Brave New World

Would a future totalitarian society be all that bad if every single person - from the day they were born - was truly happy with their lot in life? That is the question Brave New World asks, and Aldous Huxley leaves it up to the reader to decide the answer. I've re-read this book several times and each time I'm glad I did. That is because it is an enjoyable story, first and foremost. The characters have sufficient depth, the locales are peculiar and attention-grabbing, and the underlying message is enough to make you stop and think. Brave New World revolves around three main characters. First, there's Bernard Marx, an elite "Alpha Plus" who is uncertain about how he fits into society. Then, there is Mustapha Mond, the World Controller for Western Europe, a man who reads The Holy Bible and Shakespeare, despite his society's ban on these "pornographic books". Finally, we have John (named John Savage when he visits Bernard's world), the son of two World State citizens raised in the remote hostility of a Savage Reservation. The interactions and thoughts of these three characters forms the skeleton of the book, and it is through their eyes that we view the World State of the future. The reader learns about how babies are "decanted" in the future, how they are bred and conditioned for their role in society, how entertainment plays a role in keeping them happy, and how unhappiness can be quickly whisked away by a gramme of Soma, a powerful drug that has no debilitating side-effects. Of course, it would be easy for the author to jab his finger at you from the pages and scream "SEE?!? SEE?!?! See what a society without freedom looks like? Isn't it horrible?", but he doesn't. In fact, the world of Year of Our Ford 632 doesn't seem so bad at all when you consider disease, war, and unhappiness have all been snuffed out of existence. But at what cost? Midway through the book, we meet John. Biologically, a son of the World State, but philosophically a student of the old religions and old literature of the old world. But don't misunderstand. John is not necessarily the book's "everyman". Many of his emotions and actions (like self-flagellation) are still foreign to a modern reader. Bernard - who has at this point accepted that he is "different" compared to his fellow World State-ers - brings John to his home to show him off to his peers. Naturally, many aspects of the World State are appalling to John, and this conflict continues all the way to the book's conclusion. Something I found remarkable is that the author, Huxley, gives us plenty of chances to sympathize with many of the various characters. Bernard Marx is not the "good guy" nor the "bad guy". In another story, the World Controller Mond might have been the evil villain trying to destroy any freedom, and John Savage might have been the passionate hero who wins the pretty girl and ultimately brings that freedom to society. But none of this occurs. The characters in Brave New World are just people, thrust into a world of perfect happiness and perfect harmony, and they each react in their own way. Sure, it's cute to see how the author envisioned the future, and perhaps a bit scary to see some of his "predictions" coming true, but that isn't what makes this book great. What makes it great is that it allows the reader to come to his/her own conclusions. To you, perhaps the World State seems terrifying, or maybe it seems like a nice place to live. To you, perhaps John Savage is the hero, or perhaps the logic and compassion in Mustapha Mond's final words and final actions resonate with you more. Maybe you can relate best to Bernard Marx's flawed personality. I suppose the choice is really yours, because Huxley doesn't make that choice for you. A lot of people say that the story is about entertainment media taking over our society, or about drugs, or about a controlling government, or about morality. I don't think Huxley intended the book to be exclusively about any one of those things, although of course the book makes a statement about them all. As stated above, Brave New World lets you draw your own conclusions about the World State instead of trying to grab you by the collar while screaming "SEE?!? SEE?!? See how horrible a world full of drugs and genetic manipulation would be?" Now, I rate this book a full 5 stars, but here is the "but..." of the review. For the majority of the book, we are treated to a fascinating romp through future science, future sociology, and future beliefs. However, toward the end of the book, John and Mustapha Mond engage in a very lengthy conversation about society and morals and God. To me, I really enjoyed this part. It was a great answer to my lingering question of "Why did society become this way?". To others, it might come off as a preachy, show-offy exposition from Huxley's own heart. Mustapha makes a point about human psychology, and John counters with Shakespeare. Mustapah points to the World State's "happiness", and John counters with God. Mustapha talks about bliss, and John talks about struggling for joy. I enjoyed it, but you might not, especially since it breaks away from the overall pace and feel of the rest of the book. Nevertheless, this book is well worth reading. It can be finished by a diligent reader in a weekend, and it contains a lot of thought-provoking ideas that will stick with you long after the final page.

