Proselytizing for the Brave New World
In his classic dystopian novel, Brave New World , Aldous Huxley projected a future of human society, based on consumerism socially engineered to technocratic perfection. One of the prominent features of this world, set in the distant future, was a complete separation of the sexual functions of erotic pleasure from reproduction, which was taken care of by advanced test-tube incubation centers and from-birth indoctrination in consumerist values. Without marriage or any need for attachments, sex was also separated from love in the sense of intense commitment to a single partner and simply a source of recreational pleasure, efficiently enhancing the qualities of life and smoothing social cohesiveness. Though Huxley himself was rather sanguine about such developments, now it appears that his nightmarish vision is seeking realization. In their popularly acclaimed and controversial book Sex at Dawn , subtitled "How we mate, how we stray, and what it means for modern relations...