I finally got around to reading ‘Brave New World’ by Huxley. I didn’t find the distopia so distopian. Nor does it seem hideously unrealistic.
It was a case of round pegs going into round holes, and square pegs going into square holes, and if the pegs and holes really don’t match, then they get shipped off to an island where they can build holes as they see fit. (okay, so that’s a horribly over-extended metaphor).
There are a few fundamental problems with their universe. The belief that intrinsic nature is nothing and with rigorous control over the environment (from zygote on), individuals can be remolded and standardized. The belief that given a sufficiently advanced society, there are no challenges from the world outside the sculpting of the social order and the people that compose it. I’m not saying it’s totally bogus, but it’s taken overboard (probably to illustrate a point, which it does quite effectively.)
And they did have a compelling reason to strictly regulate humanity. As the world had become overpopulated, catastrophe happened, billions died, people lived in misery and squallor, and cried out for order.
The keys to what make bnw not a nightmare to me is that it does not harm. Physical injury, sickness, torture, these are things that a citizen of their society does not know, and, in fact, fear is something that citizens’ lives are constructed to avoid. It’s comfortable, though not challenging.
Harmless and bland. I wouldn’t fit in their society. The attitude towards sex, while not for me, doesn’t bother me (very castro). Besides it’s blatant unrealism, the attitude towards family doesn’t bother me (I believe that the bonding to parent-figures is an almost undeniable propensity of human nature, without proof.)
And furthermore, their treatment of outsiders is generally top notch. If you realy don’t fit, we’ll send you off to an island full of others who don’t fit, and you can go it on your own, if that’s what you need. You pick the island.
It seems realistic in many ways to me. TV instead of hypnopaedia, anti-depressants/ecstacy for soma, therapy instead of VPS. Poor proxies, but there nonetheless.
The part of it that bothers me the most is that they don’t cause pain/unpleasantness to adults, but they certainly do to children and fetuses, as part of their sculpting plan.
Scatterbrained for a review, but those were my thoughts.
I prefer a society of challenges suited to the individual, and harmonious management of conflict, rather than the elimination of challenge or conflict. I think there would be few who would disagree with that, but enh, whatever.
I remember it dimply from when I read it years ago, and I must agree that as dystopias go, this one is not so bad. In fact, the idea of kids growing up with a non-guilt-based, natural attitude towards their bodies and sex is appealing.
Yeah, pity about the factory farming of humanity though. The sad thing about it is that it seems not so far from reality. I don’t find it scary, just rather sad.
I reread 1984 this year, but its been a while since I read this one. Agreed that it wasn’t quite Orwell’s police state, but freedom was similarly absent.
Long live Ford!
island in the sun…
hmmm, i dont believe that the ‘ones who didnt fit’ were sent to the islands… i believe it was the ‘ones who knew too much’. (read the quasi-follow up book, ‘island’) … though perhaps they were one in the same. but still, the deltas didnt nessicarily fit into alpha society, yet they were kept around for whatever reasons. (not to mention the savage reservations…)
and as for the overall theme of that book- i felt that huxley was trying to get across the point that there are certain parts of our lives that are nessicary (art, god, literature, science, the unknown…) to make life worth living. and to lack these luxuries of the ‘new world’ were the real horrors. it was to show us that ‘civilization’ wasnt civilized at all… but it was the ‘savages’ living on the reservations that understood what life was about. everything in the civilized world was bland, mechinized, and contrived- NOTHING was left to chance, fates, or anything remotely resembling a higher power (otherwise known as god.) perhaps what the brave new world REALLY is, is the unkown, the uncharted, or the undiscovered. it shows an exaggerated version of a future that doesnt recognize its past (shakespeare, the bible, bach…)or what matters in life (love, family, true friendships, ect.) and how bland a future that would be. though exaggerated, you have to admit, when they are sitting in mustapha mond’s office talking about WHY the civilized world cannot know about shakespeare and god, but rather have soma and ‘music’ and hypnopedia to soothe their minds, its kinda moving. i mean as much as you/i/anyone else doesnt like shakespear/god/art/beauty/ect… one has to admit that the world would not be the same without them, and for someone, be it a single person or a government, whatever, its wrong for them to take away the choice to read/believe/understand/interpret such things on their own.
ps. im going to bed now– im writing this while drunk ONLY because bnw is my favorite book and should never recive an “eh” review from anyone- so i am sorry if this response sounds goofy or incohearant or is smispelled, whatnot.
