Brave New World

This might have been the scariest book I have ever read.

Not the normal type of scary, but the terrifying holy-shit-this-could-someday-be-real horror that fills you with a sense of fear because the future may not be so far from this. Sure, it's a totally pessimistic dystopian fucked up future, but still...

One of the scariest things about it was the Soma. Dear god, the way the entire public was completely drugged to where they could be manipulated like puppets on a string scared me senseless. And how the lower-ranked people are given purposeful birth defects... I would willingly take the apocalyptic zombie virus a la Walking Dead before I would succumb to a future like that. But even to look deeper, at the social issues that were starting show more to rear their heads when this was written, is to be afraid. They're described in such a realistic way that it's not hard to grasp that we may be coming closer to a similar type of reality*.

What really affected me is that no one knows it's a dystopia. Everybody oppressed person in this society has no idea they're being oppressed. To them, life is just as it should be, and the toxic cocktail of oppression, brainwashing, revised societal norms, and psychochemical drugs makes sure they continue to believe it.

There are so many powerful themes Brave New World that I can't even begin to analyse them all. It's an incredibly powerful book that everybody should read, even if just to give me some peace of mind that the world can't ever come to such a fate as was described in this book. Just remember...

...Half a gramme is worth a damn!

*I understand this is extreme and no, I do not think we will all end up taking Soma and being disgusted by the idea of a family. However, in Brave New World, the combination of propaganda and science grooms a society that doesn't seem so terribly alien.Al show less

This was a thought-provoking book. I had always heard before I read it that it was about a dystopia of hedonism: a world where everyone is miserable because they have everything they want. I think this is an intended theme, but it goes so much deeper than that. Brave New World is a dystopia of commercialism and conformity.

Everything is for sale and intended to make someone money. Nothing can be enjoyed for its own sake. At one point a hypnotist describes training everyone to hate nature, but to love country sports, so they will pay money to travel into the country and pay money to do stuff there instead of enjoying natural beauty. The horror isn't just upper class ennui, it's having to force every second of your life into somebody's show more hustle instead of just enjoying yourself.

The same can be said for the abolition of family: you can't just find happiness in your loved ones, you need to pay to take someone on a date if you want companionship. In a way, your life doesn't belong to you: every second of joy must be bought.

Furthermore, the "hypnoconditioning" that is supposed to make everyone content with their lot in life just doesn't work as advertised. One of the main characters, Bernard, is dissatisfied with the approved recreations of his class: something that should be impossible if the hypnoconditioning is really infallible. A elevator operator shows a deep desire to escape his elevator and enjoy the sunlight, and several female characters show a desire for monogamy (which is forbidden). Even a prominent government official expresses nostalgia and grief over the disapearence of his date 20 years ago. If Brave New World is really a society where everyone is unthinkingly content that would be impossible. This is a world which expects rigid conformity, and exiles anyone who doesn't pretend to fit in.

Finally, Brave New World is a eugunicist's dream. I would like to point out one thing: the classes aren't randomly assigned. They break down along racial lines. Epsilons are usually described as "Senegalese" or "negro" , or other terms to show they are black people; and alphas and betas are universally Caucasian. The "savages" are actually American Indians (Zuni). So this isn't just a society where nobody has to think. Your race and circumstances of birth determine your destiny: factory worker or intellectual. And while the upper-class insists that the lower classes don't mind, I think there is textual evidence that this isn't true (the elevator operator wanting to get out of the elevator onto the roof, the mechanics treating Bernard with contempt, Bernard's whole arc, etc.). We spend the entire book from the perspective of upper class white people, and they are miserable with their lives. Why do we take their word for it that hypnoconditioning works any better on the lower classes?

All this to say that Brave New World is a better book than a lot of its fans give it credit for being, and possibly a better book than Huxley knew (because Huxley seems entirely focused on the Noble Savages/books good TV bad angle). show less

This is the first time I have read this, and I found it fascinating and repulsing in equal measures. The visionary writing of Huxley is spellbinding and holds the attention (although I did find one chapter quite hard to read due to the flitting between multiple conversations in short sentences). It is amazing that this man foresaw test tube babies, addiction to various drugs outside of opium dens and made astute comments on collective society that still resonates today. The repulsion? The attitude of the Alpha Plus society to the Other is difficult to read and I can see this being mirrored in today's society - Muslims, the poor, the disabled are all ridiculed and/or vilified in the media and society, as well as seeing how this attitude show more holds similarities with the current party in parliament!

Would I read it again? Possibly not. Should I have read it in the first place? Most definitely!! show less

Superb, with wit, humour and a dark underlying message: that a future totalitarianism is far more likely to take the form of stupefying propagandisation than the brutality of, say, Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four

A reread for my book club 😉

I first read this book as a tween/teen, with the reverence appropriate when reading an Important Classic. Thankfully, I don’t do this any more. I also have to confess that the vicious satire flew right over my teen head (not surprising, really).

The satire aspect was what I enjoyed the most this time. (What does this say about being an adult?😆) Henry Ford worship? Hilarious. Both polyamory and chaste monogamy get crucified, and so do religion and atheism. This world’s Solidarity Services with their Solidarity Hymns read like a pimped up version of a corporate team building exercise. (“Orgy-porgy!”) Naturally, we will go to a darker place with this by the end.

