the fictional, futuristic setting of New London, where the World State cleanly and scientifically runs everything and everyone completely. Babies are not born, but “hatched” in a lab, genetically engineered from “conception” and psychologically conditioned from infancy to be perfectly suited to their caste-specific duty.
And while Brave New World routinely gets labeled as a dystopian story, it seems more accurate to say it’s a utopian story that’s just as terrifying as its grittier counterparts like George Orwell’s 1984. New London is clean, technologically advanced, and wealthy. Its residents have access to all the food, consumer goods, entertainment, and Soma they could want. Every conceivable hedonistic desire is indulged. And yet, something insidious lurks beneath the gleaming surface of New London.
A centrally-planned and closed-off society like New London operating with the success that it displays is simply not possible in the real world. But such dreams have long been the fantasy of many progressive thinkers over the years, especially in the early 20th century. Philosophers and writers like Huxley, George Bernard Shaw, and Bertrand Russell were convinced that central planning was not only good but necessary for managing the rapidly increasing complexity of the modern world, up to and including eugenics.
Huxley, unlike most of his contemporaries, was prescient enough to foresee the profound, negative psychological effects of such a level of state control over people’s entire lives. The latent unhappiness that would definitely exist with such a lack of personal autonomy is the reason for the invention of the fictional drug Soma, which does everything from calming anxiety and easing pain to, in a large enough dose, quietly euthanizing those members of society who have outlived their usefulness.
The combination of centralized control, intense psychological conditioning, and psychotropic drugs has created a society of mindless drones in New London. And when the cracks in that society begin to appear, which are then exacerbated by the arrival of John the Savage, we see just how fragile such a society would be.
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Yuck. You cant put the words of "perfect" and "class" near each other. Any society with a class structure is just another capitalist, feudalist, imperialist dystopia
You've mixed a whole lot of terms that all have very different meanings, while ignoring that the most stratified societies on earth are -- and have always been -- the most socialist. Where the "means of production" is collectively (read: state) owned and controlled, individuals' preferences and values are overridden and treated as unimportant. The more this is the case in any society, the more genuine extreme inequality you see between those in power and everybody else.
When you look at imperialism and feudalism, they are examples of a state controlling the resources and dismissing individual rights. Capitalism -- defined as any economics text book would as the private, individual ownership over resources, free trade, well defined property rights, and low barriers to market entry -- is the opposite of this.
There are those who would claim capitalism is corporate protectionism and state subsides, but frankly there's already a term for that system: Mercantilism, and it's just a lighter form of feudalism. It's also the very thing Adam Smith was critiquing in The Wealth of Nations, and it's the kind of thing free market supporters have continued to critique for the last 300 years.
Capitalism and feudalism aren't the same thing.
And societies driven by Marxist ideas have only ever created more class division, never eliminated it. Also, re: your other comment, this video -- like all video essays -- absolutely does contain a good deal of "opinion". It's a video designed to make a persuasive case for a set of ideas and values, as are all the videos in this series. That's how this works. On the other hand, calling that "propaganda" is laughable when the whole thing is 1) 100% out in the open about what ideas its advocating and why; 2) filled with phrases like "I believe," or "In my view," etc.; 3) supported by evidence that is easy to review and check; and most importantly, 4) exists in a world of contrary viewpoints.
You can dislike the opinions and arguments I've presented here all you want. But to define any difference of opinion to your own as unacceptable trickery is exactly the kind of closed mindset I'm criticizing.
@@FEEonline let's say you get your libertarian utopia. I don't know if you're an ancap, that wants no government, or a classic libertarian, that wants as little government as possible.
If you're an ancap how do you enforce rights when there's no authority to protect those rights? Also, what's preventing a new authority from taking power and basically becoming the new government? Like what if I'm a warlord that amasses a gathering then I use that power to enslave all the businessmen? If everyone puts themselves ahead of everyone else, like a "true capitalist individual" does, then no one is going to organize to create a community that can fight off tyrannies that want to take over. You're weak when you're alone, you're strong when you have other's that you can rely on.
If you're the more moderate libertarian then I wonder how you'd prevent monopolies from forming and becoming so economically powerful that they become their own governments? The whole foundation of capitalism is competition of business. In a competition there can only be one winner but there's always countless losers. If you have no restrictions or regulations then why cant one company dominate the market? Why cant it be better at business then the rest? It'll become the winner of the capitalist game, a super monopoly. Isn't that the end game for most businesses, to become as big as possible? This kind of capitalism already existed, it lead to the great depression, the government grew bigger to solve people's growing concerns.
Btw I'm an anarcho communist. I bet you think that's an oxymoron but I think you have a complete misunderstanding of communism, socialism and what those terms mean to the followers of those ideologies. As an anarcho communist I'm a lot like you, I dislike being controlled and told what I can and cant do. I like to imagine a world where communities organize themselves through democracy and communication. I like the idea that my opinions and beliefs are heard. I want to be apart of making the decisions that effect my life and I'd like others to have that opportunity too. Capitalism cant offer that because everyone lives in their own world, no one organizes, if someone wants to take advantage of you then they can. Libertarian capitalism is like a road with no rules, if someone wants to ram you they can, if they want to cut you off they can, the roads will only stay clear of debris if someone actually cares to take the time out their "individual" life to do it. That's the definition of a utopia, where you imagine a world that only works if people do as you want them to. That's why utopias fail, because they don't account for people who dont do what you want them to, to make the utopia work. Capitalism can only work like the Adam Smith paradise if everyone was a kind, good sport. But people a mixed crowd, some are nice and some want you dead
@Andrew Godly these questions are all the basis for a great conversation, thanks for replying! I'll try to go through each of these ideas as systematically as I can.
1a) "If you're an ancap how do you enforce rights when there's no authority to protect those rights?"
This is one of the best and most difficult questions anarchists of any stripe face.
The best answers are pretty lengthy and detailed explorations of state-less / fully-privatized instances of personal defense. The real issue, in my view, is actually not about the "authority", but instead about how rights are consistently defined for everyone. What law can do that is actually valid is to define the limits… But in fact, there are a lot of examples of rights-traditions developing outside of the state or legislation and even a lot of our laws around commerce and property rights emerged spontaneously from common law, so it's certainly possible.
I'd recommend David Friedman on some of these questions: www.daviddfriedman.com/Academic/Law_as_a_private_good/Law_as_a_private_good.html
The more direct answer though, is that the individual defends their own rights and convinces others to voluntarily work together to defend equal rights together.
1b) "Also, what's preventing a new authority from taking power and basically becoming the new government? Like what if I'm a warlord that amasses a gathering then I use that power to enslave all the businessmen?"
This, for me, is the toughest issue to get around with outright anarchism. Human history is chock full of people who imposed tyrannical power structures on entire nations through a "might makes right" mentality coupled with genuinely having overwhelming physical power.
The answer, I believe, largely lies in simultaneously spreading a culture of voluntaryist ideas which reduce support for the belief that it's morally valid to impose control over others by threats and acts of violence, while also building up individuals' capability of defending themselves from attackers.
If you're a warlord who comes in and tries to enslave all the businessmen, businessmen should be thoughtful and prepared to defend themselves or pay people to do it for them.
Again, this isn't a perfect answer because there's no guarantee that this works… but of course, let's also not forget that governments around the world have always been incredibly murderous and the history of the state is full of warlords, bloody conquerers, and genocides meant to do exactly what you say would happen under an anarchist situation.
I don't think anyone is actually safe ever, which is why I think it's so important to constantly reinforce the value of the *principles* of a free society.
1c) "If everyone puts themselves ahead of everyone else, like a "true capitalist individual" does, then no one is going to organize to create a community that can fight off tyrannies that want to take over. You're weak when you're alone, you're strong when you have other's that you can rely on."
You're creating strawmen that I'm going to have to deal with much more later, but a "true capitalist individual" doesn't "put themselves ahead of everyone else".
If anything, a true capitalist is really an entrepreneur who is constantly looking for ways to solve significant practical, emotional, and social problems for as many people as possible -- people who will, in turn, pay for their solutions and support their own goals.
By missing this point, I think you've also sort of addressed your own question. If there is demand for a means of fighting tyranny, capitalists are probably the very people who will try to provide that means. For example, through private security (which probably introduces another line of criticism, but is a thing); and more importantly through all manner of defensive technologies very much like what we see today -- better constructed homes that are harder to destroy, harder to burn, harder to break into; locks; security cameras; safes; tools for self-defense such as guns and pepper spray, etc.
Under a free market system (and even under "mostly" free market systems), the way to get rich -- the way to be a "great capitalist" -- is to create a massive amount of value for other people, all of whom can voluntarily choose to engage in economic exchange with you and buy your products / services or not.
Capitalism is not atomistic. It is, in fact, massively interconnected. This lesson is most important point I think FEE's founder, Leonard Read *ever* made throughout his life -- in particular through his essay, "I, Pencil".
fee.org/resources/i-pencil/
The whole idea here is that capitalism allows people from all over the world -- from different races, religions, nationalities, ethnicities, cultures, etc. -- to work together and create what economists now call "spontaneous orders", using their resources and local knowledge, skills, and values to create goods and services for each other. Trade and commerce is entirely driven by trust and interconnectedness, not by isolation.
I've done *multiple* videos on this point, in fact.
"What's Wrong With Wakanda"
czcams.com/video/wNf2UZPMiBs/video.html
"Could Hiring a Witcher Create World Peace?"
czcams.com/video/XMZA1LwC2QU/video.html
And throughout the entire Invisible Hands series I wrote & produced for FEE that came out last year: czcams.com/video/5zCDxev9Wqc/video.html
The very idea of economic freedom is antithetical to the kind of tyranny you're talking about, but of course this never prevents someone with a lot of guns and big armies from coming in and trying to take control. I'm not sure if there *is* a solution to that besides constant vigilance and constantly showing people how much better private property + freedom of exchange is for everyone.
