Wow, that was more vehement than I was expecting. I remember reading 1984 and Brave New World near one another, and thinking that Brave New World was significantly better. I guess I wasn’t as put off by the pro-traditionalist vibes in BNW as you were, and I remember thinking that the government in 1984 was way too capital-E Evil to be very interesting. I’d argue that BNW is about the way things can still go wrong even when you get a lot right (ending sickness and poverty), while 1984 just seemed like Stalin’s USSR with better surveillance tech.
Yeah, I am not fully sure what made it such a miserable experience for me, and it’s totally plausible there is more intellectual merit in there that I didn’t successfully pick up on, but I sure really despised my time with it. Epistemic state of the above should probably be modeled as “I had a terrible time, your experience might differ”.
Wow, that was more vehement than I was expecting. I remember reading 1984 and Brave New World near one another, and thinking that Brave New World was significantly better. I guess I wasn’t as put off by the pro-traditionalist vibes in BNW as you were, and I remember thinking that the government in 1984 was way too capital-E Evil to be very interesting. I’d argue that BNW is about the way things can still go wrong even when you get a lot right (ending sickness and poverty), while 1984 just seemed like Stalin’s USSR with better surveillance tech.
Yeah, I am not fully sure what made it such a miserable experience for me, and it’s totally plausible there is more intellectual merit in there that I didn’t successfully pick up on, but I sure really despised my time with it. Epistemic state of the above should probably be modeled as “I had a terrible time, your experience might differ”.