It was simply and well written and I was impressed with Huxley’s knowledge and insights into social conditioning, yet as the author himself said in his foreward, it has many flaws. I am now convinced that every utopia is at the same time an antiutopia. Granted, Huxley presents a world free of virtue or vice, that creates an Eden for the clones: but all this is at the price of their humanity. For all intents and purposes the majority is a rigidly castigated hive mind whose abilities and disabilites have been forfeited by the hatchery. Predestination blows. It is a world without morality, without choice and without freedom. Like The Savage, I choose misery and freedom when the other option is only the literal life of an ant or worker bee.
A world is too stagnant, too stable, if there is no black or white but only grey. Everything becomes vanilla flavored. No vice means no virtue, no ugliness means no beauty. These concepts only exist in dichotomy. A human created world that removes the passion and leaves only hypnopaedic biological existence is not for me.
Huxley acknowledged this limitation and said if he had to write Brave New World again The Savage would be given a third choice: life in exile among the few sane persons on the Reservation.
Now I am starting in on Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. I hope she isn’t too heavy handed. I have met one of her advocates and he was a little on the abrasive side. but maybe that is just him.