Otherwise, this book is a thought show more experiment that is trying to be a novel. Sometimes it succeeds (I liked the description of John’s childhood, for example). The dystopian society, with its castes, genetic predestination and conditioning, is quite horrifying. Everyone is happy, though (oh, the irony), they love their place as this or that cog in a society’s machine. They also get soma, the happy drug (I thought of our social media fixes).

I do have questions:

🤔 Giving your entire population access to a happy drug that apparently can kill you if you overdose enough is a bad, bad idea. Sure, the government controls the access, but has the author ever met a drug addict? How is this dystopia still functioning?

🤔 People are conditioned not to have close relationships with anyone, no intense emotions. Considering what we know about humans as social animals and emotional support that children need growing up, this should be a society of psychopaths. Ouch. I do like my dystopias to be more realistic, you know.

The “brave new world” has taken sexual freedom to extreme. Monogamy is a very very weird thing, nobody does this, “everyone belongs to everyone else.” Fair enough. But guess what, women are sex objects, they are ready to jump at any and every man, and they enjoy it, too, because conditioning. (Also, only the men seem to fly those helicopters the characters are always swishing about in. Women don’t have the skills, I suppose.) This dystopia is every macho’s wet dream, my friends! Please don’t ever use the word “pneumatic” in conversation with me. Those who have read the book will know what I mean.

As is usual in thought experiment books, the characters are not very interesting. They are vehicles that take the author’s ideas forward.

Since A Brave New World was written in the 1930’s, some things have aged badly. Apparently “Negro ovaries” produce way more clones than the Caucasian ones. Gaah. Someone is described as an “octoroon”. What is that? I consulted a dictionary – “a person who is one-eighth black by descent.” Ouch.

So, it was a thought-provoking reread, but there is no love lost between the book and me. I did get some cool quotes out of this:

“And being contented has none of the glamour of a good fight against misfortune, none of the picturesqueness of a struggle with temptation, or a fatal overthrow by passion or doubt. Happiness is never grand.”

“But I don’t want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.”
“In fact,” said Mustapha Mond, “you are claiming the right to be unhappy.” show less

This is a very thought provoking book, especially right now with the political upheaval in the U.S.! The test tube babies and their predestination and predetermination of their caste order is super creepy, though not entirely implausible! And the sterilization of society, the sameness of it all, seems a little too realistic to be comfortable for me! No art, no science, no individualization - just take a drug and be happy! I know of one political party right now that would love this type of society! But I'm with the Savage - I like reality! Like I said, lots to think about in here, but it's not the best story ever. Too much philosophy and Shakespeare for me! But I'd say it's a must read, and a must think, if you are inclined to do so!

If you haven't already read Brave New World or if you had to read it in school, then please take my advice: listen to it. Just the choice of accent for each character explains much of Huxley's subtext; repetition of key themes is more obvious and the disjointed, anonymous conversations become clear. In short, it's a fascinating, thought-provoking experience.

You don't need me to tell you how scarily prescient Huxley was. Published in 1932, Brave New World describes in vitro fertilization, surrogate wombs (bottles) and wireless technology. The three pillars of this worldwide society are community, identity and stability. These are secured through biological and moral conditioning, the extirpation of the family unit (sex is reserved for show more recreational purposes only) and religion (although there are worship ceremonies which end in a sexual frenzy) and censorship of science and literature. God is replaced by "Our Ford" and the Christian cross has become a "T". Any unpleasant feelings are immediately dispelled by a side-effect free drug, soma, that gives the user a virtual mini-vacation.

What's really scary about this brave new society:nobody reads! Other than the biography of Our Ford, no other book is mentioned. Marshal McLuhan once said that when the missionaries first went to Africa they taught the people to read--not so they could read the Bible--but because once they read, they stopped identifying with the group/tribe and became individuals. To ensure the populace identifies only with the "community", there are no solitary pass times. In Brave New World, entertainment means flying somewhere after work for a dance or golf or a meal or going to the "feelies". These are movies that allow the audience to actually feel what's happening on screen. For example, if the actors kiss, the viewers' lips tingle. You may laugh, but see how the Controller Mustapha Mond explains the reasoning behind this:

"But that's the price we have to pay for stability. You've got to choose between happiness and what people used to call high art. We've sacrificed the high art. We have the feelies and the scent organ instead."

"But they don't mean anything."

"They mean themselves; they mean a lot of agreeable sensations to the audience."

I had just seen and thoroughly enjoyed Mission Impossible !V: Ghost Protocol when I read this. "A lot of agreeable sensations to the audience" brought a blush to my guilty cheeks!

The second and third last chapters read like a Socratic dialogue between the Controller and John Savage, a man born and raised on a Zuni reservation and therefore not at all properly "conditioned". I listened to them several times. Mond's philosophy is so persuasive that I forgot that he was actually describing a dystopia!

Brave New World can't be adequately described in a little review like this. If you've been following this blog you've read the quotations from it I've posted. "Words can be like x-rays" got almost 100 hits! It reaches out to the reader through diverse subjects: religion (lack of), industrialism, literature, art, suffering, evolution, history (as in Ford's famous aphorism "history is bunk"), science.

Science fiction is inevitably a reflection of the time of its origin. Yet Brave New World is not a period piece. Some aspects can be detected in our own time. Could it ever happen: a society where Shakespeare is banned and The Gorilla's Honeymoon is the current blockbuster movie?

10 out 10 Recommended to readers who enjoy literary fiction and wish to deepen their understanding of life. show less