Brave New World by Huxley
Ref: Aldous Huxley (1932). Brave New World. NY: Harper Brothers.
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Summary
Envisions a future society without wars, famines, and plagues, enjoying uninterrupted peace, prosperity, and health. It is a consumerist world that gives complete free rein to sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll and whose supreme value is happiness. The underlying assumption of the book is that humans are biochemical algorithms, science can hack the human algorithm, and technology can then be used to manipulate it (Harari, 2018).
It’s far more secure to control people through love and pleasure than through fear and violence.
How much of our freedom and basic humanity do we want to sacrifice in the name of peace and social order?
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Misc Quotes
“Hug me till you drug me, honey; Kiss me till I’m in a coma: Hug me, honey, snuggly bunny; Love’s as good as soma.”
“Don’t imagine, that I’d had any indecorous relation with the girl. Nothing emotional, nothing long drawn. It was all perfectly healthy and normal.”
“Words can be like X-rays, if you use them properly—they’ll go through anything. You read and you’re pierced. That’s one of the things I try to teach my students—how to write piercingly.”
“Pornographic old books.”
“Because our world is not the same as Othello’s world. You can’t make flivvers without steel —and you can’t make tragedies without social instability. The world’s stable now. People are happy; they get what they want, and they never want what they can’t get. They’re well off; they’re safe; they’re never ill; they’re not afraid of death; they’re blissfully ignorant of passion and old age; they’re plagued with no mothers or fathers; they’ve got no wives, or children, or lovers to feel strongly about; they’re so conditioned that they practically can’t help behaving as they ought to behave. And if anything should go wrong, there’s soma.”
“Wretched that she should have thought it such a perfect afternoon for Obstacle Golf, that she should have trotted away to join Henry Foster, that she should have found him funny for not wanting to talk of their most private affairs in public. Wretched, in a word, because she had behaved as any healthy and virtuous English girl ought to behave and not in some other, abnormal, extraordinary way.”
“Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the overcompensations 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.”
“Civilization has absolutely no need of nobility or heroism. These things are symptoms of political inefficiency. In a properly organized society like ours, nobody has any opportunities for being noble or heroic. Conditions have got to be thoroughly unstable before the occasion can arise. Where there are wars, where there are divided allegiances, where there are temptations to be resisted, objects of love to be fought for or defended —there, obviously, nobility and heroism have some sense. But there aren’t any wars nowadays. The greatest care is taken to prevent you from loving any one too much. There’s no such thing as a divided allegiance; you’re so conditioned that you can’t help doing what you ought to do. And what you ought to do is on the whole so pleasant, so many of the natural impulses are allowed free play, that there really aren’t any temptations to resist. And if ever, by some unlucky chance, anything unpleasant should somehow happen, why, there’s always so ma to give you a holiday from the facts. And there’s always soma to calm your anger, to reconcile you to your enemies, to make you patient and long-suffering. In the past you could only accomplish these things by making a great effort and after years of hard moral training . Now, you swallow two or three half-gramme tablets, and there you are. Anybody can be virtuous now. You can carry at least half your mortality about in a bottle. Christianity without tears —that’s what soma is.”
“That second dose of soma had raised a quite impenetrable wall between the actual universe and their minds.”
“Impulse arrested spills over, and the flood is feeling, the flood is passion, the flood is even madness: it depends on the force of the current, the height and strength of the barrier. The unchecked stream flows smoothly down its appointed channels into a calm well-being.”
Dialogue between Mustapha Mond, the World Controller for Western Europe, and John the Savage, who has lived all his life on a native reservation in New Mexico, and who is the only other man in London who still knows anything about Shakespeare or God. When John the Savage tries to incite the people of London to rebel against the system that controls them, they react with utter apathy to his call, but the police arrest him and bring him before Mustapha Mond. The World Controller has a pleasant chat with John, explaining that if he insists on being antisocial, he should just remove himself to some secluded place and live as a hermit. John then questions the views that underlie the global order, and accuses the World Government of eliminating not just truth and beauty in its pursuit of happiness, but all that is noble and heroic in life. Mustapha Mond explains to the savage that “civilization has absolutely no need of nobility or heroism. These things are symptoms of political inefficiency. In a properly organized society like ours, nobody has any opportunities for being noble or heroic. Conditions have got to be thoroughly unstable before the occasion can arise.” Since there are no more wars, revolutions, or social conflicts, there is just no need for nobility or heroism.
Mustapha: “Anybody can be virtuous now, You can carry at least half your morality about in a bottle.”
Savage: “Effort and struggle have their merits. Isn’t there something in living dangerously?”
Mustapha: “Yes, I agree wholeheartedly that there is a great deal in living dangerously. Humans need strong stimulations, which is why the World Government decreed that every citizen must undergo a Violent Passion Surrogate treatment each month. These treatments mimic the physiological effects of extreme fear and rage so that people can enjoy all the effects of murdering someone—or being murdered—without suffering any of the inconveniences.
Savage: “But I like the inconveniences."
Mustapha: “We don’t. We prefer to do things comfortably.”
Savage: “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.”
Mustapha: “In fact, you’re claiming the right to be unhappy.”
Savage: “All right then, I’m claiming the right to be unhappy. Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and impotent; the right to have syphilis and cancer; the right to have too little to eat; the right to be lousy; the right to live in constant apprehension of what may happen tomorrow; the right to catch typhoid; the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind.” There was a long silence. “I claim them all,” said the Savage at last.
Mustapha: “You’re welcome.”
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