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Untitled
CK
by
Chris Kohnen
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Updated Dec 16, 2022
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Chapters
00:00
Chapter 1
02:30
Chapter 2
03:17
Chapter 3
05:30
Chapter 4
07:28
Chapter 5
08:40
Chapter 6
10:06
Chapter 7
10:16
Chapter 8
12:22
Chapter 9
12:48
Chapter 10
14:10
Chapter 11
Audio Transcript
Auto-generated
00:02 - 00:02
let it go,
00:03 - 00:04
what up
00:06 - 00:09
Now? I can go. OK, Hi, my name is Chris Conan.
00:09 - 00:17
Um I am in mrs J's Class Block eight and my review is over a brave new world.
00:19 - 00:22
Okay, so,
00:22 - 00:29
first to go into a little background info about the author uh analyst Huxley.
00:29 - 00:38
Huxley was born in the U. K. In 18 94 to a prominent biologist father when he was 16.
00:38 - 00:44
In the around 1910, he suffered an eye infection um was called keratosis.
00:44 - 00:47
It cost him nearly lose his eyesight, even went temporarily blind,
00:47 - 00:48
he regained it.
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But in order to see for the rest of his life, most of the rest of his life,
00:52 - 00:55
he would have to wear thick glasses magnify IRS.
00:55 - 00:56
Um
00:57 - 00:58
It was not until later on in life.
00:58 - 01:01
He claimed to try alternative medicine,
01:01 - 01:07
which he claimed fixed his eyesight although that's somewhat disputed um
01:08 - 01:14
Earlier but go back earlier on in life. He began his writing career in his early 20's
01:16 - 01:17
as a satire writer,
01:17 - 01:20
first becoming known for the novel's chrome
01:20 - 01:24
yellow and antique a uh they're both satire
01:24 - 01:29
john or books that hit kind of poked fun at the intellectuals of his day.
01:29 - 01:34
He also those barren leaves of point counterpoint, both which are also satires.
01:34 - 01:38
Um in 1932 Brave New World was published.
01:38 - 01:43
He wrote it in 1931 it was his first dystopian novel and the novel made him famous.
01:43 - 01:48
Um It kind of expresses his deep distrust of those
01:48 - 01:52
in high power and the general trend of the world um
01:52 - 01:55
During his time
01:56 - 02:00
pause, uh the novel is perceived as a sort of warning,
02:00 - 02:05
Huxley was sending the world about the potential for destruction and
02:05 - 02:09
a potential dystopian kind of society of changes did not occur.
02:10 - 02:13
And if we look at it, we can look at a number of factors to kind of,
02:13 - 02:17
understand where this novel kind of originated from.
02:17 - 02:24
One is um the historical background of that, the other is kind of his own beliefs. Um
02:25 - 02:28
so just to kind of go into the historical background,
02:28 - 02:33
um if you look at what was happening during the world during this time,
02:33 - 02:39
it's it's kind of actually fairly easy to see where this kind of came from.
02:39 - 02:41
We're all suffering for a great depression,
02:41 - 02:44
A quarter of the workforce in the United Kingdom was unemployed.
02:44 - 02:50
Um many of them were homeless uh without food, couldn't feed themselves,
02:50 - 02:53
couldn't feed their family, um some starving.
02:53 - 02:55
Uh and
02:55 - 02:59
it was just this big worldwide economic collapse.
02:59 - 03:04
And there were also some other things at play that maybe perhaps even Huxley saw
03:04 - 03:10
that the rest of the world didn't some believe um because of what happened after
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the novel was published.
03:12 - 03:14
Um but before I even get into that,
03:14 - 03:20
I just want to kind of go back and kind of just go and dive into
03:21 - 03:22
pause
03:22 - 03:24
the novel a little bit, um
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actually,
03:26 - 03:32
kind of had a cynical view of people naturally bad, and he believed they had a
03:32 - 03:35
unlimited, basically unlimited capacity for
03:35 - 03:37
being gullible and being deceived.
03:37 - 03:39
He also believed that people had an unlimited
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capacity for kind of a sort of malignant,
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malignant e um being maligned essentially.
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Um which is basically just another word for having
03:50 - 03:52
bad intentions of being evil and wanting bad things.
