[HN Gopher] Pleasures by Aldous Huxley (1920)
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Pleasures by Aldous Huxley (1920)
Author : waihtis
Score : 79 points
Date : 2024-02-25 20:09 UTC (2 hours ago)
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| boomskats wrote:
| Note that this was probably written in 1923 rather than 1920, if
| the second paragraph is anything to go by.
| smallerdemon wrote:
| "These effortless pleasures, these ready-made distractions that
| are the same for every one over the face of the whole Western
| world, are surely a worse menace to our civilization than ever
| the Germans were."
|
| Well... this aged like fine milk in retrospect to what was coming
| 20 years down the line.
| zer00eyz wrote:
| Considering how complacent everyone got in the interwar period
| about what was going on... I dont think any one at that point
| in time thought they would do it all over again, 20 years
| later, with Germany.
| randomburner99 wrote:
| Incorrect on multiple grounds, the first being that the Nazis
| were in part a reaction against the kind of society that Huxley
| sees developing.
| pizzafeelsright wrote:
| Sometimes, I wonder if it took the collective world to defeat
| one country perhaps they were superior to all other nations.
| Then I remember wrong think is a crime and push those thoughts
| away.
| ulrashida wrote:
| Yes, because as we all remember there were no countries
| allied with Germany for any duration of the war.
| rexpop wrote:
| This is how you sound, to me:
|
| "Sometimes, I wonder if it took the collective organs to
| defeat one pathogen perhaps they were superior to all other
| organisms."
|
| If we must, there are other rubrics by which to judge
| "superiority" than capacity for destruction and domination.
| marviel wrote:
| You seem to believe capacity for destruction & dominance is
| the metric by which a society should be valued.
|
| I hope you take a moment to consider what the world would be
| like if all lived according to your implied ideals
| lm28469 wrote:
| To defeat "one country" ? Do you have access to history
| books?
| mantas wrote:
| It aged very well looking at what was coming 100 years down the
| line.
| gatane wrote:
| "Do the democracies want music? In the old days they would have
| made it themselves. Now, they merely turn on the gramophone."
|
| "Kids these days bad, older times good!" - as far as humanity has
| existed.
| randomburner99 wrote:
| Yes, that is how decline works. Technology constantly makes
| life easier: does this mean "better"? In a sense, yes. But the
| mind tends to atrophy.
| rexpop wrote:
| Have we been in decline for 2,500 years?[0]
|
| 0. https://historyhustle.com/2500-years-of-people-
| complaining-a...
| overvale wrote:
| It is possible for the best aspects of a people/society to
| atrophy while they simultaneously expand their
| wealth/technology/etc.
|
| We can make the world an undeniably better place while also
| loosing vital things. It's not a zero-sum game. Have we
| been doing this for 2,500 years? Probably.
|
| It feels like a contradiction only if it's zero sum. But we
| generate more vital things than we lose, so it feels like
| (is) progress. But that doesn't mean we're not losing vital
| things.
| zitterbewegung wrote:
| As he population has grown with the respect to the existence of
| recorded music less and leee people are encouraged to even make
| their own music than to play songs that are done by the best.
|
| I can play the piano and I can done some improvisation but,
| everyone doesn't care about my improv because I'm not good
| enough but frequently you will get famous song is asked to be
| played live.
| vonjuice wrote:
| There should be a collective shift towards making art for art
| itself, and for one self, in the same way that yoga and
| meditation are encouraged.
|
| Comparing end products and foregoing the process itself,
| people don't know what they're throwing out.
| lm28469 wrote:
| It's as dumb as saying: everything new is "progress" and
| "progress" is always good. Which is apparently the main
| religion for a good 150 years
| zer00eyz wrote:
| >> Like every man of sense and good feeling, I abominate work.
| But I would rather put in eight hours a day at a Government
| office than be condemned to lead a life of "pleasure"; I would
| even, I believe, prefer to write a million words of journalism a
| year.
|
| I adore Huxley. Brave New World, The Doors of Perception, Those
| Barren Leaves...
|
| I think the overmedication facet of Brave New World is so very
| true. We know we have an opioid problem because people are
| addicted and then dying. I think it would be naive to think that
| we aren't doing the same with everything in psychopharmacology.
| whaleofatw2022 wrote:
| Agree on some level.
|
| Over my life I have found that some things, yes I do need
| medication for, but I -personally- do not need anti depressants
| to be happy...
|
| However people in society increasingly take the view of 'you
| need medication' rather than "maybe when this person tells me
| what is bothering them I should reflect on if I'm contributing
| to the problem"
| zer00eyz wrote:
| I begrudge no one their medication.
|
| I have been blessed with some very dear friends over my life.
| My first brush with the ills of psychopharmacology was with a
| woman I knew whose mother had just passed. I went to visit
| her a few days after the funeral and she was rather spry. I,
| being a man of little regard for my own well being asked the
| probing question "You seem rather upbeat". It was met with a
| resounding "I know, and I can't even cry". She removed prozac
| from her life shortly after, went through a bought of horrid
| depression (putting off processing things means you pay
| later). Today she's happy, bright and successful...
