“Community, Identity, Stability.” “Everyone belongs to everyone else.”
I recently completed (via audiobook) Brave New World, a dystopian novel where Aldous Huxley manifests one of his visions of a potential future, a world where happiness and stability rule, though not in the way you might think. The book was quite thought-provoking, and although I wouldn’t put it too high on my list of favorite books, I can see why it is a classic. (Spoiler alert.)
Much of the first part of the book is dedicated to Huxley laying out how this world works. There are many strange things about it. Firstly, there are no families. No husband or wife, no children (in the traditional sense). Instead, people are grown in a lab, a place of science where everything about these “children” is chosen by the makers. Dozens of children can be created to look identical, and their social caste is predetermined. Things like their size and the clothes they wear reflect this assigned status. These children are then “conditioned” (as the book calls it) to believe and feel exactly what their creators want them to think and feel. As babies, this is accomplished by associating “bad” things with shocks and loud noises, so that they learn to fear those things they ought to fear. Horrible things like flowers. Then, as they become old enough to actually think adequately, they are taught phrases and sayings through repetition for hours a day. They are put into a haze and repeat these phrases for months until it becomes how they think. Thus, through this “schooling,” they become functioning members of society. Each caste is taught to dislike the particular things that might make their work unproductive and also to be maximally thankful that they are the part of the caste that they are. In this way, every member of every caste ought to become maximally happy, because there is no other caste they’d rather be a part of, and no other job that they’d rather have.
One of the key sayings of this society is that “everyone belongs to everyone else.” This is meant in multiple ways. Not only that everyone contributes to society as a whole (reducing their sense of individuality even further), but also that monogamous relationships are strange and uncultured. Those type of relationships were strongly discouraged by the authorities in this society, and one of the protagonists of the book was banished partially because of his odd desire for this type of relationship. This idea that no one ought to be special to you is fostered by the fact that no one has children. Part of the children’s indoctrination is teaching them to use birth control, and society views having a baby as odd and gross. Needless to say, abortion clinics are also available.
The art in this culture is quite degraded. Firstly, none of the entertainment has any depth (though the consumers are quite satisfied with it). Secondly, all old entertainment and art are never consumed at all. Thirdly, no one reads. So this creates an environment where everyone can be satisfied and happy, in a way, but no one is fulfilled by what they consume. All unpleasant emotion is taught to be avoided, and if by chance a painful feeling arises, members of this society are well equipped at all times with a drug to cast them into a kind of happy sleep. That ought to help them feel more pleasant when they awake. So that is the state that society lives in. They spend much of their time working (which they are trained to enjoy maximally), and they spend their free time being entertained, enjoying one another (erotically and otherwise), or in a drug-induced sleep. This leaves very little time for anything else. However, very few feel unsatisfied with this lifestyle because one, they are trained that this is how things are supposed to be, and two, everyone else does the same thing. Any type of discomfort is seen as unnecessary and odd.
This is the world in which Huxley has set his book, and in many ways the actual story of the characters is used to explore this world further. As though it is just a retelling of the facts, not getting the reader very invested in any particular character. How things might happen if the world was ever to become this way – the way things could potentially unfold.
Interestingly, there do seem to be some people who have something inside of them that fights against this indoctrination. In some ways I think this makes the book even more credible. Try as they might, the people behind this plot can’t control everyone. Some are still bound to resist the training in some way. The way the book portrays it, these people are simply banished to an island with others of similar mind, so in that way it’s not even a punishment. They are with the other people who act like people. Real individuals. I wonder if the world ever came to such a place if the real rulers would be so merciful.
After telling most of his tale, Huxley brings us to his grand chapter of explanation. As a side note, it felt quite obvious in reading that this chapter was sort of written to the reader as an explanation. In this chapter, one of the heads of the entire scheme is dialoguing with a “savage,” someone who grew up in what we would consider a more normal society, reading things like Shakespeare, hearing religious tales (though not accurate), and believing in morality. This savage quite hates the society he finds himself in.
