i read brave new world once.

that was the summer before junior year of high school, and to be perfectly honest, i really didn't enjoy readint it at all. i've never been into science fiction and that's pretty much what it was. the easiest way to describe it is in relation to 1984 by george orwell. orwell's book focused on how "big brother" will restrict the level to which people are able to carry out intelligent discourse, rendering them uncritical and non-threatening to the police state in control.

brave new world was written by aldous huxley and had the same general end as 1984. people end up as uncritical, unthinking automata, but the difference is that instead of being coerced or forced into submission by a authoritarian state, the people have put themselves in that position through their desire to be mindlessly entertained. so anyways like i said, i didn't really like the book, but for whatever reason, the book and the ideas that huxley had in it pointed me in the direction of a lot of stuff that i did enjoy reading and led me to think about what he'd written on a more applied level. in fact, i feel like reading that book started me on a process that led me to major in sociology.

so anyway, i mention all this because while i was out last night, i was thinking about some of the stuff i'd written on tuesday, stuff about morality and the complexity that colors it, the fact that it's not as black and white as a lot of people want to think that it is. that whole train of thought, at least this time, started because of a really asenine conversation that i had the night before, one that like reading brave new world i really didn't enjoy. i'd sort of been fighting with myself over what to do with that conversation, because i disagreed pretty vehemently with the person i was talking to, and whenever i do that, once the conversation's over i usually try extra hard to see if i'm wrong, think about what i would say if i were arguing the point the other person was making, but in looking at everything, i couldn't find anything to suggest that i was.

at first, i didn't want to think about the conversation at all, i felt like if i did i'd be giving it undue significance, but having thought about it in the frame of how i think about not just brave new world but other stuff that i've talked about, thought about, read, that i didn't perceive as worth the effort, and saw where stuff like that could lead me, the kind of stuff it would lead me to consider and felt like thinking about it wasn't useless or worse.

maybe i would have enjoyed the book more if i hadn't waited til the day before it was due to read it.

feeling: restrained
thinking of: what to wear
music: "the great american novel" larry norman