We often lose sight of what wqs originally meant. This is rarely to our advantage.
What a BRAVE NEW WORLD this is
Most people today, when they hear the phrase “Brave New World”, immediately think of Aldous Huxley’s dark dystopian novel from 1932 a chilling vision of control, conditioning and lost humanity.
Yet few realise that Huxley borrowed those three little words from William Shakespeare, who wrote them 321 years earlier in 1611.
In The Tempest, the innocent young Miranda looks upon other human beings for the very first time and exclaims with pure wonder:
"O wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,
That has such people in’t!"
Here, “brave” carried the old meaning of splendid, magnificent, glorious. It was an expression of pure delight and hope not irony, but radiant amazement at the beauty and possibility of life and people.
So the next time the world feels heavy, remember this: long before it became a warning, “Brave New World” was a joyful cry of discovery a young heart seeing, perhaps for the first time, how extraordinary this world and its people can truly be.
And that older, brighter meaning is still available to us, if only we choose to hear it.