Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

Brave New World explores one of the many possible variations of future human existence. In the book, the world is controlled by one government, which is run by 10 world controllers.

Society runs by keeping people drugged up with a designer drug 'soma', conditioned into fearing thought, idleness and solitude and by giving people jobs that they have been genetically 'modified' to be perfect for as well as conditioned to enjoy and accept. The society is stratified, with the groups taking Greek alphabet names such as the Epsilons, Gammas, Deltas, Betas, Alphas. They go in + and - variations of each of these too.

Children are grown using fertilized embryos, in test tubes which are passed through great conveyor belts. Many of the embryos are processed with the 'Bokanovsky' process, which means they are split several times into huge groups of identical twins, sometimes up to 100 or even more. Some are made genderless and incapable of reproducing, others are 'freemartins', who have gender but must practice contraception, and the girls practice the 'Malthusian Drill'.

The Foetuses are given different exposure to things during their conveyor belt maturation. Some are given the necessary nutrients in their 'blood surrogate' to develop fully, whereas others are starved or in other ways negatively affected, in order to produce the mentally and physically stunted humans (even dwarves) that fill the relative roles down society.

Once they are 'born', the children immediately undergo all sorts of conditioning, which includes Hypnopic sleep teaching as well as things involving associating items with experiences of extreme distress...such as when children are conditioned to hate flowers and nature even when they are babies.

Alphas are given a slight degree more mental freedom than the others, because there needs to be a small ability to think outside the box. We learn later that the Alphas which progress too far in their aesthetic and intellectual journeys are given the option to locate to any island in the globe, which will be full of similarly free thinkers...so they are not executed or anything like that.

The society relies on hypnopically-charged hyper-consumerism. Every game that is brought out must be extremely expensive and complicated. Nothing simple. There is no art, all stories are quaint and simple, there is constant insipid music in the air, and music performances are entirely about feeling and not about thinking- they also include smell stimulation if I remember correctly. Everyone watches 'feelies', which are films with very simple and infantile plots, where the objective is essentially to feel some experiences, and I believe also smell and hear them.

Everyone has sex with everyone in this society, although specific strata groups never usually swap between. It's considered extremely uncivilised and barbaric to be monogamous. All children are conditioned into the mentality that everyone belongs to everyone else. All children engage in 'erotic play', playing 'hide the zipper' all the time. They are conditioned into always being sexual with the opposite gender, and this carries on through life. 'Orgy-porgy' is something everyone does when there are groups of people, for example to worship. With regards to sex, the adjective 'pneumatic' is used all the time, to describe women.

No one ages either, and it's not quite clear why people actually die I think, but one would assume it's just because the internal organs aren't preserved in the same way as the outside.

The society worships 'Ford', and in all instances where one of us might say 'God', they use Ford. The sign of the religion is a big T. One imagines this is due to the Ford model T, Henry Ford being the father of the modern production line.

There is basically no aggression or violence in the society, because all members are constantly drugged up and enjoying themselves or at least being contented. Any agitation is responded to by police who are armed with sprayed soma gas.

Book starts explaining the growth of embryos process. We then follow Henry Foster and Lenina who are currently 'having' each other, as they go through a bit of their day. We are soon introduced to Bernard Marx, who is a fairly neurotic and secretly dissatisfied Alpha + (dissatisfaction is uncouth and potentially dangerous in society- can lose one his job). He is apparently not the main character, in the beginning, but Huxley abruptly switches focus to him soon enough, and we get to learn that he doesn't like soma, or any of the mindless distractions people do. He really wants Lenina, but to be romantic with her and to be alone to talk to her. Anyway, she ends up fairly interested in him and they have some time together a few times. He can barely get through any of his ideas to her. We are also at some point introduced to Bernard's friend Helmholtz Watson, who is basically an epic win character who loves intelligence and free thinking, and is tired of his life of constantly banging the hottest chicks left right and centre and wants to get stuck into some real art, and use his talents as a creator of social platitudes ('Was and will make me ill, I take a gramme [of soma] and merely am'). It turns out later that Bernard really does suck, and he is actually failing to engage with society because he isn't very attractive and just isn't scoring very much. Which I thought was a really witty and human character flaw for Huxley to have invented.

They go to stay in Mexico, where they visit a savage enclosure, protected by electrified fences. Here they meet a person who speaks English called John, who looks like a member of society rather than a savage. It turns out his mother was the person who was being had by the controller of the embryo growth and conditioning plant Bernard works at (and Henry Foster). Because by now Bernard has been investigated and is being followed closely by the higher ups for his weirdly uncivilised and antisocial behaviour, he decides to bring John back to society with him, as well as his mother (Linda), to use as ammunition against his boss. We are also introduced to John's life, where he was a perpetual outcast, had to basically teach himself to read, reading some lame embryology textbook his mum had with her at the time she was lost on her travels. She always got high with the the savages' drugs, but they were shit and had massive come downs.