And I will say that this has also largely been the trajectory of history… Humans were a hell of a lot more likely to die from violence thousands of years ago than they are today. Part of the reason this is so is because as we get wealthier and gain better standards of living, and as we produce more goods and services, we have less immediate/urgent issues with scarcity and less to fight over physically. We owe a ton of that to capitalism.
(to be continued...)
@@andrewgodly5739
2a) "If you're the more moderate libertarian then I wonder how you'd prevent monopolies from forming and becoming so economically powerful that they become their own governments?"
Philosophically, I'm more on the anarchist side but practically speaking, I'm more moderate because I'm a realist first and foremost and do not see any path to anarchy that doesn't start with substantial reductions of power.
That said, preventing monopolies from forming and becoming powerful is pretty easy absent state intervention.
I've done a lot on this subject as well, but monopolies are overwhelmingly a problem where they are created by the state, and do not actually tend to arise or maintain any kind of stability for any significant period of time (let alone do much harm) where markets are free.
This is probably too complicated to fully explain in a YT comment, but the gist is that where monopolies arise and become dangerous is where they are able to gain state support for their continued existence in the form of subsidies, special privileges, and regulatory restrictions on their competition. I think Milton Friedman actually put this best in a 1978 interview with Reason Magazine where he said:
"Business corporations in general are not defenders of free enterprise. On the contrary, they are one of the chief sources of danger… Every businessman is in favor of freedom for everybody else, but when it comes to himself that's a different question. We have to have that tariff to protect us against competition from abroad. We have to have that special provision in the tax code. We have to have that subsidy."
This is spot on and gets to the issue of regulatory capture.
Big companies frequently support increasing regulations (including almost every one you've ever heard of that claims to rein in the power of corporations) because they routinely make it harder for competitors to operate and exist. They advocate for special privileges and subsidies because they help them maintain their own profits even if their customers would prefer to do business with someone else.
Where we have really aggressive bad monopolies today, you'll see the fingerprints of the state all over -- or you'll see that they are literally state-run entities.
Internet service providers, energy utility companies, police departments, etc.
Where monopolies arise in a free market, they are typically small and work really hard to maintain their position by appealing to customers who they know will be serviced by some other company if they drop the ball -- an example of this would be the one grocery store in the small town I grew up in.
Where competition is not prohibited, and where companies are not given special subsidies and other privileges backed by law, monopolies tend not to be an issue, and I will get into more detail on this point in the next answer…
2b) "The whole foundation of capitalism is competition of business. In a competition there can only be one winner but there's always countless losers."
Not so!
The beauty of markets is that they recognize that economies aren't zero-sum (we're constantly expanding and creating new wealth), and consumers have innumerable values and widely varied preferences, and tons of companies can simultaneously co-exist to provide a hugely diverse range of products and services that meet as many needs and wants as possible.
Companies tend to succeed in capitalist systems by finding niches and gaps in the market that other companies aren't filling, and every time someone finds a gap, there's someone else who sees the opportunity to jump into the new market and try to do it better than the first mover.
Yeah, businesses compete with each other… But that doesn't mean that only one will exist in the end. Again, economies aren't zero-sum!
McDonald's essentially started the drive-in Hamburger phenomenon and now we have Burger King, Wendy's, Five Guys, DQ, Sonic, In-N-Out, Hardy's / Carl's Jr., and on and on (including countless local burger places). I live in ATL… and there are dozens of those.
And not only that, we have seen a proliferation of types of fast/fast-casual restaurants that allow diversity in food preferences beyond hamburgers and fries into almost anything you can think of.
McDonald's didn't become the *only* thing that exists. It created opportunities for dozens more competitors. And this is only looking at a small sliver of just one industry.
2c) "If you have no restrictions or regulations then why cant one company dominate the market?"
Because 1) new competitors are free to challenge existing business models with their own; 2) entrepreneurs are free to create new options and fill needs the existing company is failing to meet; and 3) the incumbent businesses tend to get stagnant and lose their entrepreneurial edge as they get bigger, more process-driven, and less worried about competitors.
Remember here that competition in business in a free market is not about business owners trying to murder each other, but about trying to serve customers better by making better products and offering them better deals.
When we involve the state, this game changes significantly and business owners tend to compete to see who can influence politicians to write laws in their favor instead. The more powerful the government is, the more benefits there are to spending money on influencing that government instead of developing better products.
2d) "Why cant it be better at business then the rest? It'll become the winner of the capitalist game, a super monopoly."
That's not really the game anyone is playing. The winner is not a super-monopoly that does everything for everyone, wildly outside it's core competencies, but rather the best and most successful businesses are the ones that find a niche and serve customers the best inside that realm.
And again, someone being best at business in a free market is a *good* thing. It's saying that they're the best at making stuff people want to buy.
That's not a problem.
2e) "Isn't that the end game for most businesses, to become as big as possible?"
It's the goal for some businesses, sure. But I've known and worked with innumerable entrepreneurs over the years whose goal is not to grow and grow to a massive size. Scaling a business to the level of something like Amazon or Walmart is insanely difficult and comes with a tremendous number of massive downsides for the people who actually do it.
Firstly, it's enormously risky. If your systems and processes aren't world-class, growing a business quickly is more likely to lead to epic failure and bankruptcy than it is to becoming a billionaire.
Secondly, it's way more stress than most people really want or need to take on, and if you run a small bakery that gives your life purpose and provides a good living for yourself and your family, for a lot of people this is more than enough and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that.
Freedom -- which necessarily includes freedom to trade and engage in commerce -- does not have a defined "goal". It isn't a game that has rules everyone must follow (other than not engaging in violence, theft, fraud, etc.) to "win". You can decide for yourself what the ideal size of your business is. Maybe it's a hobby you do for fun through Etsy. Maybe it's a small company that pays you enough to enjoy a house and a good simple life. Maybe it's a string of restaurants all over the city or a billion dollar company that has locations around the world.
Who am I (or… who are you) to decide for other people what the ideal size of their business should be?
2f) "This kind of capitalism already existed, it lead to the great depression, the government grew bigger to solve people's growing concerns."
This is *extremely* historically inaccurate.
The Great Depression was not -- in any sense -- caused by free markets run amok. I highly recommend starting with FEE's President emeritus' excellent primer: Great Myths of the Great Depression on this point:
fee.org/resources/great-myths-of-the-great-depression/
(to be continued....)
@@andrewgodly5739
3) "Btw I'm an anarcho communist. I bet you think that's an oxymoron but I think you have a complete misunderstanding of communism, socialism and what those terms mean to the followers of those ideologies."
I think you're assuming a lot about me that you shouldn't assume. I've met a ton of anarchist communists over the years, and if that's truly what you are, and you have no desire to force your communism on anyone else then I say more power to you. I don't think your ideas are very good… I don't think that the society you want to build will be very effective or generate a high standard of living for anyone who joins up, but as long as you are not forcing people to participate and your commune (or whatever) is on land you own (collectively or otherwise) or have gotten someone to allow you to be on voluntarily, then have at it.
4) "As an anarcho communist I'm a lot like you, I dislike being controlled and told what I can and cant do. I like to imagine a world where communities organize themselves through democracy and communication. I like the idea that my opinions and beliefs are heard. I want to be apart of making the decisions that effect my life and I'd like others to have that opportunity too."
Great :)
Here's the only criticism I have of this, though. In a free market, your beliefs and opinions *are* heard. Every single time you make a decision on what products or services to support, you are voicing an opinion that is backed by actions and price signals that make a difference to the companies you choose to interact with (and to the ones you don't).
This is, in my view, exceedingly democratic in a meaningful sense. You are "voting" multiple times per day, telling people from all over the world what you want to see more of and what you want to see less of -- just as a by-product of making economic decisions as an individual.
You're also -- in a free society -- completely free to communicate your displeasure or your joy with whatever you want.
If you want to tell the world about how a business treated you unfairly, or how another competitor is amazing, or anything else, you can.
But the kind of democracy you're talking about (I believe), is political democracy backed by state violence. That is, if you can convince a majority of people to agree with you, then the companies you don't like would be eliminated from your community and the economic activity that you think is bad for whatever reason would be forced to stop and those who don't do so immediately would face threats of jail… or in the most extreme case that they continue to reject your political authority, death.
Point being: Under the system I'm advocating, you can…
- Build a commune and live on it with the 30 people that agreed to voluntarily join up with you;
- Start a worker-owned business and run it however you and your comrades want;
- Buy whatever you want to buy with money you've earned, supporting companies that agree with your political views and ignore (or even loudly criticize!) those who don't agree with you;
- Give all your surplus income to charities or engage in whatever kinds of egalitarian behavior you want;
…and all sorts of other things.
But under a system that engages the state and a centralized form of control over the means of production, "democratic" or not, those who did not agree with the majority would be tyrannized by that majority and their values, dreams, and goals would be squashed.
5) "Capitalism cant offer that because everyone lives in their own world, no one organizes, if someone wants to take advantage of you then they can."
Completely false.
Going back to "I, Pencil", capitalism offers a vision of the world that is 1) not at all atomistic, but rather highly interconnected; and 2) a product of spontaneous order. People organize their own resources and businesses based on their own values, local knowledge, and in response to price signals that help give them genuine feedback on whether or not their actions are benefiting other people -- and that guides their choices.
This is organized, but from the bottom-up, not from a central planner on down… and that's incredibly good, as central planners (for all the reasons I discussed in the OP video) are disastrous.
If someone wants to take advantage of you, they have a much harder time in a world where the state's only role is to protect people against theft, fraud, and physical violence against bodies and property.
If they want to take advantage of you in a world where it's perfectly legal to regulate an industry and gain all manner of favoritism for your special interests and crush your competitors with burdensome taxes and regulations, it's much easier to do.
6) "Libertarian capitalism is like a road with no rules, if someone wants to ram you they can, if they want to cut you off they can, the roads will only stay clear of debris if someone actually cares to take the time out their "individual" life to do it."
