Turning Romanticism on its Head: The Peripheral Symbolic Geography of Aldous Huxley and Ira Levin

Within the present paper, I aim to discuss how Aldous Huxley and Ira Levin have employed the peripheral symbolic geography of their two works (Brave New World and This Perfect Day) to articulate their debate between different sets of social values. Unlike other authors of negative utopias such as George Orwell or Yevgeny Zamyatin, neither Huxley nor Levin idealized pre-modern values. In order to highlight how the two articulated their views with the help of symbolic geography, I will also make use of Michel Foucault’s theoretical concepts of heterotopias, heterochrony as well as the ideas developed by the critics Michael Lowy and Robert Sayre in their seminal work Romanticism against the Tide of Modernity. My purpose is thus firstly to point out how and why Huxley and Levin divided the symbolic geography of their works in two parts as well as how they employed the Romantic critique of modernity. Secondly, I aim to show how despite using this analytical tool, they also employed symbolic geography with the purpose of turning the critique on its head, thus unveiling both its strong points as well as its shortcomings.

Humans and humanity at a crossroads, reading Huxley’s brave new world in light of harari’s homo deus

We don't know where humanity is going. It's challenging to keep up with the rapid advancements in science and technology. In real life, both true and fictional 'truths' play important roles. Huxley's utopian/dystopian novel Brave New World (BNW) depicts a possible future for humanity through his description of a society organized and controlled through the use of science. A contemporary history book, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow (HD), also discusses the potential of humanity facing extinction in the future. This discussion employs HD to shed light on BNW, using Marxist and New Historicist arguments. Its goals are to analyze the irony in the works, the threat to invention and creativity, oligarchy and hedonism, the name allusions in the works, and the future prospect of engeneered homo sapiens as eternal working classes. The research discovered that both books are based on humanism, but humans are not treated as they should, that the lower castes in BNW cannot become innovative and creative because they are engineered, that the small oligarchy (the Alphas) maintains its power by providing pleasures for the lower castes so as to forget that they are being controlled.

Humans and humanity at a crossroads, reading Huxley’s brave new world in light of harari’s homo deus

We don't know where humanity is going. It's challenging to keep up with the rapid advancements in science and technology. In real life, both true and fictional 'truths' play important roles. Huxley's utopian/dystopian novel Brave New World (BNW) depicts a possible future for humanity through his description of a society organized and controlled through the use of science. A contemporary history book, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow (HD), also discusses the potential of humanity facing extinction in the future. This discussion employs HD to shed light on BNW, using Marxist and New Historicist arguments. Its goals are to analyze the irony in the works, the threat to invention and creativity, oligarchy and hedonism, the name allusions in the works, and the future prospect of engeneered homo sapiens as eternal working classes. The research discovered that both books are based on humanism, but humans are not treated as they should, that the lower castes in BNW cannot become innovative and creative because they are engineered, that the small oligarchy (the Alphas) maintains its power by providing pleasures for the lower castes so as to forget that they are being controlled.

The fourth industrial revolution: contradictions of the new social reality and its techno-digital security

The article is devoted to the topical topic of the fourth industrial revolution, which every member of society is witnessing and participating in today. The author analyzes the process of forming a new social reality and notes its ambiguous nature. On the one hand, there are obvious innovative breakthroughs in many areas of life that can significantly "improve" human (not only social) existence. On the other hand, the contradictions and paradoxes of such a "brave new world" are exponentially increasing, "deferred" challenges and risks are being formed, moral and ethical algorithms of social interaction are being transformed. The author focuses on the fact that today humanity, in order to form a balanced and safe social environment, needs to delve into the essence of the process of the fourth industrial revolution. To do this, it is necessary not just to comprehend their upcoming scientific and technological "steps", but equally those profound changes that have already been launched. In addition, the article also notes the special role of the COVID-19 pandemic, which, according to many researchers, has forever changed the usual societal contours, forming a kind of "post-pandemic" social reality. The paper analyzes the uniqueness of the situation of "layering" of two transformational processes – the expansion of the fourth industrial revolution and the reformatting of being by the COVID-19 virus. In view of this, as the author notes, a person begins practically, at the level of everyday life, to face an increasing volume of changes generated by these processes, as well as to experience fear of the future and a permanent state of anxiety. Therefore, in the modern social reality, there is an adequate demand for the formation of a "response" to new, including digital challenges and risks, as well as in the strategic development of regulatory and adaptive measures. The author substantiates the need to develop a strategy for techno-digital security and include it in the relevant federal regulations.

What’s to Come of All This Tracking “Who We Are”? The Intelligence Example

Increasingly, we are required, encouraged, and/or motivated to track our behavior, presumably to improve our life “quality.” But health and life-satisfaction trends are not cooperating: Empirical evidence for success is sorely lacking. Intelligence has been tracked for more than 100 years; perhaps this example offers some hints about tracking’s overall social impact. I suggest that Huxley’s Brave New World offers a relevant long-term extrapolation and that popular recent tracking activities will accelerate “progress” in that dystopian direction.

Editorial: Building Healthy Academic Communities in this Post-Pandemic Brave New World

No abstract available.