I've read Brave New World a few times, and I've never referenced it more often than I have in the last few years.

In terms of dystopian novels, I'm almost as big a fan of Orwell as anyone; but, I would dare to say that Huxley was objectively more right. Both Orwell and Huxley were right. It's just that Huxley took something that Orwell touched upon, and made his entire Brave New World horrifyingly focused on a particular truth.

What Huxley was afraid of, and what I absolutely believe is happening now, is a world in which everybody values his or her own happiness so much that freedom and personal autonomy don't matter.

I'm gonna spoil the novel. I don't care. It was published in 1932.

What Huxley did was create a world where everybody is happy.

Everybody is genetically designed to be of a certain aptitude and class. Everybody is subliminally programed from the cradle to be happy with his or her social status. Everyone comes from an artifical womb; so, sex is really all about pleasure without the responsibility. The nuclear family is pretty damn far removed. In fact, the word "father" is deemed to be vulgar. Still, everyone is constantly happy and obedient because everybody is fed a drug on a regular basis.

Does any of this sound familiar -- either in regard to what's happening, or what people are saying they want to happen?

Anyway, two of the characters from this Brave New World happen upon a "savage" named John who was born naturally.

The Complete Works of Shakespeare was one of the only books that he could access.

When John is introduced to this Brave New World, he's enamored for a moment; but, things go south from there. John's idea of sex is one of courtship and chivalry, which conflicts with this Brave New World of libertinism.

John eventually finds this society's lack of personal autonomy, and it's outright mockery of reverence for family, to be unbearable.

John eventually hangs himself in the midst of the rest of the society engaging in a drug fueled orgy.

What Huxley did was show us that there is a real danger in everyone being affirmed and happy all the time. Freedom does require the occasional discomfort and the unkind word from time to time.

The horror that I've experienced for several years now has been describing the book to people who haven't read it, only to get the response, "That sounds amazing. Why wouldn't you want to live that way?"

No, the brilliance of Huxley's novel was and is that it shows a world where everybody is happy, while no person should want to live in it.

Huxley was talking about the clash between "Give me liberty, or give me death. " and "I'll give you my liberty, if you give me a pill and an orgasm."

What we should be seeing right now is that the Brave New World is forming.

It goes without much saying that a large number of people showed us that they're more worried about losing their lives than their liberty over the last few years.

I think I've heard the word "affirm" more times in the last five years of my life than I heard in the previous thirty-three.

The major split is between the people who just wanna take the pill and have the orgasm, and the people who want to control the pills for everybody.

The people who want freedom seem to be those meek voices coming from the corner of the room.

That's what Huxley was warning us about. That's what we're dealing with now. That's also probably why I was never assigned to read Huxley in my government schools, and I had to buy the book with my own money.