How is the Brave New World Progressing?

 I was reading this discussion of culture, and the ways that it is transmitted through a particular nation-state, and started thinking about dystopian novels.

Now, many of us have seen parallels between 1984 and the Stern, Authoritarian States of the Woke World. It doesn't require much in the way of imagination to see the features that mirror Orwell's frightening novel.

But, Brave New World always seemed, to me, to be the more unlikely scenario. Women, other than the most vain ones, seem to crave the experience of gestating their children themselves. Even those who do off-source the pregnancy to a surrogate, generally do as a last resort, when their advanced age (for childbearing) makes it dangerous or not feasible.

But, when you think about it, the Left has made enormous efforts to dissociate women (and, to some extent, men) from their reproductive functions:

• Regulating their menstrual cycles through chemical means
• Interrupting the natural conception process through abortion
• Promoting delay of childbirth until natural methods of conception are less likely
• Promoting storage of eggs, and later use in a surrogate body, for career women
• Legislatively and judicially reducing the role of fathers to solely being used as a cash source
• Only promoting men as parents if they are the type that cannot conceive with each other.

For Leftists, sex would ONLY be for hedonistic use. Women, having no value as breeders, would have value only in their youth, for sexual use only. After they'd been rejected as too old, they could only hang around the fringes as Epstein's procurer did, and only if they provided the younger women demanded by their customers.

We already have the Soma-equivalents - focus drugs, anti-anxiety drugs, sleep aids, energizers, anti-depressants, mood stabilizers - it's not just ONE drug, it's multiple. And, all of them subsidized by insurance/government.

I used to teach science. I learned, early on, the one sure way to disgust teens (to the point of some of them gagging), was to mention breastfeeding. Yeah, the one natural function that DEFINES mammals will gross out younger women to the point that they could lose their lunch.

Some of them would discuss oral sex (even talk about administering it as an alternative to coitus), but that didn't stop them from thinking of a child taking a breast into their mouth as the most horrible thing imaginable.

I never understood it. I still don't.

But, the fact that such thinking exists is a sure sign that Huxley's World is closer than we think. Many people have become disconnected from normal human functions, and are more comfortable turning over control to machines/technology. From birth to death, people will gladly turn over human activities to automated technology. They use gadgets to change channels, cook, intervene with ordering food, remind them about necessary appointments, wake them, play music to send them to a relaxed sleep, and tell them when their kid needs attention,

Many people have learned to use technology to avoid having to interact with actual people, even to see them as a horrible source of disease. Remember Heinlein's Robots of Dawn? Such a society will not be seen as a soulless, lonely world, but a sensible alternative to contact with 'icky' organisms.

Having robots and other high-tech helpers is the wave of the future.

Don't be surprised if the current crop of kids are the last to actually learn to drive. Future kids will look at that as terrifying, and a sure road to a quick death.