|
| I have a current friend who is "suffering from anxiety and
| depression". Her life is hard, for a number of reasons.
| Medication makes her "happy" and she does not address the
| structural issues in her life. You can't help those who wont
| help themselves, I get that. But if you dont feel the pain
| how do you know to pull back from the fire.
| lm7272 wrote:
| honestly really do not think you understand SSRIs or anti
| depressants at all man. Never once encountered people being
| unable to cry or feel negative things whilst on anti-
| depressants. Even if you have, to disregard antidepressants
| as some evil big pharma mind control is so incredibly
| narrow minded.
| mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote:
| I don't think GPs post generalises well(nor does any
| simple statement on phychopharmacology, everyone is and
| reacts differently), but I've spoken to many people who
| have reported emotional blunting from SSRIs. It's a
| fairly common complaint. Being "upbeat" from
| antidepressants also happens a lot to people with bipolar
| disorder, who are often misdiagnosed with and mistreated
| for depression before their first episode of
| hypomania/mania.
| lazide wrote:
| Considering how the exact same thing happens without meds,
| but people will just kill themselves more sometimes.....
| zer00eyz wrote:
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17728420/
|
| Except kids.
|
| Barbiturates were a problem for how many decades? How
| much over prescription were there of "mothers little
| helpers"? How about oxy? How many people did that kill?
| How about benzodiazepines? DO we even have accurate data
| on that, or did we just stop looking at the long term
| effects.
|
| We're not studying the impact of over prescription of
| psychopharmacology. There is NO data on what happens if
| you give these drugs to people who DONT need them. Zero,
| None. And we would be very naive to think that we dont
| have that problem.
|
| Edit: The only reduction in suicide rate of those taking
| SSRI's vs those getting a placebo is in the over 65 age
| group.
| conradev wrote:
| Have you read Island? It lays out Aldous' idea of utopia, and
| it's pretty compelling
| CTDOCodebases wrote:
| Pleasure does not exist in the absence of pain.
|
| It's the avoidance of pain that is the problem.
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| On the other hand, maybe it would have been better to devote more
| effort to pleasure.
|
| In a few years from when it was written, Germany would be
| devoting the full power of a modern industrial economy, not to
| pleasure but to wipe out undesirable people.
|
| They would is the newly developing field of electronic data
| processing, not for pleasure to to better target people for
| death.
|
| Planes would be built not for people to travel on vacation, but
| to drop bombs.
|
| Factories would work around the clock, not producing goods for
| pleasure, but weapons of death.
|
| The greatest group of geniuses ever assembled, would be given an
| unlimited budget not to develop new forms of pleasure but to
| develop a weapon that could vaporize an entire city in a few
| seconds.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| Store-bought pleasure, the opiate of the elite?
| al_borland wrote:
| I have to believe there is a middle ground between devoting
| life to pleasure and trying to exterminate a race of people.
| That middle ground is most of what we call life today.
| dansiemens wrote:
| > In place of the old pleasures demanding intelligence and
| personal initiative, we have vast organizations that provide us
| with ready-made distractions - distractions which demand from
| pleasure-seekers no personal participation and no intellectual
| effort of any sort
|
| This feels true in some sense for every generation; bemoaning the
| insolence of the current youth feels like a rite of passage.
| However, it also seems true that the youth of today have a lower
| barrier of access to "pleasure" than any other humans in history.
| rwasco wrote:
| This is a natural conseqence of copyright law. It is hard for
| local talent to compete against unnatural monopolies. We
| subsidized mass produced media at the expense of decentralized
| talent.
| zibzob wrote:
| I'm not sure abolishing copyright would make much of a
| difference, in terms of increasing the number of people who can
| professionally make media. Supply and demand doesn't work
| properly in mass media, because one movie can supply the demand
| of everybody in the entire world, pretty much. We don't need a
| singer in every town, we only need a handful of talented people
| who can supply the music demands for everybody in the world -
| it doesn't really matter who they are. I'm exaggerating a bit,
| but that's how I generally feel about it.
|
| (Having said that, this article is pretty much "old man yells
| at cloud" for me.)
| parentheses wrote:
| Huxley was talking about a time when most work was manual labor
| (tend the farm, smith the axe). While there was an intellectual
| element it was imbued into the physical aspect of the work.
| Today, work is more intellectual. It makes complete sense that
| pleasures are not so much so.
|
| It's a great abstract discussion. Increases in technology have
| made it possible to use human intellect to move society forward,
| but also make pleasure that much easier to attain.
|
| I don't really have a point here but I find the topic very
| amusing to think about. I feel guilty watching hours of TV during
| the week to unwind. At the same time, it helps me to relax.
| Pleasure that comes from physical work seems to always have a
| greater positive outcome for me. OTOH, mental pleasure sense to
| leave me depleted even more so. TV is an interesting mental
| pleasure that does help.
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