I bought BNWR (Brave New World Revisited) (1958) and BNW (Brave New World) (1932) by Aldous Huxley as a vintage publication from Sarasavi Bookshops Online and Sarasavi Bookshops Gampaha branch. Both books have a unique cover design which is pretty awesome.
The novel BNW published in 1932 is far ahead in terms of predicting a fictionalized future rather than his collection of essays BNWR (1958) published after thirty years which have several predictions gone wrong due to political changes in the global setting compared to the 1950s to 2022.
The first chapter "Overpopulation" suggests that due to this issue of the rising population there will be an obvious bias toward communism of nations' policies and due to this there will be a negative impact on the United States of America (USA). But with the fall of the Soviet Union, many of the communist nations changed their policies to capitalism leading to the end of the cold war. It reflects that many of Huxley's arguments are political rather than being world view. Many of the issues like overpopulation are now tackled by concepts like sustainable development in economics.
Chapters like "Quantity, Quality, Morality" and "Over-organization" discusses very valuable and insightful facts. Many concepts are highly connected to the modern world today.
Aldous Huxley's knowledge and intelligence are unparalleled as it is depicted in his collection of essays related to BNWR. It emphasizes the thought process of the 1950s to 1960s and also analyses many foundations of knowledge he used in BNW.
For a bird's eye view of the novel following list of chapters will be put down for easy reference.
(01) Introduction
(02) Foreword
(03) Overpopulation
(04) Quantity, Quality, Morality
(05) Over-organization
(06) Propaganda in a democratic society
(07) Propaganda under a dictatorship
(08) The arts of selling
(09) Brainwashing
(10) Chemical persuasion
(11) Subconscious persuasion
(12) Hypnopaedia
(13) Education for freedom
(14) What can be done?
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