Given all the recent interest in a book that was required reading when I was in school, and the new TV series based on the book (which I have not seen), rereading Brave New World by Aldous Huxley seemed in order. It was shocking to find how little I remembered about the book so, good plan. The book is actually a philosophical exploration of the underpinnings of societies and it projects us into a mechanized future with universal happiness as its goal. I’m experiencing this as a sort of a mash-up because I am also reading Sapiens: A Brief History of Mankind by Yuval Noah Harari at the same time. Harari suggests that the only difference between homo sapiens and other animals is our ability to tell stories, our facility for generating myths that allows us to exist in collective groups greater than the 150 members of the largest groups that prevailed in previous ages. This reverberates with what Huxley writes about in Brave New World in 1931.
In the society Huxley creates, the god who is at the mythical core is Henry Ford and the model is the assembly line which was the object of both admiration and consternation among various groups. It allowed the production of all those Model A cars and Model T’s that offered the freedom of the open road and seemingly conquered the matters of distance and time. Rather than turning out one vehicle at a time the assembly line could produce dozens in a day or hundreds in a year and the production rates kept improving. So what if you applied the idea of the assembly line to human reproduction. Rather than the whole messy and often tragic process of biological birth, what if birth could be mechanized, removed from the nuclear family and moved into a factory setting. You could even produce different castes of humans depending on the way you controlled the birth environment and later the mental development. Huxley used Greek letters to indicate these castes: Alphas as the highest, Epsilons as the lowest.
We begin our tour of the “World’s State” at the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre. The motto of the State is “Community, Identity, Stability.” Because of the Bokanovsky Process it is possible to create infinite numbers of twins by causing branching in fertilized eggs. These groups of identical twins work very well together without pesky disagreements, and in addition to their genetic content they are mentally conditioned or programmed to enjoy their group identity and their slot in society, however high or low. Alphas and even Betas are individuals and are not ‘twinned’. Epsilons are slated for menial labor. Alphas are, within limits, thinkers.
Sexuality is key to the goals and order of this society. Toddlers are encouraged to engage in sexual play. Many groups are sterile. During naptimes subliminal conditioning is broadcast as nursery rhymes and songs that are treasured in adulthood even as they control the behaviors of the various groups. Alphas and Betas cannot reproduce but they can have as many sexual partners as they wish, although pair bonds are frowned upon. If you live in this Brave New World and you find yourself in any way troubled or unhappy there is a drug for that. Soma will restore your happiness and send you tripping off into musical, light and sexual sensations that make you happy once again, and if that doesn’t work you can really zone out, take lots of soma and take a soma holiday.
An Alpha, rumored to have experienced a chemical imbalance in his birth bottle, promises to take Lenina, a female conditioned to enjoy sexual encounters, to an area that has stayed ‘savage’. There we meet Linda, who was what Lenina is now, but was left for dead by a previous Alpha who toured the same area. Linda was pregnant and was forced to do the very thing she was conditioned to despise. She had to give birth and have the feelings that mothers have. But she had also been taught to perceive of motherhood as a relic of the past, as an unacceptable role for women. It leaves procreation to chance. This combination of biological imperative and conditioned loathing is not a recipe for good parenting. We also meet her son John who does not biologically fit into this tribe in which he has been born. This tribe worships two gods; they worship Jesus and a tribal god. John has been raised with this religious conditioning. His mother acts promiscuously within the tribe and is shunned because of it. That is part of her conditioning, as is her willingness to take the mescalin and peyote available to her as a soma substitute. John is torn. He loves his mother and he loathes her sinful behaviors and the way it spills over into the tribes’ perceptions of him.
So what happens when our Alpha takes Linda and John back to the World’s Society, the Brave New World? What happens when myths collide? This is exactly the point where Sapiens and Brave New World collide, although they were written decades apart. You can probably make some guesses about what happens but this is a book that should be read and pondered as you question societies and what you believe they should be like.
So Many Books, Choose Wisely 