About This Blog

The purpose of this blog is to express my views about current events and trends in society and to invite thoughtful readers to participate, react, and offer theirs. Perhaps in this way we can refine and begin to spread some consensus for rational yet humane solutions to some of the many serious problems confronting the contemporary world. I am an American living in California, so American concerns will often predominate in my observations. That being said, I am well aware of global interconnectedness and vitally interested in issues that cross borders in their impacts. After all, we do all live on the same planet. The political, economic, social and environmental challenges at issue today rarely confine themselves to a single country.


The title of the blog, drawn of course from Aldous Huxley's classic 1932 novel, Brave New World, is intentional. If you haven't read it yet, you ought to. It describes a future utopia in which order, stability and material sufficiency have been achieved at the price of individuality, creativity and humanity itself, where triviality has replaced meaningfulness and mindless narcissism has supplanted both reason and spirituality. People have been engineered and conditioned into drones-contented drones to be sure, but drones nonetheless. It is an ironic, nightmare utopia, particularly for those few who have retained a spark of the human spirit. Huxley wrote it at a critical time in history, the Great Depression. In that year of 1932 millions sought deliverance from the emergency of their day by giving themselves over to the totalitarian ideologies of fascism and communism. We have our share of emergency in the contemporary world as well, and no shortage of voices crying for unquestioning uniformity and scapegoating independent thought as a primary cause. History begs us to recall that we have been down that road before.


The thrust of the blog will not be to dwell on Huxley's novel or otherwise engage in speculative science fiction, but to discuss the gravity of today's issues and means for resolving them. Huxley asks us to think about how we can ensure order and provide for our material needs without stifling creativity and freedom itself. That will be our quest. I invite you to come along for what ought to be a stimulating journey. Maybe what we start here can do a little to leave the world a better place than we found it.


Oh, and one more thing. I value those who engage in civil conversation without recourse to personal attacks and a lot of profanity, and who aren't allergic to facts and a little reason. Let's agree or disagree and do so with some basic consideration for each other.

Welcome, and thanks for stopping by. I hope to see you again soon.

Steve Natoli