(also read ‘brave new world revisited’… huxley wrote it a few yrs after bnw. its a collection of essays where he talks about some of what occurs in bnw. he also relates it to HIS modern times… a WW2 post WW2 era. compairing hitler to some of the Fordian leaders, trying to make ‘alphas’ and segregate the ‘betas’, ‘deltas’, and ‘gammas’ of society- its interesting to think about)
Re: island in the sun…
I agree that the bnw’s main society is not worth living in. And I find it disturbing, mostly in a sad, enormous collection of missed opportunities sort of way, as opposed to say 1984 which I found disturbing in a can’t-sleep-clown’ll-eat-me sort of way, on top of the sad death of culture. What I find most sad though, is the degree to which it is a reflection of the reality we currently inhabit. It may be a bit of a stretch to conflate soma with prozac and ‘music’ with TV, but not as much of a stretch as I would want.
As for the eugenics campaigns of hitler, and the comparison of that to the stratification of alphas to epsilons, there’s a very valid point. And I noted that the black characters in bnw tended towards the delta and lower. My review glossed over a number of points in the book, and wasn’t totally faithful to it.
Re: island in the sun…
🙂
Having read this as a young’un — around 12 or so — I have to say the shaping of the indivudual in rather extreme ways to meet a specific role rather bothered me. It flew hard enough in the face of my concepts of individuality that it was more than a bit unsettling.
It is true that none of the adults seem to being actively harmed, but at the time it struck me that this only served to make it completely unthinkable that the system would ever be changed. Everyone is comfortable in their manufactured world, and so it will go forever.
Or at least until the meteor hits.
Devil’s Advocate: but if street sweepers are necessary to society, would it not be better if they enjoyed their work?
You’re devils advocating something I did not say. The fact that the street sweepers enjoy it is seperate from whether they’re manufactured to do so.
If I correctly remember you as a spiritually-leaning ex-catholic, you may be interested in this debate
http://www.livejournal.com/users/kaustuv/7453.html
So, as a non-christian his theses for “saving christianity” are better termed “dismantling christianity”. I think that he is cavalier in his use of assumptions (as every theologian needs to be, it’s not an empirical field after all). I suspect what he’s trying to save out of christianity is his notion of the spirit of the faith, being good to the neighbor and all that. But that’s not what makes christianity unique. I agree with his analysis when it comes to social and psychological trends within the church, but his theological claims (god as a theistic entity, is dead, we need a new way to talk about god, virgin birth makes jesus’s divinity an impossibility, etc) strike me as every bit as ludicrous as the concepts they are intended to replace. Both can be plausible, neither is remotely provable.
Allow me to emphasize that trying to combine rational debate with God is the height of absurdity. Religion is 2 parts indoctrination and 1 part faith. Occam’s Razor (applied by me, anyway) would slice theology in its entirety into the trashcan.
Religion began as a way of explaining the universe around us, to provide comfort, sanity, and sense. And, as with any good explanation, there were consequences. It’s natural that the explanations, and consequences, and authority that resulted from claiming to know how things were grew, diversified & split over time, following a pattern similar to language and other human inventions.
The rise of empiricism over faith within the past few hundred years in europe and then, by invasion, the US, is mostly because it gives better results, imho, not necessarily because it’s more accurate.
Much more stupidly, I feel that christianity would be best saved by dismantlement since it implies an abdication of the personal moral center for an external one, which I view as evil.