It's an interesting book I actually didn't understand too much I just kept going and it's very funny and it's one of those books you read and it seems to have a hidden message in it it's like puzzle. Out of the blue after reading this book, you notice when you hear something about a topic that is mentioned in this book and you remember oh yeah I read something about it, for example: people tend to agree with everyone else's opinion in a particular group, an opinion is very similar to all members of that group as if it is collective thoughts, or connection of thoughts. Another thing is the studies about genetics and drugs, the drug is called SOMA which is like a sleeping pill popular used to fall asleep and most loved by women. The person who is narrating personally don't like SOMA. I will definitely read it again in the future and see if I understand a bit more. I highly recommend it!

Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World was published in 1932, a fact that is truly astonishing if you pick this novel up blindly. Set in a dystopian London, this book that I’d gladly describe as cinematic, follows future citizens through their nightmarish brave new world, with little to no resemblance to our own. While Huxley’s novel wasn’t specifically written for me and my literary tastes, I am continuously amazed by this book. Keeping the time that it was written in mind makes for a truly captivating reading experience as Huxley has managed to weave a story that’s timeless and interesting and terrifying all at once. The protagonist of Brave New World is Bernard Marx, an outsider in this seemingly perfect world where everyone has their place. Although he was born an Alpha Plus, the highest tier in this New World’s society, he’s never felt that he fit in. He feels that he’s always had to fight for respect, whereas with any other Alpha, it’s automatically given. Despite this fact, he doesn’t particularly identify with the lower level Epsilon’s or any other caste, for that matter. Nor does he really fight against these social constraints. Bernard’s main companion is Lenina Crowe, a nurse in the “nursery” where all the lives in this world come from. Unlike Bernard, Lenina is only too happy to accept things the way they are. The main idea of Huxley’s world seems to be to erase emotion and sentiment in its entirety. There’s no place for love or monogamy, for hate or passion, for any type of longstanding commitment or relationship, including family. This society thrives on logical thinking, therefore all evidence of history and deities have been erased. The closest thing to a belief system or god they have is Ford Company founder, Henry Ford, known for his innovation, vision of the future, and ability to get things done. Huxley’s choice of Ford as a messianic figure goes to show that the most important value of this world is production. So why has Brave New World withstood the test of time? Why hasn’t it faded into obscurity like so many other dystopian novels just in the last ten years? I think there are two main reasons. The first, and the one that astounds me most about this book, is its timelessness. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say this book was written and published yesterday. The language Huxley used is still incredibly modern and easy to read. That along with the ideas he fearlessly writes about, such as promiscuity and recreational drug use, aren’t something you’d expect from a book written in the early 20th century. Secondly, there is the premise of the book. The idea of all of humanity being a godless, loveless people, is a challenging thought to say the least. On the other hand, it has restored my faith in our race. Surely, we’d never let this happen. And our steadfast faith is for the better, right? My conscience wants to say yes, but logic says we’d be better off without the sentiment. The fact that it got me thinking about these things is why this book is still relevant. It challenges everything we know and hold dear about humanity and the way we are. All of that leaves the question; is Brave New World a good book? For arguments sake, I’m going to say yes. It wasn’t really my cup of tea, it’s not the best science fiction book ever written, and at times the science side of things is complicated and tends to drag on. However Huxley made his point here, which I think was to leave us with questions. What if this was the way things were? Cold, godless, ignorant and adolescent in many ways. This novel is so exceptionally well written that it held my interest despite the fact that it’s not something I’d choose to read outside of an academic setting. One of my favorite quotes was during Bernard’s introduction, which summed up Bernard’s character as well as any of us who have ever felt like an outsider. “Those who feel despised do well to look despising.” In conclusion, I think I can easily say that Aldous Huxley was a visionary. He envisioned and created a world not entirely unlike our own, and fearlessly wrote about things that could make literary critics today shudder. Brave New World is an adventure, despite its like of action, and a poignant look at what exactly makes humans, human.

