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Comment by n4r9 | Hacker News Reader

> Utopia is about letting people live in a manner that they would want

One of the lessons I learnt from Huxley's Brave New World is that this phrasing is very ambiguous and the meaning of utopia is more complicated, if the word is indeed meaningful. The people in BNW live in the manner that they desire, but not many would call it a utopia. Sure, those desires themselves are the result of genetic and environmental conditioning, but so are ours!

It seems to me that Huxley is saying that some element of struggle and overcoming of adversity is necessary for human flourishing.

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Between Huxley ("Brave New World") and Orwell ("1984"), I think Huxley saw the future more accurately, although Orwell has amazing insights.

I actually thought that "Wall-E" was a good, and particularly accessible, commentary on utopia. Without the need to strive, we might all just turn into human potatoes. I'm not far from that now, which is pretty frightening.

I just want to mention here for those who haven't heard of it: Huxley's "Island" explores the complement to the ideas presented in "Brave New World", i.e. it is an imagining of utopia. I highly recommend it.

Orwell was writing about an authoritarian socialist society devolving into fascism.

Huxley is less clear, but on the whole it looks much closer to a capitalist society.

So one could argue that they represent different future paths - mutually exclusive, but which one is more likely than the other depends on where the wind blows at any given moment. Orwell had the advantage of seeing what Stalinist ideology is like first hand, as a member of POUM in Spain, so that's where his focus was. We live in a world that's dominated by capitalist countries, so Huxley's vision seems more likely to us. But it can all change.

> The people in BNW live in the manner that they desire, but not many would call it a utopia.

That's probably because Huxley implies an overarching force or process that is rather directly controlling the population. Also-- like 1984-- this process is strongly implied to be inescapable.

Those aspects of those books scare the hell out of young people. But if you remove those aspects, I'm not sure many people would find anything wrong with getting high and dancing to algorithmically generated music when they feel the urge.

> some element of struggle and overcoming of adversity is necessary for human flourishing

This sounds like "what doesn't kill me makes me stronger" or "no pain no gain".

I know there needs to be work to make things better, and to come up with solutions that will always incur adaptation, but I don't see how it necessarily involves struggle and difficulty.

Difficulty is not the goal, but we should not stop at difficulty if the result is worth it.

Dystopia's are often a form of Utopia. Thomas More's original Utopia is not necessary a perfect society, but a designed society. I would classify BNW as a Utopia even though it is a cautionary tale.

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