03:53 - 03:54
Um
03:54 - 03:59
This is kind of, expressed in the novel on page 211, quote,
03:59 - 04:04
one believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them.
04:04 - 04:07
That was a quote from character in the novel and expresses his believe
04:07 - 04:11
that people have almost an almost a limited capacity to be fooled.
04:13 - 04:15
In addition, there's tons of references that
04:15 - 04:16
people being fooled.
04:16 - 04:23
And obviously, so there's another thing this quote on um early on in the book, um
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and it kind of shows the way the characters,
04:26 - 04:32
many of the characters which aren't really named by, into the words of the director,
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um quote, you won't have time for generalities.
04:36 - 04:37
Meanwhile,
04:38 - 04:41
meanwhile, it was a privilege, straight from the horse's mouth.
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The book, the boy scribbled like mad. So
04:44 - 04:48
in other words, these people in the book aren't even remotely freethinking.
04:49 - 04:50
And um
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once again,
04:52 - 04:57
this expresses Huxley's extreme belief that people can be extremely gullible.
04:58 - 04:59
Um
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Huxley also furthermore,
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he believes people have almost a limited capacity for perversion.
05:07 - 05:10
Take the DHS remarks on page 38 for example,
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in a little grassy bay between tall clumps of mediterranean had their two Children,
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a little boy about seven and a little girl who might have been a year older were
05:17 - 05:20
playing very greatly with all the focus attention to
05:20 - 05:22
scientists in terms of the Labor of Discovery,
05:22 - 05:27
a rudimentary sexual game, charming, charming, the DHC repeated sentimentally.
05:28 - 05:31
So this is just another
05:34 - 05:37
of Huxley's beliefs expressed, expressed in the novel.
05:37 - 05:39
Um in this case,
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it is his belief in people's malignant e an
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ability to be very maligned um and perverted.
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Um obviously, uh looking at Children playing, having sex in the bushes and
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uh finding it charming is perverted, at least in our world perspective,
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although not so much in theirs, because of course it is a dystopian novel.
06:04 - 06:10
Um he also believes uh people have almost unlimited capacity to be deceiving.
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Um a man can smile and smile and be a villain. That's a quote from Huxley on page 123.
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And these assumptions of Huxley's about people's underlying
06:22 - 06:25
malignant e and ability to be received.
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They can be found all throughout the novel.
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So,
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the part of the novel is the ability to kind of look at it
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and take find Huxley's beliefs within from
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quotes from other characters in the novel,
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amongst other things.
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And this is kind of his and there's these little hidden,
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subtle warnings throughout the novel that Huxley is trying to send to the world.
06:47 - 06:51
Um and as time would go on. Um
06:52 - 06:57
Huxley's words and Brave New World would become almost prophetic.
06:57 - 07:01
Um and it's probably why those who lived not actually
07:01 - 07:06
during the time um right around when Huxley's writing level,
07:06 - 07:12
which was his warning to the world perhaps was not heated um because people,
07:12 - 07:16
I guess based on the events that happened afterwards didn't take it.
07:16 - 07:17
Um,
07:18 - 07:21
but people who lived through those events would be
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uh become his biggest audience for the novel.
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It makes sense why what would go on and why it was seen as prophetic.
07:28 - 07:34
Um there would be the Second World War after the rise of Hitler in the late thirties.
07:34 - 07:36
Um the holocaust,
07:36 - 07:39
I think I already mentioned the Great Depression was going
07:39 - 07:42
on at time and influencing his writing the novel,
07:42 - 07:45
but certainly the holocaust Second World War,
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the rise of Hitler in the Cold War and the red scare in the early fifties, um,
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all this kind of stuff going on, you know, um nuclear the atomic bomb,
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all this stuff kind of scared people.
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And they were looking for something to kind of perhaps find that would um
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be kind of aligned with those views and Brave New World
08:10 - 08:12
perhaps fueled them perhaps
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seemed relevant. Um,
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pots
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no doubt that the events of Huxley's time influenced um
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his novel as well as who would become the novel's target audience.
08:31 - 08:32
Um,
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you're saying, um way too much crap, it's not pause not possible,
08:37 - 08:39
I'm not recording recording the video because
08:40 - 08:41
it's still not possible.