This is another one of those "dystopian" novels that seemed popular in the first half of the 20th century. It fits in perfectly with novels like "1984" and "Fahrenheit 451". Of those three novels, I believe this came first. The funny thing about this book is that the future doesn't seem completely terrible, unlike the latter two novels, although I might compare the entire population of the earth (in "Brave New World") to the proletariats (in "1984"). See, in this novel nobody seems to be unhappy at all. They are literally born to do the jobs they will perform for their entire adult lives, and love those jobs. Each person is born into a certain "caste" and they are happy to be in that caste, and envy no one in any other castes. The lowest of the low are referred to as epsilon - minus, semi-morons. This is interesting, as epsilon is a common mathematical number that defines how much error a function may allow. In this book, the epsilons (as a general class), represent the lowest possible mental and social state of humanity. Of course, their are more intelligent people as well. The castes are, from highest to lowest: Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, Epsilon. That's quite a bit like a typical grading system of A, B, C, D, F. As you can imagine, the Alphas are the smartest, and the list goes down from there. But the thing is, each caste member is truly satisfied by their caste membership. The novel makes a pretty logical reason why the caste members are happy with their lot in life. Sex is treated in a completely pragmatic fashion, and emotions are almost completely subdued. With the help of a super narcotic, the populace is able to enjoy life and extravagant recreation - devoid of all sadness and driven by a natural tendency to "consume". Everything is in place to allow a person to go through life almost without any spikes in emotion. Even death is a conditioned response. The missing element in this picture is humanity. Essentially, those in control have tried their best to keep any highs and lows within a certain amount of error (epsilon). The central question is the running of civilization vs. the individual spirit. It seems that, to keep a civilization going, we need to make certain sacrifices individually - and it's easy to make those sacrifices when we don't realize that we are making those sacrifices. However, there are about 5 major characters, and I think each one represents a different amount of humanity - or at least different levels of humanity. In this version of the future, it's possible to step outside the bounds of what is acceptable, but you are not doomed if you do so. Instead, you are offered a quite reasonable accommodation. Aldous Huxley offers extremely complex characters, but each is allowed to act within a certain epsilon of ranges - he wrote in very delicate shades of meaning. In fact, I'm pretty certain that I've never read an author who has presented me with more "gray areas" within the thinking of each character. Mr. Huxley is a very deep and complicated author who was ahead of his time. Those novels "1984" and "Fahrenheit 451" presented dystopias that were easily regarded as undesirable, whereas "Brave New World" presents a future that is not so obviously flawed. In fact, my wife asserts that this future was actually desirable - but she's a bleeding heart socialist, so that doesn't surprise me. "Brave New World" does, in my mind, present a more deviously dystopian future than the other two novels. I believe each of the major characters is meant to ask, in total, all of the questions we, the readers, might have. In the end, this novel was gripping and a serious page turner. Every night, it inspired a great debate between my wife and me, and its overall game plan is one of subtlety instead of shock. I'll bet that, after you read the novel, you will be able to spot this particular plot in many movies - particularly "The Matrix".