Rules of the road emerged spontaneously, precisely because people want to avoid collisions. Nobody wants to get in a car crash.
Likewise, Merchant Law and most of the rules centered around property rights that are *still* our primary commercial laws were never originally legislated, but came from thousands of little conflicts that were resolved peacefully through mediators, contracts, and courts and not through politicians and regulatory bureaucracies.
Over time, people figured out what allowed customers and business-owners the best shot at building trust and maintaining reputable services, and that trust enabled trade to be expanded around the world without any central plan or state control.
The Silk Road wasn't the product of some emperor's decree, it was a natural result of people wanting to trade and exchange goods & services with each other. Once governments did get involved, it was to secure the road and protect traders and their goods against bandits and thieves.
That seems pretty appropriate to me.
(to be continued one more time...)
"What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one." -Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death
@Dcard Dcardian "In 1984, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that we love will ruin us." Indeed
Well, I know what I'm reading this weekend.
Ah, yeah, the sacred magical stacks of paper. The only true way of gaining knowledge and intelligence.
Huxley was more correct in that people today don't want to read anything unless it is nonsensical propaganda like the 1619 project and White Fragility.
Both were right
The scariest thing about this, is that even in a perfect utopia, male pattern baldness is still rampant.
huh? balding?
Look at patrick stewart
Amen brother…😂
... and not a "Hair Club for Men" to be found.....
Don't eat wheat, sugar, or alcohol. Don't do drugs or smoke. Get lots of sun during the midday (Vitamin D). Eat plenty of high quality meat and organs. Get regular exercise, both 'cardio' and resistance training. Do not let yourself get a gut. Treat you body well...
... and you won't get 'male pattern baldness'. You'll also live longer, avoid dementia, and all sorts of other common ailments.
I was always under the impression that "Brave New World" was very much a cautionary tale about how Utopias were in fact nothing more than another type of totalitarian regime (just one that didn't require violence so it was easier to disguise). I NEVER got the impression that Huxley was an advocate of the ideals in the book; more that he felt something like New London would be the kind of "Dictatorship" we needed to fear far more than any Stalinist or Warlord because we wouldn't recognize it for what it was until it was too late.
He didn't ADVOCATE for eugenics, or control via drugs, or a caste system. Those things terrified him. He knew those things would WORK if they were implimented in the right way, and in the process they would crush the human spirit every bit as effectively as any Orwellian Nightmare scenario.
I have no idea how you can read that book and get idea that he supported eugenics.
@@EnhancedNightmare it's the same way some people think Socrates genuinely wanted to construct a utopia in Plato's Republic. That book is also a critique of utopian thinking yet Socrates' irony is often missed.
@@EnhancedNightmare I'm with Twister - that is the impression that comes across in the commentary of this piece - that Huxley was for the methods described in his book. A wrong reading of Huxley by the voice over.
Although consider that Huxley was a member of a totalitarian and utopian for him regime (IE British Empire originally), only that he was on the middle - upper level thereof. And so his cautionary tale about (other) utopias is perhaps just a way of saying, don’t try to change things, there’s no other way that things can be organized, other than with me where I am, and you where you are, lower than I. He also had his societally approved drugs in the form of tea at 2 and G&T’s in the evening :)
@@feraligatorade99 Same with The Prince. The whole book is spent explaining how hard it would be to walk the tightrope between "King" and "Tyrant".
Kinda gives a new perspective on what Jefferson meant when he wrote, "Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness". It's not happiness in itself that means you are free, but the ability to pursue your own happiness in your own way.
Hold on, don't you need to have freedom to get happiness? That's kinda a bad view point
Please stop quoting dead men who didn't want me to be free because I'm not a wealthy white man with lots of land.
Please continue to quote the founders of the United States of America
@@businesscat4435 wow you are salty
@@businesscat4435 Actually there was widespread opposition to slavery for a very long time even then, there's several letters about it for example from John Jay when they discuss that they were opposed to it in principle but that because so much of society wasn't, and due to fears over an uprising they didn't push for it as the negative effects would've outweighed the positive ones at the time.
In short the Republic was young, fragile and surrounded by enemies and to push something that 50% of the population would've been violently opposed to after you just had a revolution over taxation is a really stupid idea, but that's not the same as to say they didn't have any issue with the concept which they absolutely did.
Then there's the issue that the overwhelming majority of them had no education, no skills beyond farming and no real property, what do you do with them once you free them? What would prevent them from being conscripted into a British militia (Britain was still very much a hazard to the US at the time) or just launching a Haiti-style uprising.
With sudden abolition you'd end up with hundreds of thousands of men, women and children suddenly homeless and jobless overnight and a whole lot of seriously angry plantation owners, it was just a rocking of the boat that didn't make sense back then, but the language of all documents was always made racially neutral for a reason ;)
Furthermore it is due to these dead men that you're free today as they made moves to oppose the concept of slavery before Africa itself did
Well, thank goodness people aren't ceding their freedoms and devolving into meaningless sex and drug abuse for escape.
*womp womp*
Listen Fat-
Yeah.. if only
What about meaningful sex and drug exploration for self discovery?
@@soulfuzz368 that second one is a myth
There is no such thing as perfect society. Humans can never build it for a simple reason, Humanity itself. We are not robots. We all have thoughts of our own with different opinions and views.
In other words, return to monke
As Humans are not perfect, our hands cannot create a perfect society.
Utopia is dystopia.
So long as humans have free will, utopias will have to be achieved by removing that aspect. And every methos to do so is inherently evil.
Therefore, to achieve a utopia, you must conform to dystopian methods.
And even if we did humans would ruin it anyway tbh. We rebel on principle, we dont want to be our parents, we want to be ourselves, we want to find ourselves by ourselves. That is the thing that will keep us from doing this forever.
I do think there is a perfect society i believe ants live in a perfect Society. but we are humans not ants.
I died laughing when she said "Never know violence" followed up by a fucking CATTLE PROD
That’s called irony…and in that case it was fuckin hysterical!
A book I had a hard a really hard time reading. Hell, reading 1984 was easier. This book pissed me off from the very begining and every time I picked it up I knew it would make me feel angry. And it's not because it's a bad book. It's because it is a great book, one that so perfectly captures the society we live in today that the realisation of this makes you feel helpless and irritated because unlike in 1984 there is nothing keeping the characters chained...they do that to themselves. This is the dystopia that stands out from the rest. 1984 is a world that from the very begining plays out as dark and unpleasant , that you never want to live in. A brave new world describes a world that tests you for you as a reader may find yourself desiring certian aspects of it. I love 1984 more as I read it first and it reminds me of the stories of what my family went through during the communist regime in my country. Brave new world however is the book that I think is the most accurate in it's portrial of modern society. But I don't agree with your parallels with the quarantine. We were already living in a world like that prior to covid.
yeah the narrative of the 1984 is more conventional and the regime closer to real communist ones. I think BNW states deeper questions, many at that with sexuality, hedonism, monogamy and challenges us as readers. It is uncomfortable read because it makes us uncomfortable. The BNW shows society that scares us because we see elements of that increasing (AI, Social media, Self stratification of working class and rich, people being on drugs all the time etc)
A world where manufactured consent is embraced.
The book that fucked me up the most was the giver.
And what do you think this Covid-filled world is right now, to you?
SAME THOUGHTS EXACTLY!
If I'd created the perfect woman for me at age 18, she'd be completely different than what I ended up needing at 35. People's wants and needs change, and only a dynamic, fluid, individual-focused society can satisfy that. If we can't centrally-plan our own lives with perfect prescience, how could we do it for 10,000, 100 million, or 7 billion people?
That is a great analogy. It reminds me of that Louis CK bit about wanting a real tough woman.
Perfectly said
You can't, it's why freedom is the only way to true happiness. Being forced to be happy makes the experience invalid, you were never happy, you were just told to be happy.
@BattleAngelFan why do you say that?
Exactly, this is a great point, even of we go with the assumption that humans will ever have the ability to create an indra like AI ( though i personally think if we ever do it will functionally more resemble SYBIL from physco pass) and thus get around the problem of no individuals being able to have enough knowledge to plan a society............. it still would not matter because of the nature of humans as you just so succinctly put it.
“One man’s utopia is just another man’s dystopia”
-somebody smart I think
Everyone has different utopia, for me it would free adventure to distant lands but for my friend, it is a happy life with his girlfriend. For some,it would to be eternal peace,for others eternal war.
@@CasperFiles1969 yeh that's what he said
@@superiorredditor8173 I was just elaborating his quote.
@@CasperFiles1969 oh ok
Funnly in 40k the Emperor of Man wanted a Utopian society like the previous civilization that collapsed after an AI uprising that literally sent human technology back to the stone ages and instead created the worst Totalitarian regime ever created after a Civil War called the Horus Heresy creating stagnation, radical exetrimisim and almost every human rights abuses you can think of and the worst part is its all there to keep humanity from extinction.
This Irony is also present in another 2 factions that take influence from this book the Eldar (Space Elves) where it went from a free Utopian society to sadisim and near extinction creating a literal god of torture and seperating them to 2 factions the Dark Eldar that still practice the sadistic ways of their ancestors and tge Eldar who want to recreate the empire.
What scares me is that nowadays the word "perfect" is actually back into society talk, like it's something achievable, and actually something to wish for.
It also scared me too, so i hope perfection never influence global world, this make me scared so much
Edgar Friendly from Demolition Man:
"You got that right. See, according to Cocteau's plan, I'm the enemy. Cause I like to think, I like to read. I'm into freedom of speech and freedom of choice. I'm the kind if guy who wants to sit in a greasy spoon and think, "Gee, should I have the T-bone steak or the jumbo rack of barbecued ribs with the side order of gravy fries?" I want high cholesterol. I want to eat bacon, butter and buckets of cheese, okay? I want to smoke a Cuban cigar the size of Cincinnati in a non-smoking section. I wanna run through the streets naked with green Jello all over my body reading Playboy magazine. Why? Because I suddenly might feel the need to. Okay, pal? I've seen the future, you know what it is? It's a 47-year-old virgin sittin' around in his beige pajamas, drinking a banana-broccoli shake singing "I'm an Oscar-Meyer Wiener". You wanna live on top, you gotta live Cocteau's way. What he wants, when he wants, how he wants. Your other choice: come down here, maybe starve to death."