The Controller, as the book calls him, explains everything. This society has been set up, it seems to me, to prioritize two things: The happiness of the people and the stability of the society. Those two things are able to benefit off of the other. The reason that there is no family or no partner is to maximize happiness in a strange way. It is so that there is no real emotional attachment or reliance on any particular person. With no attachment, there is no loss. With no loss, there is no instability or unhappiness. So, it’s better that everyone belong to everyone else, to provide maximum short-term happiness. The reason that everyone has a job to do, rather than roles being delegated to automation or even robots, is because the people aren’t as happy with too much free time. They need something to give them busy. On top of that, too much free time would allow for thought, which would not lend itself to a stable society at all. The reason that no old books or media is allowed is because it would make old things look attractive, when it is in society’s best interest to keep pressing forward and not look back. The future is always better.
The reason that people are able to avoid any unpleasant experience is because there is near-perfect stability, so there is no actual threat the people might have to prepare themselves for. Nothing that requires an unpleasant experience. And the reason that the people are kept so happy is partially so that they won’t cause any trouble, which would then lead to instability. The two go together.
Interestingly, the Controller is quite aware of what he is doing. He realizes and says quite explicitly that happiness has been chosen over truth and beauty. He says something quite interesting about that:
“Whenever the masses seized political power, then it was happiness rather than truth and beauty that mattered.”
He notes that for a time, even while happiness reigned supreme, research and science and the search for truth were still allowed to go on. But then, a war, instability, brought that to an end. By the time this book takes place, those days are long gone. The two could never actually go together – frivolous happiness along with a search for truth. So one had to go, and truth it was.
Then, there is a section dedicated to God. The Controller knows quite a bit about God – he has read the old books – and even believes in him to an extent. But a belief in God would not lend itself to total and complete happiness. A belief in God brings in standards, calls to nobility, unpleasantness, and fights against evil. That brings instability. So much has been done to keep the notion of God out of the people’s heads. The lack of ancient literature lends itself to that. So does the lack of thought. If no one has the time to think about serious matters, the less the chance that God may pop into their heads. Interestingly, society has also been set up so that people die quite young. I believe it was 40 or so that was considered the average age of death. This means that the people will be able to experience their pleasures right up to the point of death. What the Controller had to say about that, quoting another book:
“…the religious sentiment tends to develop as we grow older; to develop because, as the passions grow calm, as the fancy and sensibilities are less excited and less excitable, our reason becomes less troubled in its working, less obscured by the images, desires and distractions, in which it used to be absorbed; whereupon God emerges as from behind a cloud… Yes, we inevitably turn to God; for this religious sentiment is of its nature so pure, so delightful to the soul that experience it, that it makes up to us for all our other losses.”
And again:
“You can only be independent of God while you’ve got youth and prosperity…
God isn’t compatible with machinery and scientific medicine and universal happiness. You must make your choice. Our civilization has chosen machinery and medicine and happiness. That’s why I have to keep these books locked up in a safe.”1
And so we see the reason that people die young and that death is taught to the children as normal.
There is much more I could say about this entire exchange and the book as a whole, but that’s all for now.2 There’s one final thing I want to discuss before I finish: could this ever happen in real life? Well, I think it’s quite clear that some of this has already happened, if you know where to look, and I don’t see reason that it couldn’t continue to happen. There is one thing that I take issue with though, and it’s that I’m not sure that if society were ever so corrupt as it presented in this book that it wouldn’t also manifest itself in other ways. What I mean by that is that throughout the book, each individual person is portrayed as quite innocent, only doing what was natural for them to do. I don’t think that’s possible. I think that if such wickedness was so rampant, the stability wouldn’t last long without some strife coming between people over something. Sin grows when it’s allowed to grow, so I don’t see why people could innocently be sexually immoral so shamelessly, or have such little self-control and inner strength, and it not show itself in other parts of their life, such as anger, or perhaps a more brutal treatment of those who rebelled against the society. I think eventually, the most likely scenario is that society would only get more unstable, just with the guise of stability on top of it. But then again, it’s possible that Huxley alluded to this more than I realized. I can see some of this moral rot more clearly at the end. Or perhaps with such thorough indoctrination things would go differently than I imagine. I tend to think at least the controllers would be totally wicked and take more advantage of those beneath them than the Controller in the book seemed to.
Regardless, it really is a Brave New World that Huxley envisions. ~
- I’m not totally sure I agree with what the Controller said about choosing God vs machinery and science. I think it’s definitely true that you must choose God or universal happiness, in the way that this book uses the word happiness. ↩︎
- Or maybe ever. ↩︎
(This post was proof-read, not written, with AI. It ought to have preserved nearly all of my original text.)