Aldous Huxley's dystopian classic "Brave New World" is a dark look into what humanity could become if a worldwide government is given complete control of everything. The story opens with a tour through a London hatching and conditioning center. In this center, fetuses are altered in various ways at various times by exposing them to foreign substances, or by denying them things (like oxygen) for certain periods of time. This is done to create different classes of people by altering their intelligence and conditioning their preferences. The conditioning is continued as the children grow up. They are raised not by parents, but by the government, and are taught to love everything, to enjoy anything they want (including child sex), and to depend on a daily ration of a drug called "Soma". All thought and opinion has been stripped from the public and replaced with whatever propaganda the government has deemed appropriate. In return, everyone is provided for and taken care of by the government. The story is scary. No doubt about it. This situation - as farfetched as it may seem to some - is in a lot of ways, exactly where society is headed. With the increasing power of the United Nations, the "political correctness" that is being pushed on everyone, and the record number of people signing up for welfare, it's not hard to see that a one government world where the people exchange freedom for provision is not that far away. So from a story idea perspective, Huxley's tale is horrifyingly ingenious - especially since it was written in the early 1930s. My complaint about the book is that it's not enjoyable to read, it jumps around a lot, and the ending is terrible. The focus of the story moves around from character to character. Huxley spends chapters developing a character, only to abandon that character later in the book for a new one. This is done repeatedly. And while most of those characters do come back into play at different points in the novel, none of them really develop into a "main character" except for maybe John "the savage" and he doesn't even appear in the book till it's half over. ***Spoiler ahead*** What makes matters worse, is that as the book draws to its end, you as the reader are wondering how Huxley plans to wrap all of this up in just a few last pages. How does he do it? He has the main character (John) hang himself. No warning, no debate, no dialogue, and no epilogue to tie things together or elaborate. John is simply upset at the way he handled the mob situation, and the next day someone finds him hanging from the rafters. The end. As I compare this book to other classic dystopian stories like "1984" or "Fahrenheit 451", I believe that the idea of the book is equally compelling, but not nearly as well executed and certainly not as much fun to read. Classic or not, I can't give this one more that three stars.

Before there was ‘The Matrix’ and ‘Bladerunner’, before there was even ‘1984’, there was 'Brave New World'. It is astonishing that Aldous Huxley wrote this tale of technological dystopia in 1932. The social elements from the story are similar to those in Orwell and Kafka and others, namely a society of obedient sheep run by the state and benevolent dictators through brainwashing and groupthink. But what’s striking about the novel is how it so astutely anticipates a society taken over by benevolent technocrats rather than politicians, a scenario that appears increasingly likely in the age of AI and genetic engineering. Huxley came from an illustrious scientific family with social connections. His grandfather was Thomas Henry Huxley, Darwin’s close friend, publicist and “bulldog”, whose famous smackdown of Bishop Samuel Wilberforce has been relished by rationalists fighting against religious faith ever since. His brother was Julian Huxley, a famous biologist who among other accomplishments wrote a marvelous tome on everything that was then known about biology with H. G. Wells. Steeped in scientific as well as social discourse, possessing a deep knowledge of medical and other scientific research, Aldous was in an ideal position to write a far-reaching novel. This he duly did. The basic premise of the novel sounds eerily prescient. Sometime in the near future, society has been regimented into a caste system where people are genetically engineered by the state in large state-run reproductive farms. Anticipating ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’, only a select few women and men are capable of providing fertile eggs and sperm for this careful social engineering. The higher castes are strong, intelligent and charismatic. The lower castes are turgid, obedient and physically weak. They don’t begrudge those from the upper castes because their genetic engineering has largely removed their propensity toward jealousy and violence. Most notably, because reproduction is now the responsibility of the state, there is no longer a concept of a family, of a father or mother. There is knowledge of these concepts, but it’s regarded as archaic history from a past era and is met with revulsion. How is this population kept under control? Not shockingly at all, through sex, drugs