when the world needed him most he vanished

My take on the smartest person may be slightly different. I'd vouch for 'Adam Quint', the protagonist of the science-fiction novel 'Edges of Light'. In 2023, he was crafted in a manner that displayed unprecedented intelligence, understanding politics, science, and technology at a level that marked him as beyond genius level.

In 'Brave New World', the characters are trapped in a society that suppresses genuine emotion. Bernard Marx feels alienated because he craves individuality in a world that values conformity. His loneliness is palpable, and his struggle to connect with others is heartbreaking. John the Savage, raised outside this system, experiences intense emotional turmoil when he confronts the shallow, pleasure-driven society. His despair and eventual suicide highlight the cost of living without authentic human connections.

The society in 'Brave New World' is like a machine that strips away genuine human connections. Everyone is conditioned to avoid deep relationships, and intimacy is replaced by casual encounters. Characters like Bernard and John struggle because they crave something real, but the world around them is built on superficiality. It’s heartbreaking to see how love and friendship are reduced to empty rituals. This dystopia makes you question what we’re sacrificing for stability and comfort.

The central conflict in 'Brave New World' is the individual's battle against a dystopian system that erases authentic emotion. John the Savage embodies this—his yearning for love, art, and suffering clashes violently with the World State’s conditioned numbness. Society’s mantra of 'community, identity, stability' masks soul-crushing conformity: relationships are transactional, creativity is banned, and dissenters like Bernard Marx face exile. The novel’s tragedy lies in how even rebellion gets co-opted—John’s meltdown becomes a spectacle, proving the system’s invincibility. Huxley warns that comfort-driven control (via soma, hypnopaedia) destroys humanity’s messy beauty. The effect? A hollow utopia where happiness is tyranny, and free will is extinct.

Please be more precise. This year would appear to be the year of "Grigori Perelman". Do you know? He is a Russian Mathematician, whose solution to Poincaré Conjecture--a world-class math problem--made him famous on every continent overnight. Perelman may well have had a genuinely great mind. Besides cracking such hard nuts as this one, he also made many valuable contributions to Riemannian geometry and geometric topology I dare say he did. And now look at him: Ho Ho Ho!! What a guy!

Huxley’s 'Brave New World' and Bradbury’s 'Fahrenheit 451' dissect oppression through opposing lenses. In BNW, society’s enslaved by pleasure—soma, casual sex, and consumerism numb people into compliance. It’s a dystopia where happiness is weaponized. F451, though, attacks censorship: burning books to erase dissent, replacing critical thought with mindless TV. Both warn against passivity, but Huxley fears we’ll *love* our chains, while Bradbury fears chains *forced* upon us. BNW’s horror is smiling conformity; F451’s is violent erasure of history. For deeper dives, try Orwell’s '1984'—it bridges these extremes.

'What a Wonderful World' by Louis Armstrong is one of my absolute favorite songs simply because of its touching lyrics. They begin by painting a vivid picture of the beauty found in everyday life. 'I see trees of green, red roses too. I see them bloom, for me and you. And I think to myself what a wonderful world.' Beauty is inherent in our world, if only we stop and take a moment to appreciate it. This isn't confined to what we see, but also what we hear - 'I hear babies crying, I watch them grow. They'll learn much more than I'll ever know.' It reminds us of the continual renewal of life and the enormous potential in each new generation.

Lignt Yagami from "Death Note" is the most terrifying figure, I think.This high school genius possesses both cool accomplishments and self-restraint, but his spirit is a strong one.His intelligence says he should be respected. Although he possesses the Death Note now--a book that any name written into its pages will kill--he sets himself further apart into even more untouchable terror.His arrogation to himself as 'god of a new world', able to mete out judgment makes one shudder.''