[jobim]

Have been using this book in World Lit for 4 years, and it speaks with chilling accuracy to students of the world they know is emerging. They feel it in their bones.

[Mrs. Don-o]

Interesting that of the two most famous dystopias (Brave New World and 1984) it's Huxley's "soft" dictatorship of collectivist mind-numbed subrational pleasure that seems more likely to win out than Orwell's "hard" boot-stomping-your-face dictatorship.

And a really human future? Neither BNW nor 1984? We must struggle for it as if it's possible. Because it's better to die upright than to live prostrate.

I think of this with a real pang in my heart. As to my adolescent sons: I would rather they be dead soldiers than live slackers. That they should just be strong, decent, upright, honest, human, Christian men.

[puroresu]

The college kids I deal with on a daily basis would give up their liberty in a heartbeat in return for being taken care of by the state and allowed their share of sensual thrills. Not all of them, obviously, but enough the destroy everything we hold dear.