Yeah, I think I'm with ya, Edgar.
It's scary bro think about how much from Demolition Man has become reality.
@Sumeet Mahindroo I never made the connection, but I see it now.
😂😂. I could hear his voice while reading your comment!!
you still confuse freedom for license.
Yo he did Demolition Man!
“The road to Hell is paved with good intentions”
That 'road to hell' maybe paved with such, but is freely accessible to all, and requires attention and driving skills to be avoided ... Pay attention and avoid the Candyman with his cache of mood drugs and flu vaccines that must be redone with each new mutation; that's just for starters. The new socialism: no one owns anything, they just go "wherever" for work and have a living quarters, clothes and food already there. They"own" everything in common: a "true" communism, so to speak.
Kool aid, anyone?!?
Social conformity and etiquette arent good intention, they are cowardice and selfishness
Bob is Consumed dude I feel like I see you every where
The Dude Bob is All! Plus my bandwidth cant handle Netflix, Disney, or Games so YT only median I can use sometimes.😢
This is not actually true. The road to Hell is paved with frozen door-to-door salesman. On weekends, many of the younger demons go ice skating down it.
"...a society with no conflict and no pain..."
The neat thing about pain is that it means you're still alive...
a society with no pain means a society with no sense of perspective of self or of themselves it makes people no more then clay dolls shaped by society
Life is suffering. Many edgelords often quote this as a way to justify their hatred and contempt towards the world. Yet I find the phrase to be beautiful. It is a reminder that you are not alone in you're suffering, that it isn't wrong for you to suffer nor is it a sin. It is natural and common for you to suffer and therefore you can find comfort in the fact that you are not alone in your suffering. The next step would then be to take the steps need to improve.
@@stephenlee3406 I think it should be: life is strengthened through suffering. Which follows everything else you said!
Nonsense, you don't need pain although some amount of pain is not that bad as it may spice things up and provide some motivation. Pain does not mean suffering. Suffering is when you feel pain but you can't do anything about it. And suffering is never good or useful unless you are a masochist.
@@rongould1466
Are you a masochist? normal people do not get stronger from suffering they get more horrible and nasty.
"Our first attempt at World Control was a society entirely made up of Alpha + +'s. It was a disaster." --Mustapha Mond
The talk they had with Mond is what really tied the whole story together. It was the print version of the Architect scene from the Matrix Reloaded, and perfectly contrasted with 1984's vision of the dark future. The scary part is Mond was completely reasonable, and compromised with the protagonists, allowing to live their lives in exile while the rest of society can live theirs.
@@MachineMan-mj4gj Yeah, something I loved about the book, and feel the show messes up, is that there's no bad guy.
Mond isn't blind to the problems, just complacent, and there's no AI. John's father isn't an asshole who abandoned his pregnant girlfriend and tries to attack his son - like in the show. Linda went missing by accident and he feels no connection to John because fatherhood doesn't mean anything in their society. It's just embarrassing for him.
John and Lilana never even get to the point of having a secret affair in the book because their values are so far apart not even mutual attraction can bring them together. They certainly don't need a jealous third party stirring the pot to drive conflict.
Brave New World is one love can't conquer.
This is why I value individualism, loss of identity will always lead to loss of humanity which ruins the whole group no matter what ideology they're under.
Individualism dies with the ever-growing TikTok trends today's herd-like mentality swiftly adopts...
You are correct
But it also makes us weak in the face of power.
The hypocrisy of people who want big government is that they'll attack parents who also try to dictate what they believe is best for their kids.
Is it hypocrisy though? If you believe in big government then you believe that power needs to be centralized. Parents having strict rules for their children threatens that. Not only does that challenge governments ability to control the children but that also means that parents have strong beliefs that probably threaten the society.
@@timothyjacksondrake4454 another way to describe it is that there are many who criticize parents and think they "brainwash" their own children into certain "outdated" ideologies. these people inturn want the schools and government to do the parenting instead of actual parents, brainwashing and indoctrinating children into more "progressive" ideologies instead. infact there's a thing i saw blow up all over youtube amongst the channels ive been watching where schools wanted parents to sign waivers to not eavesdrop on their children's online classes
@dragonsder but that's actually why it is hypocritical. they're constantly attacking and accusing parents of trying to do the same thing that they're doing in order to justify or cover for the state indoctrinating the kids through public education system. even more so if the parents have religious beliefs that the cultural marxists want to stamp out
The maxim goes "if the state is your father yee have no father "
wait, you mean, like when the government says that a parent cant raise a gay or trans kid?
"Power is concentrated, knowledge is diffuse." -Thomas Sowell
(quote from: czcams.com/video/ERj3QeGw9Ok/video.html )
Suuuuper important.
Exactly. Everyone should read or listen to Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell.
Edit: spelling
@What he is a libertarian, you idiot
@@FEEonline 🤣 Are you honestly trying to tell us "um don't do Socialism or Earth will be this fictional movie, even though this movie has nothing to do with Marx, Socialism, let alone Anarcho Syndicalism/Communism" Have you even read Marx?
@@FEEonline What the hell does this Move have to do with Marxism or Socialism??? Lol, like is this video a joke?
Taking away someone's rights as an individual, decision making and freedoms without consent and lawful reason is a crime of it's own.
I watched (and thoroughly enjoyed) the movie “Demolition Man” and later realized it was an illustration of Huxley’s Brave New World. I can’t imagine a better sense of satisfaction than watching the self-important rulers get put in their place.
"Don't we all want a society with no conflict and no pain?"
*No.*
Yes I think we do which is why it's so difficult to say no
@@kash3862
I don't. I know that growth and excellence comes out of conflict and pain. I'm not content to squat in perceived perfection.
Football, hockey, running, stretching, all involve pain.
@Brother Paul
Think you might have accidentally replied to the wrong post.
@@decwow 👏👏👏
I remember reading Brave New World when I was in college, (after serving in the Army for six years.) At one point, the Professor asked the class who would rather live in the Society, (where everything was handed to you, but nothing was truly yours,) or in the Savage Lands, (where you had to work for everything, but what you had was your own.) I was the only one in my class who said I would rather live in the Savage Lands. I always found that deeply disturbing.
:(
> College
College kids are literally living in the Society.
Kid in community collage, 1972. The bio class began with survival lecture. The Viet vet's were class mates. If the plane crash, we all have same stuff to use, groups had to decide what to do for help. I stood my ground and said stay with plane. The only person in the big lecture. Stayed,
If I was in your class, it would be 2 hands raised for living in the Savage Lands.
@@ActionJackson3785 Make that three, I want to work for my own, not have it handed to me, that's for cowards and weaklings.
The saying is
“Ones heaven is another hell”
Honestly yes. If I was in the upper classes It be great, I'd know what I was, what I did and why I was alive.
If I was in the lower classes, can't be unhappy I know the reason for my existence and am programmed to enjoy doing what ever I was ment to do.
When I go to peacock website to watch the show it shows: "This service is unavailable in your region.".
Me goes: "Aye aye captain, we are sailing away."
czcams.com/video/i8ju_10NkGY/video.html Aye
"Even paradise is a prison if you can't leave"
Some really smart people, where?
I would rather go to hell then.
@@monad_tcp You can't leave hell either.
What if it's a global paradise?
Is it a prison if those in it, more accurately than "can't" leave, genuinely don't *want* to leave, though? 🤔
There is no such thing as happiness, if unhappiness doesnt exist
You can not see the light without the dark
@@cameronmurtagh9977
There is no good cocaine without the cheap shit.
czcams.com/video/joU4gcARxe4/video.html
south park. beautiful sadness
Which means we will redefine what is good and what is bad so that humans can continue to feel happy and good. Ask anyone who thinks they're doing a hard job sitting at a desk compared to a coal miner. Without fuller context, humans will only look at what directly affects them to compare themselves to rather than necessarily seek a bigger picture.
You are wrong,
Yes, happiness without unhappiness does exist and those things have nothing in common with each other.
That old action movie "Equilibrium" must have gotten inspiration from that piece of literature as well.
Thanks a lot, not you made me feel old...
“…that treat the 150 year old predictions of mediocre social theorists as fact.”
I giggled.
"Freedom is a responsibility."
- Yeomi Park
Responsibility died a few years after the invention of the Internet..
“Yes this floor here is made of floor”
freedome is one of the most miss used words out there. just like the word love
Hey, I know her :P
Social dogma enforced by the people. That’s pure twitter.
enforced with a "slight" bit of help from big tech & their zealot ideology.
Cultist might be a more appropriate term, actually.
& BTW, bring on the doxxing/banning most of us are done being concerned with juvenile concepts like being censured on a digital forum... I have nothing these companies value, so, bring it the fuck on, Google.
Project "Bluebird", huh?
Also Nazi Germany really.
I just rewatched this series. One of the most important lines, IMO, was "this is my body, and I want to be the only one in it."
"The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design" ― Friedrich Hayek
“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 unhappy.'
'All right then,' said the Savage defiantly, 'I'm claiming the right to be unhappy.'
'Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and impotent; the right to have syphilis and cancer; the right to have too little to eat; the right to be lousy; the right to live in constant apprehension of what may happen tomorrow; the right to catch typhoid; the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind.' There was a long silence.
'I claim them all,' said the Savage at last.
Mustapha Mond shrugged his shoulders. 'You're welcome," he said.”
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
Comfort is boring.
The irony of this is that I find more happiness in overcoming the challenges that come from facing hunger, than I do in having everything provided for me without any work whatsoever. Happiness via security is an illusion. Happiness is found via freedom.
