Fast forward to 1958 and he was shocked by how quickly society was moving towards his predictions. I was too much interested in truth I paid too.When Huxley wrote Brave New World in 1931, he set his sci-fi dystopia over 600 years in the future. Watson–paying because you happen to be too much interested in beauty. It hasn't been very good for truth, of course. People were ready to have even their appetites controlled then. What's the point of truth or beauty or knowledge when the anthrax bombs are popping all around you? That was when science first began to be controlled–after the Nine Years' War. That made them change their tune all right. Right up to the time of the Nine Years' War. People still went on talking about truth and beauty as though they were the sovereign goods. Still, in spite of everything, unrestricted scientific research was still permitted. And, of course, whenever the masses seized political power, then it was happiness rather than truth and beauty that mattered. Universal happiness keeps the wheels steadily turning truth and beauty can't. Our Ford himself did a great deal to shift the emphasis from truth and beauty to comfort and happiness. True, ideas were beginning to change even then. Knowledge was the highest good, truth the supreme value all the rest was secondary and subordinate. They seemed to have imagined that it could be allowed to go on indefinitely, regardless of everything else. It's curious," he went on after a little pause, "to read what people in the time of Our Ford used to write about scientific progress. All other enquiries are most sedulously discouraged. We don't allow it to deal with any but the most immediate problems of the moment. That's why we so carefully limit the scope of its researches–that's why I almost got sent to an island. But we can't allow science to undo its own good work. China's was hopelessly insecure by comparison even the primitive matriarchies weren't steadier than we are. It has given us the stablest equilibrium in history. But truth's a menace, science is a public danger. A much harder master, if one isn't conditioned to accept it unquestioningly, than truth." He sighed, fell silent again, then continued in a brisker tone, "Well, duty's duty. Happiness is a hard master–particularly other people's happiness. I chose this and let the science go." After a little silence, "Sometimes," he added, "I rather regret the science. "I was given the choice: to be sent to an island, where I could have got on with my pure science, or to be taken on to the Controllers' Council with the prospect of succeeding in due course to an actual Controllership. "Because, finally, I preferred this," the Controller answered. "Then why aren't you on an island yourself?" All the people who aren't satisfied with orthodoxy, who've got independent ideas of their own. All the people who, for one reason or another, have got too self-consciously individual to fit into community-life. That's to say, he's being sent to a place where he'll meet the most interesting set of men and women to be found anywhere in the world. "Whereas, if he had the smallest sense, he'd understand that his punishment is really a reward. “One would think he was going to have his throat cut," said the Controller, as the door closed. "I'll teach you I'll make you be free whether you want to or not." And pushing open a window that looked on to the inner court of the Hospital, he began to throw the little pill-boxes of soma tablets in handfuls out into the area.” "Don't you?" he repeated, but got no answer to his question. "Don't you want to be free and men? Don't you even understand what manhood and freedom are?" Rage was making him fluent the words came easily, in a rush. Grief and remorse, compassion and duty–all were forgotten now and, as it were, absorbed into an intense overpowering hatred of these less than human monsters. The insults bounced off their carapace of thick stupidity they stared at him with a blank expression of dull and sullen resentment in their eyes. Mewling and puking," he added, exasperated by their bestial stupidity into throwing insults at those he had come to save. His face was flushed, his eyes bright with ardour and indignation. “But do you like being slaves?" the Savage was saying as they entered the Hospital.
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