Comment on aldous huxley

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We will travel in six and a half hours from London to America. If this seems already incredible the idea of doing it by rocket appears even more preposterous

doesn´t it?

 Aldous Huxley presents us his vision of the future in his text “What does the future hold“. It is an extract of his book Brave New World published in 1932, which treats his visions of in life six hundred years. The text has been structured in 5 parts. “World” the first passage deals with the organisation of the world including the government. The second passage ”People” is about the future society and is followed by “Entertainment” dealing with the new forms of entertainment we maybe face.  The penultimate Passage details the future Economy, before the last passage “travel” alludes to new ways of travelling.

His visions seem quite utopic at first sight but are they really that improbable or are they maybe just to frightening for our society to be considered to be true?

His vision of the world could be compared to a totalitarian tyranny especially the censor he evokes correspond to tis image. The world is  “controlled centrally” alludes to a world being in total dependence to a omnipotent government which seems unimaginable today especially due to the democracies which has been installed in most of the countries. In the scenario the author presents this government is put in place after a “nine year war between super powers which led  to economic collapse”, the described war would probably be the most destructive and especially most mortal war that has ever taken place. It is possible that the author was inspired by WW1.

Notwithstanding the above this kind of war is totally realistic in particular regarding the amount of nuclear bombs that superpowers like the USA or Russia possess.

The world population, which he estimates being at only two billion is maybe a consequence of this war, otherwise this number seems totally unrealistic, and is contradicted by the current estimates which predict a world population of 11,2 billion in 2100(Uno). The idea of total social stability isn’t as unrealistic as it might seem due to two factors: First of all the total control of the government could help to stabilize the society and secondly the quite small population would make the process of stabilization.

The in my opinion most controversial paragraph is the second and third one dealing with ”Population” and “Entertainment”.

He shows us a picture of humanity that is a dream and a nightmare at the same Time.

“Everyone is happy”, “there is no illness or disease”, ”Everyone looks young until they are sixty” concurrent there is no privacy and we don’t feel anything, we are emotionless.

And at sixty years the people “are sent to hospital where they die”. Actually the term of happiness so will be newly defined and will be disconnected from our feelings which would totally change its meaning and put in a context where it comes across as totally insignificant at least in comparison to our present Definition of happiness. The reinterpretation of happiness is also caused by the total absence of coincidence in the life of the population described by Huxley. This phenomenon destroys also the possibility of luck or misfortune because every life is predesigned and not individual lived like nowadays. Further on you can question the term of humanity in general if you consider Huxleys Visions to be at least partially true, because in the passage “People” he describes the population more like a machine than as an autonomic human being. “People are designed to perform certain functions in life” since we are “designed” you could question our ability to think as” it appears logic that we won’t be able to think at least autonomic. But does this mean that we don’t think anymore at all? In my opinion it does cause we wont be able to build an own opinion, which is part of the definition of human thinking. Thinking being one of the basic parts that define a human being, You can come to the conclusion that humanity will not further exist in it initial form.

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