and rock and roll. Promiscuity is encouraged from childhood onwards and is simply a way of life, and everyone sleeps with everyone else, again without feeling jealousy or resentment (it was this depiction of promiscuity that led the book to be banned in India in the 60s). They flood their bodies with a drug called soma whenever they feel any kind of negative emotion welling up inside and party like there’s no end. They are brainwashed into believing the virtues of these and other interventions by the state through subliminal messages played when they are sleeping; such unconscious brainwashing goes all the way back to their birth. People do die, but out of sight, and when they are still looking young and attractive. Death is little more than a nuisance, a slight distraction from youth, beauty and fun. Like Neo from ‘The Matrix’, one particular citizen of this society named Bernard Marx starts feeling that there is more to the world than would be apparent from this state of induced bliss. On a tryst with a particularly attractive member of his caste in an Indian reservation in New Mexico, he comes across a man referred to as the savage. The savage is the product of an illegitimate encounter (back when there were parents) between a member of a lower caste and the Director of Hatcheries who oversees all the controlled reproduction. He has grown up without any of the enlightened instruments of the New World, but his mother has kept a copy of Shakespeare with her so he knows all of Shakespeare by heart and frequently quotes it. Marx brings the savage back to his society. The rest of the book describes the savage’s reaction to this supposed utopia and its ultimately tragic consequences. Ultimately he concludes that it’s better to have free will and feel occasionally unhappy, resentful and angry than live in a society where free will is squelched and the population is kept bathed in an induced state of artificial happiness. The vision of technological control in the novel is sweeping and frighteningly prescient. There is the brainwashing and complacent submission to the status quo that everyone undergoes which is similar to the messages provided in modern times by TV, social media and the 24-hour news cycle. There are the chemical and genetic interventions made by the state right in the embryonic stage to make sure that the embryos grow up with desired physical or mental advantages or deficiencies. These kinds of interventions are the exact kind feared by those wary of CRISPR and other genetic editing technologies. Finally, keeping the population preoccupied, entertained and away from critical thinking through sex and promiscuity is a particularly potent form of societal control that has been appreciated well by Victoria’s Secret, and that will not end with developments in virtual reality. In some sense, Huxley completely anticipates the social problems engendered by the technological takeover of human jobs by robots and AI. Once human beings are left with nothing to do, how does the state ensure that they are prevented from becoming bored and restless and causing all kinds of trouble? In his book “Homo Deus”, Yuval Harari asks the same questions and concludes that a technocratic society will come up with distractions like virtual reality video games, new psychoactive drugs and novel forms of sexual entertainment that will keep the vast majority of unemployed from becoming bored and potentially hostile. I do not know whether Harari read Huxley, but I do feel more frightened by Huxley than by Harari. One reason I feel more frightened is because of what he leaves out; the book was published in 1932, so it omits any discussion of nuclear weapons which were invented ten years later. The combination of nuclear weapons with limitless societal control through technology makes for a particularly combustible mix. The biggest prediction of Huxley’s dystopia, and one distinctly different from that made by Orwell or Kafka, is that instead of a socialist state, people’s minds are much more likely to be controlled in the near future by the leaders of technology companies like Google and Facebook who have formed an unholy nexus with the government. With their social media alerts and Fitbits and maps, the tech companies are increasingly telling us how to live our lives and distracting us from free thinking. Instead of communist regimes like the Soviet Union forcibly trampling on individual choice and liberty, we are already gently but willingly ceding our choices, privacy and liberties to machines and algorithms developed by these companies. And just like the state in Huxley and Orwell’s works, the leaders of these corporations will tell us why it’s in our best interests to let technology control our lives and freedom, when all the while it would really be in their best interests to tell us this. Our capitulation to their inventions will look helpful and voluntary and will feel pleasurable and even noble, but it will be no less complete than the capitulation of every individual in “Brave New World” or “1984”. The only question is, will there be any savages left among us to tell us how foolishly we are behaving?

