Ok, I've read Brave New World (great book, btw) and that kinda explains Brave New World, but misses the point. Brave New World, in my opinion, had few parallels to 1984, but far more parallels to The Giver, in which we are bred from birth to have a specific role in life, even to the point of removing all color and emotion from the world. In Brave New World, essentially our genes were modified so that some people would get all the benefits (stronger, smarter, better jobs, more beautiful) and others got all the flaws (cripples, genetic defects, ugliness, stupidity, weakness) in order to have the ideal workers and ideal utopia. I mean, babies grew in freaking tanks of liquid. As for the pleasure, the only one popping into my mind now is Soma, an engineered drug with effects similar to both cocaine and LSD (delusions about yourself from cocaine, think Leo saying "I feel wonderful," as well as delusions of the world around you, literal hallucinations) to escape. This wasn't used frequently though, and when someone "went on a Soma trip" they would announce it so it wouldn't disrupt society.
My point is, even though I agree with what the article claimed was Huxley's point, it wasn't Huxley's point. Anyway, weren't the images of distractions oddly familiar...?
