Brave New World Revisited By: Aldous Huxley

This...essay? made me laugh, then sober up real quick. Huxley spends the first chapter arguing that his vision of the future is better than Orwell's 1984. He does go on to explain why he is so bitter towards Henry Ford, which he did predict accurately. He was worried about the larger businesses, using assembly lines enabling them to put products out faster, would "gobble up" the little businesses. Although he did not go on to envision us relying on foreign countries for these cheaper goods, hurting small businesses even more. His theory of "herd thinking" versus "individual thinking" was a sort of epiphany for me. I knew this was true, but he explained how Hitler used it as "Herd Poison" which made it much more serious for me. The stress limit tested by Pavlov was equally interesting- people can last between 15- 50 days until stress before they break down. I also learned that Soldiers in World War II were given supplemental hypnopaedia instruction at night to go with their day time training with favorable results.