@@alpheusmadsen8485 as do all humans. there is no reward in what is not earned.
Yeah we'll see always thought the book kind of sucks and any other tatian of the book there's always better. But now I think I'm catching on to what they're trying to do trying to make things so terrible that people except this. people who don't care about you no prescriptions being taken out of the hands of doctors and put into the hands of the government and all kinds of other nonsense like that stuff that you're not even realizing or sitting is down onto a road that inevitably leads to something like this only humanity always screws things up even worse than the movies so we'll never even be able to achieve this level of it so well my only question is whether or not it's too late. if we're really willing to put Joe Biden in the white house then it's obviously already too late
@Ozymandias Nullifidian I'm pretty sure happy people don't feel the need to stroke their ego and flex their financial superiority over random people on the internet.
If it's hard enough for a village to raise a child how can one man (or even a group of them) raise an entire civilization.
That is why central planning doesn't work.
no. it is more complicated than that.
it is about free will. central planning will do their best to erase that.
you will have 10 people want to do 10 different things in that village
centralized planning will do either none of those or just one, because of political reasons.
10 free people that want to do 10 different things will DO 10 different things. maybe 7 will fail.
but 3 will create small succesful businesses, and they will work harder than they ever would for the central planning.
and they will be more inventive and that will create more succes than the central planning could ever create.
It's...not hard for a village to raise a child though...
While watching the series, the most intriguing question in the back of my mind was "what's powering all this?" Of course it's not important to the philosophy of the story, but I always find myself deeply suspicious of any lush post-scarcity universe where the source of energy isn't shown. Most likely it's a form of nuclear power, although Huxley's original conception was before that was even invented.
same here, I guess that is the reason we call it utopian or distopian because the concepts don't hold up, they will easily collapse in a minute
Just discovered this channel at random, and I gotta say the execution on the video was excellent! The editing, the rhetoric, the story, the philosophy, all of these were great! I'm definitely subscribing
“Destabilizing” is the book’s version of triggered and their entire world is a safe space at its best. At its best and it still sucks.
destabilizing is code for inspiring in this context.
@@DieselRamcharger remember Yuri Bemenov, the guy in the Call of Duty trailer.
@@VeryProPlayerYesSir1122 Nah, he was a gatekeeper, like Jordan Peterson.
They aren't mobs of hysterical fanatic simpletons, at least not in the books.
destabilizing is the book's version of destabilizing. As far as i've gathered, it's any action that destabilizes the Social norm. People getting triggered at you on twitter isn't upsetting the social norm, it's just dipshits online being angry dipshits online. Actual 'destabilizing' gets you a bullet to the back of the head by the CIA, or gets you painted as a terrorist in the 70s and a completely peaceful centrist today, ala Martin Luther King Jr.
In the movie series the Matrix the “architect“ explains how creating a perfect world ended in catastrophic failure.
Amusing enough, the Matrix uses many concepts from Buddhism (amongst several schools of thought). The first Matrix is a reference to a trap of pleasure; a world of absolute bliss and pleasure is a trap designed to imprison your soul. The first Matrix was probably quite nice for the first few weeks, but as the lack of meaningful interactions and choices became apparent, it was guaranteed that the system would fall apart.
When _has_ that NOT a Hollywood, mainstream lesson?
Star Trek? Even that one got changed by Kuntzman.
Human beings need to struggle, need challenges to overcome. That’s one reason why video games are so addicting. We can’t stand being bored and sitting around for very long. Even couch potatoes find challenges to overcome in the stories of TV shows and movies they watch. A perfect world has no challenge to overcome, just monotonous work to do to maintain it. Sounds like a form of hell to me.
Smith says that in the first movie. "Did you know that the first Matrix was designed to be a perfect human world? Where none suffered, where everyone would be happy. It was a disaster. No one would accept the program. Entire crops were lost. Some believed we lacked the programming language to describe your perfect world. But I believe that, as a species, human beings define their reality through suffering and misery. The perfect world was a dream that your primitive cerebrum kept trying to wake up from. Which is why the Matrix was redesigned to this: the peak of your civilization."
@@dewfall56the experience with the sublime.
What people seem to never understand...is that without pain, without struggle, etc etc...the opposite feeling simply cannot exist.
Instead it’s just a state of ‘null’. Pointlessness. Empty. Void of meaning.
I've been saying for a few years now, "I feel like shouting Shakespeare at people."
Thank you for this vid.
Off to shout...
Somewhere out there there's an "enlightened college graduate" screaming "NO! NO! You promised lubricated with ribs!"
I laughed in Three different wavelengths reading that
1st: typo? Lol
2nd: entitled spoiled Manchild? Heh
3rd: thought you had a CHOICE? HAH!
@Jonathan Neufeld Yummm! Tasty, succulent, tender flesh!
"Man cannot live on bread alone."
"A Dystopia is the illusion of a utopia." This is just an example of that quote.
Capitalism is the most efficient economic system. It has its flaws but that can be fixed. It's political not economic that needs to change
Capitalism has some flaws that cannot be fixed inherently that will always be there if only because of the existence of Pareto Distributions occurring naturally in any economic system. (in the long run, it essentially ensures that the biggest winners win big, and those winners are incentivized to subvert the free market forcing that got them there so they don't have to compete to remain on top)
That said, Capitalism is infinitely preferable to any centrally planned system (socialism/communism/theocracy/aristocracy...etc) because it's the only system that tries to swerve into humanity's flaws rather than futilely trying to socially engineer them out of the species.
Is that why 3 people have all the money now? Lmao.
@@milliepearl967 show me a better system that's helped more people in history. People are living better at the bottom rhen at any other time in history
@@Hamsteak socialism, it would make things even better. Amazon employees literally piss in bottles and they deserve better man. Just because things are better now than 100 years ago doesn't mean this is as good as it gets. It could be so much better man.
@@milliepearl967 Imagine thinking a system that's killed literally hundreds of millions of people though forced labor and artificial famine, war, and environmental destruction, but has also failed literally every time it's tried, will somehow improve the lives of everyone.
You follow a zombie ideology, but you're too dumb to realize.
“It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn't want to know the end… because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing… this shadow. Even darkness must pass.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Two Towers
And yet here we are, the totalitarian monster lies slain for nearly 30 years.
It's important to remember that the darkness is supposed to pass, it's not supposed to be a constant threat dogging your heels every waking moment of your life.
The Darkness does pass. But it can take many generations to do so. Once another Tower of Babel is built up once again, it returns...
@@hattricksoup5929 alright folks you heard the man, NO Babylonian Ziggurats
Think about this though. When Tolkien was born and for a good deal of his early life, horses, as they had been for millennia, were the key, fundamental, primary mode of transportation in the world. Little got moved anywhere in the world without them. Armies, commerce, civilian transportation; everything relied on the horse. Their numbers were plentiful and their existence was ubiquitous throughout the world.
Then came the machine and internal combustion engine. The car. The truck. The train had already replaced a good deal of what they once transported, but now machines replaced the rest. Suddenly, within a couple of decades, horses were of no practical use to humanity. In very short order, the massive number of horses were herded, corralled and culled. Right now only a small fraction of their numbers exist today, and they won't ever be coming back. That's not a passing thing......
You might want to note that autonomy is slated to replace as many as 50% of GLOBAL jobs by 2035, 80%-90% by 2050-2060. The machines WILL replace humanity SOON. Once AGI is fully developed, the people that planned for all this will digitize their minds, place them into AGI organisms and by that means, live forever. Hansen robotics is working on exactly that outcome and its progressing steadily.
What do you think all these engineered viruses are for? COVID 19 is an engineered virus, was it accidental or intentionally released? IDK. But imagine if 5-6 of these things were released within a few months of each other? In the coming digital/virtual environment where EVERYTHING is going to be virtual, cloud based and dependent on ULAs for operation, not to mention the constant surveillance of IoT, what do you think they plan to have happen to us once we are no longer needed to contribute to the cycle of profit? Become nothing but a net consumer of earth's resources, giving nothing back in return? What do you think this whole climate issue is about?
Read Dr. Calhoun's work on his Rat City/Rat Utopian experiments. "DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE" has a great video on YT. We're living in an engineered "Behavioral Sync" right now. 100% destruction of the colony 100% of the time, every time. We're being herded and corralled. The eventual culling isn't far behind. Read the Georgia Guidestones. It's not like they're trying to hide anything.....
The shadow that was the ussr is dead. But it wasn't thr only shadow that existed. We slain one then went to relax thinking we were safe. This shadow too will pass, but it's time to remember were never safe. Just not in danger for the moment
Without choice there’s no freedom, without freedom there’s no happiness and without happiness life is worthless. A brave new World is a unrealistic utopia that doesn’t consider the real human condition.
Really ? Lots of addiction is a happy zone !
Props to you for explicitly pointing out that the myth of central planning leads to disaster and no one is happy living in it - especially the 'covid central planning' version (@26:50). But it is not 'social isolation' that causes trouble it is loss of freedom; neither myself nor most people I know are 'isolated', because we aren't hypochondriacs, but we have been faced with the spontaneous replacement of a free society with one of fiat government. I'm gonna be honest I'm, pretty happy right now, not because of the state of the world, but in spite of it, and because I faced it a long time ago back in 2020 when it became apparent certain people wanted to use the current situation to expand gov't power. So I long ago decided what I would and would not put up with. I've been living week to week not knowing if I'll have a job due to mandates, and all that, but also I've been treating every day like a party - not the mindless things that pass for parties in the show you are reviewing, but a celebration of life. Each sunset, each bike ride, each trip to the woods, each album listened to, each taste of good food - is another day I have cheated the state out of claiming my life. Growing up in the 80s and 90s during an era of fortunate good circumstances I never thought I'd end up an outlaw or outcast, let alone destitute, but that is the goal of some, and the point in mandating every door be a gov't checkpoint. I never thought we'd see this level of authoritarianism but here it is, and every day I come into work wondering if this the day someone asks me to show a 'pass' I do not have to prove my covid 'caste'. But my reaction to that is foregone. I am prepared to lose everything to stand for something against it. So I crack a joke to coworkers, smile, and enjoy myself in my private life and enjoy myself while I can because I never know from week to week when some arbitrary mandate will cause me to end up living under a bridge. It's not ideal but it is better than living in fear because I have made my choice long ago, there is no uncertainty and therefore no fear, only a hope that it does not come to that, but if it does it is what it is. These are my terms, I will not live or work under any others. In short, it isn't about the circumstance but the attitude. That is the measure of my resolve... And if enough people had it the authoritarians would starve to death the moment they tried to pull their b.s. Instead you got lots of people out there facing the leviathan alone, and individually we may lose, but maybe in the end we win if there are enough of us who just say 'no'.