08:41 - 08:43
So, back to the novel in the novel,
08:43 - 08:49
um I mentioned a lot of this topi in elements that kind of stand through in the novel,
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but I haven't mentioned yet.
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Perhaps the main protagonist novel, the main character,
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his name is john he's also commonly referred to as the savage,
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the savage in the novel.
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Um
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and the savage kinda runs a countercultural force to all these people in the
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novel as well as something to be the most parallel to a modern human,
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but in the novel because it's so dystopian.
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Um well, as just as we see these people is kind of like,
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the character is the director of the novel is crazy.
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They see john
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which is much like us as modern humans as crazy.
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So, throughout the novel,
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he's kind of questioning what's going on and he's really
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unsure as to what it is in the world.
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Um that is true and untrue and um like I said,
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he kind of represents a modern human kind of going into Huxley's world.
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And as the novel goes on,
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it becomes more and more curious and questioning um
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the beliefs of the THC and the Controller.
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Um and by the end of the novel, um it kind of this kind of peaks when he is
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and then opposed it to everything the controllers monde uh says and beliefs. Um
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speaking of that, I will actually find the quote that kind of ties into this um
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cool,
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all the tonic effects of murdering dist oma and being murdered
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by a fellow without any of the inconvenience mind speaking,
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but I like the inconveniences, john the Savage speaking,
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that was we don't see the controller. We prefer to do things comfortably.
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But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry. I want real danger.
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I want freedom. I want goodness, I wants in
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quote impacts and mustafa manure, claiming the right to be unhappy.
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All right. Then the savage to finally, I'm claiming the right to be unhappy.
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Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and potent.
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The right to have syphilis and cancer,
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the right to have too little to eat.
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The right to be lousy the rights to catch typhoid,
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the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind.
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There's a long silence, I clean them also. The sandwiches last.
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Um and this is what I mean,
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where he kind of grows with the novel and becomes like a wiser human being,
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a modern human being but wiser in that he is insinuating the quote,
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I want reality with all his words, He chooses reality
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and all its negatives above the kind of promise,
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false promise of a Utopian society and he has served
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himself in doing so as a non conforming freethinking individual.
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Um and this is what Huxley I think is saying in this quote is that gratitude is
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a key element of preserving what is good and
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natural and preventing this kind of dystopian society.
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That's his kind of warning to the world heated or not.
11:56 - 12:02
Um because without it, without gratitude, society will overlook what is good,
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real and natural and said seek what they perceived to be utopia.
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Um And this kind of continues on in this other
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quote just found 16 pages early in the novel.
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I'll read it quote,
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actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in
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comparison with the overcompensation for misery.
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And of course, stability is nearly so spectacular instability. So just to explain
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to your squalid in the vocabulary,
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um it means evolving low moral
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standards or dishonest behavior initially thought the
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actual happiness looks better than um
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whatever over compensations for misery. But it actually turns
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it looks much worse.
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And this is kind of actually changes the meaning into Huxley's actual message,
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which is that um
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you know, kind of overcompensation for misery can look so elusive.
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It doesn't appear to be um
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as good as actual happiness at times because those
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in power can make it look so deceiving,
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but it's an empty promise.
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Um And if and if you know, if something like happiness which is exclusively used,
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Huxley is saying is
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you know, if it's exclusively yours,
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they're promising that it's probably an empty promise,
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it will lead down empty rabbit hole Once again, this stems from a lack of gratitude.
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Falling into these traps of wanting of these overcompensation.
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Empty promises of uh them being able to overcompensate for misery,
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which they call happiness.
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Um because of a lack of gratitude, which then people will buy into
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and fall into the trap of kind of this kind of dystopian type system.
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Where then that's how kind of were centralized power
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and and and uh immoral leaders will come from.
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So it's important to have gratitude as a key way of preventing that.
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That is a big warning of Huxley's.
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I think that is kind of hidden, kind of buried within this novel.
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Ah
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good
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last word. I want to go over here, stability.
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Uh the quality of being state or state of being steady and
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not changing or being upset in any way from the Oxford dictionary.
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Um
14:22 - 14:26
The word stability is used by Huxley on numerous occasions throughout the novel. Um
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Not changing or being upset in any way is kind of
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the central goal of the DHC the state,
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because it's necessary to make control of the system loses perfection.
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