Books You Should Be Reading Number 44 Of A Bunch

Apathy Jack writes:

Brave New World Revisited by Aldous Huxley

If the first half of the twentieth century was the era of the technical engineers, the second half may well be the era of the social engineers' - and the twenty-first century, I suppose, will be the era of Wold Controllers, the scientific caste-system and Brave New World. To the question quis custodiet custodes - who will mount guard over out guardians, who will engineer the engineers? - the answer is a bland denial that they need any supervision. There seems to be a touching belief among certain Ph.D.s in sociology that Ph.D.s in sociology will never be corrupted by power. Like Sir Galahad's, their strength is as the strength of ten because they are scientists and have taken six thousand hours of social studies.

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This is a fascinating book (and not just for Huxley's quaint ignorance of the fact that the phrase "they are scientists and have taken six thousand hours of social studies" is an oxymoron). It's a series of small, interconnected essays written twenty years after the publication of Brave New World, where Huxley says, in essence, "Well, that happened faster than I thought it would..."

It helps to have read Brave New World first, but isn't entirely necessary, as Huxley summarises all of the important parts to which he refers.

If one did want to read Brave New World Revisited, the entire book is offered online, in the link above...