Anyway, props to you for your analysis of the themes in this show, but please don't forget it is not limited to fiction, some of us are living through this in real life. Ideas have consequences, after all.
P.S. - A small critique: It seems as if you are saying Huxley advocated central planning before being against it. I never saw Huxley as an advocate of central planning, I think he saw it as the way things were potentially going, but never endorsed it, indeed in both 'brave new world' and various statements he seemed to warn against it, not the other way around.
Reminds me of the movie equilibrium. Although that one worked with the idea of removing all emotions, not just 'negative' ones. Wich eventually breaks down because some people refuse to let go of the 'ecstasy' of the full range of human emotions
What do you mean by that? By the "ecstasy" of our full range of emotions? I'm curious.
@@anamariaramirez9341 Not the original commenter here, but I think what he means to say is that being robbed of the emotional complexity of the full range of human emotions is extremely devastating to some. The ability to love, the ability to experience joy, the ability to have silent, fleeting moments of introspection, the ability to laugh, the ability to smile without a hint of irony or tragedy, the ability to struggle, the ability to hurt and be hurted and the ability to empathise and connect with those who are different from you, among many others. These are things that define us as persons, yet unites us as human beings. These experiences would be lost on people and lost to time if they never had any emotions. Really, the human condition is intensely difficult to explain, yet we all go through it without really being able to find the right words to define or explain it. Being robbed of not only negative emotions, but all emotions makes a person deeply hollow. They don't feel anything, they don't yearn for anything, they don't pine or desire for anything. And it troubles them, but they don't really understand why. And so, I'd imagine being bereft and devoid of any semblance of feeling in their bones, the desire to experience the 'ecstasy' of the full range of human emotions smoulders deep within their hearts. It wouldn't really matter whether or not those emotions were good or bad. What matters the most is that they were able to feel *something* and not have that feeling be completely disingenuous to them as a person and as a human being. Otherwise, it would all be a lie and a betrayal to their sense of self. This is as much as I could say without sounding like a complete idiot, so I hope my interpretation is valid and offers you some insight. Thank you, and have a nice day!
@@MadarasRightHand7150 Thanks for explaining! I hope you have a nice day as well! :D
wow. i love how the A+ counselor invokes "selfishness". Haven't we heard how selfish it is to not obey with out question certain arbitrary government edicts?
@NurturingTalents The scientists disagree. Don't be an Unthinking Drone. Choose.
Yes put on your mask and stay indoors, go stir crazy and depressed but don't be selfish.
@NurturingTalents sarcasm right?
What I like about John is that he changed.
@@GuyInBlackClothes he went from one extreme dystopia to another only to realise the dystopia of poverty and freedom was still more desriable then the dystopia of safety order and indlugence
My mom read this book in high school back in the 80's. It's crazy how a lot of the stuff in the book has come true.😳😱
Hey kid, the story is on going. The idea is inspired, time an time again.
I've never read the book. It Sounds interesting, especially since it going around me of "New World Order" and wanting to burn down the system. Makes me question is Utopia really that great or just another type of control and dictatorship
That's a massive overgeneralization of society and you know. Society looks nothing lik Brave New World.
How about reading it yourself ;)
@@Brakvash , soma and legalized drugs ring a bell, junior?
In the perfect system, you let the people do whatever they want with tempered reason.
Or moderated capitalism under social democratic principles tolerating many viewpoints unless it harms human life? And we use choice-based voting systems? Not "winner takes all"?
I really love hearing the music in these video essays. It’s so hopeful and uplifting. I think that’s half of the reason I keep watching these again and again. I hope you will occasionally come back and make an episode here and there.
The phrase "the needs of the many outweighs the needs of the few, or the one." Is a sentiment that speaks to the logical aspects of society, while being empathetically bankrupt.
In a society like that, the individual is always sacrificed if the collective can gain from it. And *you* are an individual within the collective. You will inevitably be the individual being sacrificed at some point.
The problem with this way of thinking, is that the modern proponents of it, play on a pseudo empathy with it. The individual must be sacrificed, because not doing so, hurts the collective. And if they are hurting *everyone* then its better to remove the one, in favor of helping the hundred. Right?
Except the pain supposedly being caused is almost always subjective, unquantifiable, and usually never backed up. But the damage caused to the individual is always visible. A certainty of pain, to remove the possibility or mention of it.
In the context of civil liberties and political ideology, absolutely.
Take what you said and consider the moms who don’t want to vaccinate their kids as the individual compared to the collective of people who can’t be vaccinated for reasons and will die if an unvaccinated person sends a disease their way.
Now before you continue, know that while this may seem as if I’m trying to straw man you, the truth is this is a thinking that can be considered on all fronts.
Would you say this philosophy is empathetically bankrupt If there are people having to rely on the hope they don’t encounter someone who made an OBVIOUSLY TERRIBLE decision so they can continue to live and be happy?
While empathy and the ability to think give happiness and freedom, the problem is we have to use logic as well and at times more than emotions or the opinions of a select few.
otherwise we will accomplish nothing and eventually get to a point where even free will and happiness of choice is what is killing us and making our lives worst and void of happiness, because not vaccinating someone you love because you don’t trust the LOGIC of scientists who have made cures that thousands of years ago were impossible and thus killing another man who wanted to live happy but now can’t because he is dead to the terrible decision of another
Is not logically or even emotionally right.
Tl.Dr- at some point we have to be forceful at the cost of happiness because smarts is what makes things that keep people alive and also happy
P.S I am not trying to be an asshole or sound stupid, but their are terrible things in the world that because of just a few collective individuals thinking, is causing a bigger majority to suffer due to their support that keeps that bad thing alive.
@Dcard Dcardian the collective good ends where my property line begins. The principle of private land ownership is the foundation of a free society.
Now get off my lawn!!!
To quote Spock "That is illogical."
Sidney Fein
That’s not always true. Fires don’t respect property lines. Yet your taxes employ fire fighters to come on your property in order to preserve other structures nearby. The thing about the collective good is that it must be voluntary and localized.
Centralized planners can not predict where fires are likely (as evidenced by the recent California wild fires). This leads to massive, out of control infernos which destroy dozens of lives and thousands of structures because central planners are bad and managing local issues. During fire season, local municipalities must be allowed to manage their own regions, with minimal disruption from state and federal politicians (coerced by environmental lobbyists). American Indian tribes have mitigated fire risks on their own lands with various methods, but California politicians have deemed those practices as politically inexpedient.
This is one example, and I could probably come up with one or two more if I had more time, where collective good disrespects man-made borders. But local communities know how best to make those decisions about collective good. We don’t need micro-managers at the state or federal level to tell us how to best live our lives.
"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Someone needs to post this here.
:The Patriot Act wants to know your location:
actually, when you are starving and have no safety the liberty does not matter just because dead people do not have any use for it.
So you may need to rethink that nonsense claim from the perspective of someone who is on the very bottom rather than from the perspective of the child of wealthy parents who does not allow you to do reckless stunts on your motorcycle.
@@deltaxcd What part of "essential liberty" and "little temporary safety" do you not understand?
@@EbonyPhoenix
if you mention that then I don't understand either of those terms, can you explain their meaning?
@@deltaxcd Not starving, and more safty than none "like being murdered" isn't "little temporary safety".
The show was canceled after 1 season. Can't hold up a mirror to society like that. Might make the plebs discontented, and the alphas don't like that...
It wasn't cancelled. The only material they had was from the book. And from the reviews I've read, it's souless garbage anyway. So who cares.
@@alucardtepes8402 No. Check your sources. It was cancelled. And it was kinda interesting. So I care.
@@bandit6272 Yeah it's based on the book. Only enough material for one season apparently and it was garbage.
@@bandit6272 Don't worry mate, the damage has been done. Our Alphas can't take it back.
People that don't have to make hard choices in life can never experience true living.
Omg I died!!!!! Lol “ These children will never know violence” Zap!!! Child is violently assaulted with a taser lol
> Childhood book is made into a movie or TV series
> It's been Hollywoodized
TRAINED, DISCIPLINED...
Don't use words like assault, he was about to play with kids in a lower class system. We have to ensure everyone remains seperated for the sake of equality
@@elgatochurro I think the Indians would like you. lol
If the Joker was unleashed here I'd be rooting for him.
now THAT would be an insurrection I could get behind.
If I had money I’d personally fund his mission to destabilize and destroy this society. I mean that wholeheartedly.
@@FazeParticles then your just making dystopia lmao. Keep it balanced.
XPECTED this society meaning brave new world.
Needs a little Simon Phoenix.
You can, given one thing, manage an economy centrally. You need perfect information about demand. However, as perfect information does not exist outside pure math, its an impossibility in the real world :)
Not only is there no way to obtain perfect information about demand... even if you were able to take a snapshot, the balance of people's needs and wants would change seconds later.
It's impossible to manage an economy centrally until we are post scarcity.
@@MA_KA_PA_TIE Even post-scarcity would be temporary, as the central motivation of greed would create a demand among the biggest suppliers to create scarcity so their profit margins would increase.
