Americans have a healthy distrust of collective utopian visions after seeing how well that worked out for Germany in the 1930s and 1940s, for China in the 1950s and 1960s, for Cambodia between 1975 and 1979, etc.
My family and I attended Expo 67 in Montreal, and although it was a good time, it did not have any salient effects on the life aspirations or political beliefs of anyone in my family.
It's interesting to examine A Brave New World in the context of a world where there were active programs (across the world) aimed at making better men. It seems horrifying to chemically stunt a fetus, but the book was written in a reality where compulsory sterilization was being carried out over at the asylum.
I always read that section of brave new world as being a satire of the then current society and it's social classes. Basically the poor live in deprived circumstances and so geow up stunted compared with better fed and nurtured kids from other backgrounds.
Surely it's not a coincidence that they were stunted via alcohol, rather than random scary chemical X.
Though so many other people seem to not see this interpretation, I've started to wonder if I've just invented it.
It doesn't really support the idea. I think that is an interesting way to look at it (and even if he wasn't intending it to be satirical, it was a response to the times he lived in).
My family and I attended Expo 67 in Montreal, and although it was a good time, it did not have any salient effects on the life aspirations or political beliefs of anyone in my family.