This book is deeply existential. A dystopia in which happiness is prioritized through an extreme form of capitalism is challenges by a "savage" who lives as they did before "Ford". Honestly, the best parts of this book are: 1. the introduction; it is incredibly well crafted and paints a clear image of the world in which the story takes place and 2. the final debate between the savage and the controller were they discuss what the better life should look like. My genuine conclusion is that the author wants to know both are imperfect. The savage's pursuit of truth ends up leading him to the darkest places, whilst the "civilised" world depends on tumultuous sacrifices that villainize all natural human emotions and replace it with simpler, almost robotic, conditioned dogmas that remove all feeling not directly to pleasure. Some quotes I'd like to remember: '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! 'I'm claiming the right to be unhappy! Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the over-compensations for misery. And, of course, stability isn't nearly so spectacular as instability. 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! 'Then what's time for?'

I don't usually read post-apocalyptic, dystopian, pessimistic or "literary" books, and this is all four. It's very well done, though, and a classic, and I'm glad I read it. The post-apocalyptic: a terrible war full of anthrax terrorist bombs has been fought, and in order to recover... The dystopian: the world has been heavily regulated. Humans are now grown in bottles, and raised in conditioning centres, where they are relentlessly conditioned to be mindlessly happy and contribute to a stable society. The pessimistic: in such a world, there's no place for "high art" or pure science, only for science as a tool, and meaningless entertainment. "You've got to choose between happiness and what people used to call high art... Every discovery in science is potentially subversive... truth's a menace, science is a public danger." The author sees no third way between the squalid primitivism of the "savage reservation" and a sterile, totalitarian modernism. John, the character who is caught between these worlds - having grown up on the reservation, the son of two people from the modernist world, but, unlike almost anyone else alive, with access to an old copy of Shakespeare - is unable to adapt to the modernist world when he is taken there. Although several of the characters have names alluding to Communism - the female lead's name is Lenina, for example - that seems to be mainly to invoke totalitarianism. In 1931, when the book was written, the Nazis were not yet in power in Germany, and Russia had the only modernist totalitarian government. However, the society depicted in the book is based more on the consumerist modernism of America. References to "Our Ford" have replaced religion - Henry Ford being the ultimate modernist symbol at the time - along with "community sings" ending in orgies. I was surprised, by the way, at how much sex there is in the book. It's not explicit, but it is pervasive. The members of the society are heavily sexualised from a young age, and social attitudes to monogamy and promiscuity have been reversed (by hypnopaedic conditioning) because family life creates destabilising passions. Nobody knows who their parents are, and "mother" is considered a dirty word. Oddly, given that women's ovaries are removed to be cultured and create the next generation, some (though not all) women are still fertile, and they are all well drilled in contraceptive use. The author does slip up, however, and refers to a "gorillas' wedding" near the end of the book from the viewpoint of a member of the society who doesn't, presumably, know what a wedding is. When John comes along, with his Shakespearean ideas of love, this causes predictable instability. He's attracted to Lenina, but her sexual behaviour is incomprehensible (and reprehensible) to him, as is her society. The sexism of the 1930s is baked in. Only the male characters rise above or question their conditioning (for what good it does them); Lenina remains conventional and largely passive, and the other female characters are minor. All the people at the top of society seem to be men. From the point of view of literary technique, there's a masterful set-piece early in the book. Several conversations are going on at once in different places, and the topics and the voices are so clear and distinct that by the end, the author is cutting rapidly between them with no speaker attribution. It's not only completely possible to follow them and tell who is speaking, but the aggregate effect is greater than the sum of the parts. Even if the book did nothing else, it deserves to be celebrated for this - and it does a great deal more. The important questions of Brave New World still remain with us. How do we keep society stable, especially in a world where technology is becoming more and more powerful and potentially dangerous? What cost are we prepared to pay for stability? What is "human nature," and what are the implications of attempting to change it? Is it possible to be happy without sinking into mindlessness? What is lost when society pursues happiness as its highest goal? Deservedly a classic, Brave New World was the first of the great dystopias, influencing all that came after (notably 1984, by Huxley's contemporary George Orwell). It continues to have resonance and power.