This isn't speculation either as I will give a real life example that's ongoing to today: The video game industry.
Even with a market medium where the end product is most trivially mass-produced, the largest producers have gone to great lengths to monetize more of their games for less and less value. This makes sense as per their motivations, and the gullibility of gamers at large, so capitalism is at least working as intended there.
However, where it isn't really working so well is in the competition side of things.
There is an entire business model (Lootbox or 'Gacha') that's predicated specifically on extreme lengths of obstruction of content delivery.
Cosmetics that used to come with your lump-sum purchase of a game 10-20 years ago are now repackaged as drip-feed content from Day 1 and sold at a premium, and that's the BEST CASE SCENARIO for the overwhelming majority of the largest publisher's outputs.
With the Gacha business model, it's much worse, where both cosmetic AND gameplay-oriented content is drip-fed and tied to random-payout methods of distribution rather than direct delivery (making the games little more than overly elaborate competitive claw machines).
Statistically, you'd have to spend several dozens if not hundreds of times the amount of money you did buying the initial game to get the same content as you could just a decade ago. "Free to Play" schemes are even more predatory, since they attract gullible suckers (whales) with a lot of cheap "leaches" (minnows) to pit against.
While not every game follows that model, the largest and most profitable ones absolutely do, and they are the games the rest of the industry follows as the ideal model, because, well, that's where the money's at. It's a clear cut example of how free-market forcing is causing standards across the whole industry to fall rapidly and end-user value to plummet along with it because too many people are happy with "less-for-more" schemes like these.
I don't really blame the companies for making the most money at the least effort since they're not pretending to be charities, nor is that the point here I'm trying to convey anyway; rather, it's that this blind-faith some place in capitalism and the so-called "Invisible Hand" is not foolproof and it's not always self-correcting.
My interest in newer, contemporary gaming has diminished drastically, and I find myself playing older titles I missed out on in the prior 30 years far more than new releases.
What's sad it's that most would likely choose to live in a world of comfort and vapidness than a world that is more filled with strife and achivement (myself as well,as much as I hate to admit it or accept).
No one took their freedom. The point is that everyone is so content that no one gets an idea of freedom.
@@averageblonde5496 read the book. There is no real mention about how it happened. The story just puts you in a society where people are born in machines by the system and it explores the point of "is freedom even needed, if everyone is content will people even want freedom (pain and suffering)". You can see that everyone born to this system eventually surrenders to the system.
@@averageblonde5496 I understand that but it is not genuine to the original idea. And comparing this series with Huxley Brave New World and saying they are the same is like revisioning the history.
@@averageblonde5496 the idea of Huxley is basically star trek borg on a lower level. Not this.
@@averageblonde5496 A second world war which had gone on for 9 years in which civilian populations were targeted with virus bombs an economic collapse lead to the fall of the old world governments.
It's unclear how exactly because history had been effaced but from the point of view of the society they live in, it was a choice the leaders of nations embraced rather then a coup and they then divided the world into regions rather then nations.
However naturally not everyone wanted to embrace the idea's that the world controllers wanted to implement, they believed the problems the world faced in the aftermath of all it that which threatened to end humanity could not be mended and instead history, religion, culture had to be erased and started a new a few groups tried to resist.
At first they were met with brute force but after several confrontations which resulted in massacring these people “the Controllers realized that force was no good. The slower but infinitely surer methods of ectogenesis, neo-Pavlovian conditioning and techniques were deployed.
Basically imagine if the world never recovered from the GFC we had a horrific global war and then turned to all the lunatics from the cringer corners of tumblr who rail against everything from the nuclear family to words in old books for leadership, Only instead of the usual pseudo marxists diatribes they embraced mindless consumerism.
@Bruno Pereira agreed but they were still free. They have brainwashed the society so much that no one wanted to embrace total freedom. The man that wrote poetry was not denied to keep writing it even if the rulling class didn't want him to, but he did not like the pressuare from society and asked to be tranfered somewhere where there are less people. Reputation is everything in Brave New World. Except for the rulling class (the ones that could read old world books)
Haven't watched the series, but I'm guessing they won't be pushing the "kids should have sex too cuz it's not fair if only adults get to do it" part of the story...
@Mr. 8-Bit Doggo Well in the book, society is based on ensuring all desires are instantly rewarded. The mere concept of not getting what you want is seen as traumatic.
There's this section early in the book about a class of students where a boy (10 years old if I recall) explains how bad he felt when a classmate refused his sexual advances. The teacher then makes it out as if something absolutely terrible has happened to him.
I've watched a short bit of the show. It's really nothing like the book, except there's a cast system, and the trope names are the same.
Oh, those pages IGNITED WHEN LAUNCHED INTO THE STRATOSPHERE...
Because if they didn't, THAT'S THEIR DESTINATION!
the perfect society is one where government is limited
you need purpose.
you need duty.
and you need the freedom to choose your purpose and to choose how to do your duty.
"We were keeping our eye on 1984. When the year came and the prophecy didn’t, 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 vision, there was another-slightly older, slightly less well known, equally chilling: Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley’s vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think. What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.” In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us. This book is about the possibility that Huxley, not Orwell, was right." (Foreword of Neil Postman: "Amusing Ourselves to Death - Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business", 1985)
The truth is they both were right. The comfort of the carrot always looks more tempting when trying to avoid the threat of the stick. That is exactly why every Communist/Socialist movement that pushes for equity uses a mixture of terror tactics and violence, supported with feel-good propaganda and "empathetic" utopian rhetoric. Make people fear to step out of line, and make staying in line has the promise of being as safe and comfortable as possible.
Huxley described the promise to get everyone to go along with a centrally planned utopia & Orwell described what it will actually be like.
I just finished reading Orwell's the road to wigin pier and it is interesting that in part 1 he goes on about how the poverty stricken spend their megar wages on such distractions. Orwell may not have written about it.in 1984 but he certainly observed it.
Very interesting and perceptive post sir. I remember that as a cadet at the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy we had Brave New World and Brave New World Revisited as one of our reading assignments. That was cerca 1964. One thing that Huxley discussed in "Revisited" was something that he called, "herd poison", that being the proclivity of humans to act like animals when in a mob. In light of the riots and general jackass-like behavior in so many of our cities at this point, it was strangely prophetic. I see the possibility that the Brave New World paradigm may be being used to soften us up, make us weak, indolent and stupid so that the 1984 approach can be used for the ultimate technique of control. Sinister stuff, this.
Thanks for the post... gonna have to get a copy of this book now!
Hey, you reading the comments, have a great day!
Since my copyright dispute on this video was resolved in like 30 hours, I'm already having a great day :)
Also... You too!
Will do, you too, and thanks for the well wishes!
@@FEEonline hey since you're here I just want you to ask, can you look at the economic situation of Detroit become human and what would happen if we did have androids to serve us economically
Thank you! And you too
A -good- great day to you as well, stranger!
"What makes you think you'll be at the top? What makes you think in a system of nothing but workers and elites you'll be anything but what you are now but without the right to complain or fight back."
fun fact, Aldous Huxley taught at etton college. one of his pupils, Eric Blair later started writing as well,
under the pen name George Orwell.
(Small essay time)
Brave New World always stuck out to me. I remember reading 1984 for the first time and reading the forward which described the dark utopia trinity: Orwell's 1984, Zamyatin's We, and Huxley's Brave New World. I got to Brave New World last, mostly because my heart was crushed by the former two. Many like to joke now that we shouldn't be using Orwell's warnings as blueprints for a society, yet it seems more accurately to be what Huxley was warning.
No sane person can read 1984 and think it's the world they want. It's bleak, and oppressive for reasons that are always on the nose. The same can be said about We: it's impersonal, too transactional, and you become so dehumanized you may as well be a tool, which seems accurate by giving you numbers instead of names. But Brave New World is different. It's pretty. It's fun. I'd bet many real people would be happy to visit New London.
I'm obviously not for banning drugs and alcohol outright, but I'm always leery of anything that directly hijacks your mind. Soma could be paralleled by so many real life substances or items. I've known people who get addicted to video games, pornography, and alcohol, and it's always tough to see them struggle with their self-conditioned minds, but truly empowering to see them overcome their addictions. So to see this contrasted by Brave New World calling monogamy, equality, and capitalism just tired old selfish traditions scares me. How easily are we willing to forfeit true equality if we could all just own each other? How easy is it to block out the world, your job, or people in your life if they all took the same drug you did, bringing you both to a state of complacency? And the scary thing is, I bet people look at Brave New World's technology as a justification for advancements, yet it's simply impossible to see the results of that labor without the freedom to control ourselves.
The line about human's imperfections reminds me of The Worthing Saga by Orson Scott Card (the Ender's Game guy). Explaining why people need misery to feel joy is a fascinating concept. Brave New World, and perhaps our real world, understands that. And even more interesting, I think that's why you see a counter culture in rock and metal now. Before, it was cool to drink and smoke and do whatever you want and flip the bird to the system that controlled you. I think the pendulum is swinging the other way now, with people singing about how they've been caught by addiction, or how they're even more unhappy from their numbness. It's no longer the system they're fighting against, but the new master they traded it for.
One last thing and then I'll go. I remember learning about Congenital Insensitivity to Pain (CIP). Children born with this condition tend to bite off their own tongues when teething. They don't know any better, because they can't feel pain. They often smash their heads into walls, sometimes for fun, and they don't know any better because they can't feel pain. They often injure themselves or die to something they couldn't feel, because they didn't know it was killing them. That's how I view substances that can quickly become addictive, and how I think Soma was harming the citizens of New London. It'll end up killing you, and yet you'll just take more of it to avoid the pain; when if you listened to the pain earlier, you wouldn't be dying.
>No sane person can read 1984 and think it's the world they want. It's bleak, and oppressive for reasons that are always on the nose.
