Brave New World Revisited

Brave New World Revisited is the follow up to Aldous Huxley's earlier novel entitled Brave New World. This book is basically a series of essays on corporations and private individuals, and offers a lot of comparisons between the present day (at the time of writing) and the worlds described in Brave New World and Orwell's 1984.

This book is an easy read and you can probably finish it in just 2 or 3 sittings. Unfortunately, it was written before the dawn of the internet, so some of the material is outdated. He speaks of mass communication and how radio and television make it so much easier to do this, but I would love to hear what he'd have to say about the internet.

One of the most most insightful topics discussed are the overpopulation of the world. He says that religious and political taboos are keeping the use of contraceptives down, and so more babies are being born. On the flipside of that, advances in medicine are keeping more people alive, and so the world population is growing faster this past 100 years than it ever has. Scary.

He also discusses how Hitler was able to control his people through the use of manipulation of the group mentality. He spends a good bit of time on this subject, regarding communicating to and influencing the masses. Very interesting.

Even if you have not read Brave New World, you should check out Brave New World revisited and let it get you to thinking about some things in this world that the average Joe would probably have never before noticed.