My sister gave me this book a few years back, and I finally got around to it this year. Out of the 20 (edit number later) books I read in 2020, it's the only one I read in a literal sense-- the rest I listened to. Thanks, sis.
Brave New World is a dystopian novel set in our own future in the year 632 "After Ford" (or 2540 A.D., if you like).
Why is it dystopian? Well, people are bred into a genetic caste system. They are:
Alphas: the highest tier: strongest, most intelligent, bred to be leaders of factories and societies.
Their jobs require the most thinking.
Betas: the tier below Alphas. They are bred to not be quite as intelligent as Alphas, though enjoy a similar standard of life in society.
Their jobs are typically a little less demanding than those of Alphas, such as a nurse.
Gammas: below the Betas, Gammas usually specialized in less demanding jobs that still require modest intellect, such as working as a butler.
Deltas: nearly the bottom tier of society, and more physically and mentally handicapped than Gammas.
Deltas work in highly repetitive jobs, such as factories.
Epsilons: the most severely handicapped caste of all, Epsilon jobs are the most menial, but certainly not the least necessary. An Epsilon might be a lift operator or sewage worker.
Artificially handicapping embryos and human breeding sounds pretty awful to the average reader, but the members of this society, Alpha to Epsilon, are for the most part happy.
Well, as happy as the lethargic mind of an Epsilon can be. How can this be?
The answer is meticulous conditioning from birth. One example of this that stood out to me was a scene of a Delta nursery.
Young students watch as a crowd of delta babies are released into a room filled with books and flowers.
The babies eagerly crawl to the items in pleasure.
Then an alarm shrills, and the babies are electrically shocked.
When nurses offer them books and flowers again, they shy away in fear. 200 repetitions later, the Delta babies are branded with an instinctive hatred of these things for reasons that, even if they weren't mentally handicapped, they probably wouldn't remember.
Conditioning the conscious mind is powerful. But alone, it is terribly inefficient. All brains, big or small, need to rest.
Fortunately, an ingenius technique was developed to not only overcome, but capitalize upon this "setback", called hypnopaedia: the process of learning while sleeping.
While complex rules of society or job-related skills cannot be trained during sleep, simplistic moral rules can. While a youth sleeps, memorable phrases are repeated over and over again.
For a beta, it might be: "I'm awfully glad I'm a Beta, because I don't have to work so hard."
That was a lot, but the above wouldn't even classify as a summary; perhaps a threadbare expositive summary. From this, it is probably clear that there is a lot going on in this book.
In just a few chapters, Huxley unloads a vivid illustration of this futuristic society. No space is wasted, every description gives us a sharper image of the world in 632 After Ford.
While many dystopian settings are characterized by oppression and lack of basic necessities, this society suffers the opposite to an extreme.
Thanks to enforced promiscuity, euphoric drugs, and endless sensory input, "Everybody's happy nowadays."
And... it's true. Despite the inhumane means, it seems everyone is indeed happy. There's almost no delayed gratification.
There's no suffering. Everybody gets what they want. Brave New World was published in 1932, but its message rings eerily intune with today.
Basic necessities, entertainment, and sexual gratification are, for the priveleged of us, available at the touch of a screen.
Like Huxley's dystopian world, delayed gratification is one of the few resources becoming more scarce.
But why is any of this a bad thing? Why is it bettr when we have to wait to have what we want? Why is Huxley's novel considered dystopian at all? If you go on the internet, you'll probably find phrases such as "Social Media DeTox" or even "Dopamine Fasting."
In moderation, it's reasonable to say that the advancement of society (specifically of technology in this context) has generally gifted us with good things.
It's great to watch a TV show whenever you want. We're lucky to connect with our families though Zoom during a pandemic.
Obviously Huxley's society takes things to an unhealthy extreme (socially acceptable promiscuity is one thing, but mandatory orgies is a little much). But for the most part, everything seems pretty great.
I think the point of this extreme is to convince us to go along for the ride with everything else and say
"oh yah of course everything in this society is twisted and meaningless".
There is an ever-present theme of everyone's happiness being a trivial happiness because it's just an empty indulgence.
I strongly disagree. Who is Huxley, or anybody, to denounce one happiness as meaningful and another as meaningless? Happiness is just chemicals in our brain, and the people in Huxley's society get a lot more of it than we do.
I think it's pretentious to hold our values and gratification with more "meaning" than a soma holiday.
Why is the joy from discovering new laws of physics more deserved than the joy of finally getting 100,000 followers on instagram?
What's great about free will is we get to choose what has significance to us.
If our happiness doesn't cause suffering in others or ourselves, it is worthy happiness.
We're further from a utopia than Huxley's world, and happiness is more scarce.
If you're lucky enough to be happy, don't ask yourself if you deserve it. You do.