And yet you see people clamoring for it everyday. Certainly they don't describe it the way you do. But that doesn't change the fact that Democrats and Republicans want an authoritarian state that will use its power to brutally crush those who dissent in any meaningful way while brainwashing the public into hating who they're told to hate and loving Big Brother for saving them from everything. 1984 wasn't wrong in any significant manner that I can see.
@@PierzStyx Spot on. I guess the key word is "sane."
Nice post... thanks for your perspective!
Captain James T Kirk said it best. Quote: " I NEED MY PAIN" -End quote. So give me some of that delicious freedom.
Happiness is much more valuable when you have sadness and pain to come before it. I almost lost my mother to a stroke, but right now we're the happiest as a family that we've ever been.
And the award for the most crazy, noisy, and bizarre book cover goes to "Brave New World"
I think the biggest reason a “perfect” society would never work is because perfection is different to everyone so no matter what, society can never meet everyone’s wants.
The closest you can get is the little gods utopia where everybody is God of their own little matrix. Unable to leave and made to not be able to think of that.
This is obviously not perfect for everyone.
+
It's why you cannot create Heaven on Earth, no matter how hard you try.
Also, realistically speaking, Heaven on Earth could never exist because of how rampant our sins are, and the amount of corruption and greed we see daily.
@@troybaxterwe humans go extinct then heaven can be created
The very thing that defines "harmony, happiness, peace, etc" IS CONTRAST. You can't know peace without conflict. You can't know health without pain. These are inexorably linked concepts. The Ying to the Yang, the Light to the Darkness.
How would you know if you are successful, if you've haven't worked for it? One needs to struggle at the bottom, and navigate the world's pitfalls, economic and social barriers to reach a level of freedom from your own actions and choosing. This is part of Personal Responsibility and autonomy. Handing someone all their wants, needs and desires only creates a weak minded slave class. They become easily controlled and manipulated, by those doling out the goodies. The fear of losing your perks, keeps you in line.
Please do not be the boss. No contrast necessary. The universe, the verse. Music alone shall live !
This is why bad things happen to good people. Because if bad things didn't happen, how would we know the good?
Nice Reddit take!
@@ClokworkGremlin Thank you for this wisdom, Reddit!
Fridaey,
Excuse me?
Someone needs to show this/ share this with Portland.
When I was a little kid I was like maaan I wish I could live thousands of years so I can witness how human society evolve, technology, how cities will look like etc. Now I'm 33 years old and I changed my mind aaa lot
Indra, a Hindu god often called as "A God with a Thousand Eyes". That's why the name to the technology.
And here I thought it was just my favorite sniper rifle in ME2 & 3.
"They will just mix the soma in your water, so you don't have to."
Hitler
Fluoride for the masses.
Hitler never said this
The first rule of all Utopias... you begin by eliminating all of those who have no place in your perfect world.
I read Brave New World in high school but it was so confusing to me at the time I don't remember much of it, unlike the others like 1984 and Animal Farm. watching this started to remind me of some of it. Thanks, and ,yes, we are getting into those scenarios now.
Brave New World had a profound impact on me. It really introduced me to the idea of controlling people through pleasure rather than pain. 1984 is often considered the quintessential dystopian novel, but to me it's Brave New World all the way. Orwell could only look to the past; Huxley was able to look to the future. It's genuinely scary how much he was able to predict with that book.
"You catch more flies with honey than vinegar"
"Use the carrot, not the stick"
🎶"I have become, comfortably numb"🎶
The worst distopia combines the two plus others to factor in humans humanness
Bribery. Teach my horse to always move towards me. Carrots.
Been watching a lot of animal reserve vids lately, and it seems ironic that despite so many people championing freedom for animals, those same people can just turn about and demand that people not be free, crying for others to give up freedoms for the betterment of society.
Misguided, they always feel like they can make the world a better place if they could control people, taking away freedoms for a perceived 'greater good'.
Unknown Vagrant Communism/socialism has killed hundreds of millions of animals and lowered their standard of living to absolute lows, resulting in them living or dying in absolute misery. They comment about how much they love animals, then tweet about how great socialism is. The cognitive dissonance is astounding
If one recieves nothing but exploitation and misery as other more powerful individuals use their freedom to oppress them, then why the fuck would anyone see the benefit to liberty? What would it matter to me if I was permitted to make a billion dollars if it was physically impossible for me to do so? Not to mention the literal nature of capitalism means you only a few people will ever be rich, so by design your freedom to make money is useless because other people will always have more of it, and then use their resources to take more of it, and more importantly harness you to make it for them.
That's what late stage capitalism is, the rich reaching such heights that they need to exploit more and more to get higher, while the ability to actually produce slows down and it becomes harder to funnel those resources up. Till eventually the people who actually do shit in this country can't afford to survive in it and the whole system collapses on it's own inability to support impossible, infinite growth.
@Sench If one has to compete in the Olympics in order to have a home and eat then we probably should ban it.
They want to feel better about themselves, "look at how morally great I am", than a lot of times it turns out they were pieces of shit.
That's the ideology (incomplete religion) of the empaths. The more victimized and vulnerable you are, the holier. Those who have agency are evil, either because they are victimizing or they are not spending every waking moment helping the victimized (original sin).
Just found your channel! Such great content! Thanks!!
.
Zhuangzi had a story of 'The Caged Pheasant'.
A caged pheasant has comfort, but envies the wild pheasant who has freedom.
I think the same applies here where being in a 'society' is comfort over freedom.
for some reason I've always found brave new world more unsettling than 1984
Yeah it seems more likely more realistic more probable
I think that may be since Brave New World wraps its dystopia around more layers of good intentions. Even a communist would read it and say they don't want to have any part of it, "that's not real socialism". It's hard to see any motivations for the rulers in that world that have any positive intent. In Brave New World, on the surface it could seem attractive to many. It could seem that the rulers do have positive intent, you have peel away the layers and put thought into why such a world would be Hell on Earth.
BNW is closer to our current trajectory. But 1984 always got me because the message isn't just about the oppression, it's about how people come to believe and love the lies, that always hit me harder. Compromising everything about yourself so that you can live within the society that you exist...
1984 is capitalist totalitarianism whereas Brave new world is communist totalitarianism.
@Kurt Barryman 1984 is a warning against authoritarianism. Orwell was politically socialist and believed in individual freedom and worker's rights.
"A perfect society: What if humans ceases to be humans"
They'd have a better shot at perfection I guess because Humans now couldn't survive it.
Become a Borg!
“There is no growth in comfort; There is no comfort in growth.”
The Scarlet King approves.
Has anyone ever caught that the main character's name was Lenina, and the book Brave New World was written by Huxley. And in the movie Demolition Man, that character was named Lenina Huxley, and they also loved in a modern dystopian society modeled off Brave New World as well. Complete with "savages" that lived underground.
Of all totalitarian controlled fictional worlds I’ve heard of, Brave New World seems like the scariest by a long shot.
“A time is coming when men will go mad, and when they see someone who is not mad, they will attack him, saying, "You are mad; you are not like us."” St. Anthony.
How it feels to say to someone in the west “socialism doesn’t work, people need freedom”
Great content/series. I hope your audience grows to encompass much of the world. I feel like you could do a video on the rate experiment of utopia.
"How it feels to say to someone in the west “socialism doesn’t work, people need freedom”
Ain't that the truth!
Literally BLM's moto. Worrying.
Every single dystopian movie seems to be fusing together right now.
I read this book about a month ago, and i instantly started seeing so many parallels to this world that it's SCARY
Give me a percentage.
@@flynnwhimster5371 69% accurate
We live in: """ 1984""" and """Brave New World""".....MIXED TOGETHER.....
LIFE....IS LIKE A SLOW LIVING HELL....
@Dr Deuteron and a tiny dash of 'They Live!' and a hint of 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers'.
You forgot the Tower of Babel. 1984, Brave New World AND Babel.
Sounds like you need to up your Soma dose.
Makes me think of the great reset operation by the globalist cultists who wants power.
@@Stormvermin-bx1lh Thought I missed some serious messages when I misread that last one as 'Babe!'
Fun fact : Soma is a Vedic Sanskrit word that literally means "distill, extract, sprinkle", often connected in the context of rituals
@The Wristwatch Experience Soma and also Indra. Huxley was deeply influenced by Indian thought (although previously he had rejected it.)
@ekjudo indra means the god with thousand eyes. thats why the name of AI
With so many people I know who work 9-5s and they cope by smoking and drinking, this hits to close to home
Where I come from there are only two levels, the living and the dead..............................
LEGENDARY
“The village needs an enemy”
Hillary Clinton
I don't know it sounds kinda warmongering to me
@@marseldagistani1989 Broken clocks. Just remember, you cannot know good without bad. Without war, there is no peace, without suffering there is no joy, without tall there's no short, etc. If there is no frame of reference, things just are.
So either we go thru perilous storms or a long-ass limbo 🤔......Can I switch btn the 2?
I can't believe I actually thought Brave New World portrayed a good society when I was younger.
You were a child of course they think it sounds good. I was told in school if one gets in trouble you all suffer. It wasn't until I knew about this shit I realized how bad this shit is. I had no fucking idea about communism in history class.
In his 1946 foreword to Brave New World, Aldous Huxley writes "If I were to rewrite the book, I would offer the Savage...the possibility of sanity...where community economics would be decentralist and Henry-Georgian". To understand Huxley you must read his thoughts on the concepts of the economist Henry George. It is monopoly - both state and private - that causes societies ills. You can create a utopia if you remove monopoly (and externality) . Simply put if we abolish all taxes but those on monopoly - this consists of unimproved land values, power to create money, intellectual property etc, but also includes the externalities of the damage we do to others and our environment we can have a system that can allow all to have free and good institutions like healthcare, transport, utilities, police and defence, but allow all to operate in a true free market (one free from control but also free from harm to others). True freedom is the freedom to do want we want and the freedom not to be harmed by the actions of others. False freedom is the freedom to do harm, that is tyranny!