He got to find a Shakespeare book and read it religiously. He experiences Shakespeare in exactly the same way as Helmholtz will later experience it, except for him it is a reprieve from the base and ostracizing savage culture; whereas for Helmholtz it is a reprieve from the shallow and ultra-receptive culture. Up until this point, the book is about Bernard, but it now switches to half John half Bernard, and later becomes entirely John.

So they return to society and John is shown everything. His mother had always spoken highly of the civilisation, and spoken negatively of the life of the savages. Whilst John is initially impressed with the society, he is soon enough horrified by the seeming lack of sincerity and passion in the lives of the citizens. Bernard, meanwhile, uses Linda to embarrass his boss, just as he was being confronted and about to be fired; to instead become talk of London. Everyone wants to hear about the savage, and all the women now start fucking Bernard's brains out, thrice a day it reads. So anyway, he reveals himself to be completely retarded and almost as shallow as the rest of them. It gets to his head, and he even shuns Helmholtz, who up 'til now has always been forgiving of Bernard's self-obsessive retardation.

John gets increasingly upset with society. He finally gets to meet Helmholtz and they trade free-thinking attitudes and clearly are on the same wavelength. John shows Helmholtz Shakespeare, but it is apparent after awhile that even Helmholtz has been to corrupted by society- because the notion of mothers and fathers is offensive and bawdy in society, he bellows out in laughter about Romeo and Juliet, which greatly pisses John off. But it's not too serious, they stay close. John goes on a date with Lenina or something like that, to the feelies, about a black man and a helicopter. But he's pissed off about it, and doesn't want to shag her even though she expects it and hopes for it. He is annoyed at how shallow she is, even though she is about the most deep woman we get to see in the book.

Anyway, Bernard invites everyone round to see the savage, who doesn't come out of his room 'cos he's pissed off, destroying Bernard's social status. And now no one wants to bang him. Anyway, he mopes off to Helmholtz, whilst John ends up having to go see his dying mother. She requested so much soma that she shortened her life expectancy (by the way she is a grotesque demon to society because she has 'actually' aged until about mid forties) massively, 'holidaying' on the drug. John is extremely sad that Linda dies, and when a bunch of gimp-ass children come in and start essentially heckling him, he gets fucking pissed. He wanders out into the main yard where a bunch of Deltas are being given soma. He shakes them and is like WTF don't you ppl want to be free??? They don't respond so he throws their soma down into something, maybe out of a window or maybe into some water, I can't remember. Bottom line is, they advanced on him and he fights them. Bernard and Helmholtz rush to the scene because they are informed of it. Helmholtz is a total legend and starts beating on the Deltas, but Bernard is a pussy retard and just sits there indecisively. I think he gets involved eventually. Anyway, the police arrive and spray soma into the air, and put on this anti-riot speech. The deltas settle into an orgy. By the way, before this happens, John gets really pissed off with Lenina and almost beats her up cos of being so angry about her frivolous and shallow conditioned-nature.

The three are reprimanded and taken to Mustapha Mond, the controller who lives in London. Here begins an extremely interesting and vital set of chapters, about 75% of the way through the book, where Mond explains how he is free thinking himself but uses this and his knowledge of the previous modes of man's existence to tell them how stability is the key in society, and to obtain it one must sacrifice passion, art, science, individual thought, etc. He puts forward the case for all of the processes used, in order to preserve stability and safety. He offers the 3 (actually Bernard is not in the room cos he gets sent out for being a douche) the choice of going to islands where there are loads of free thinking Alphas, allowed to pursue literature and science away from society...or of staying in society. Helmholtz decides to stay in society and try to mould it a little towards the way he wants. Bernard...well who cares about him he is a cock. I think he just gets jettisoned off to Iceland. John elects to live in the countryside near London.

And so begins the final part. John basically tries to cleanse his spirit and soul by repenting to his gods (which are a shitload of mixed and mashed gods from all previous peoples). He self-flagellates with a cat o' nine tails. He hunts game in the forest and grows plants. Eventually some people from London find out about him and check him out. He shoots their helicopters with a bow and arrow, which scares them. Then a feely film-maker sets up recording instruments to record John's way of constantly punishing himself, which is bizarre in every way to the naïve and innocent civilised people. The film is made very quickly, and the second it has been shown, flocks of people fly in their helicopters (everyone has helicopters by the way) to watch the savage. They heckle him to start using his whip. Anyway he gets fucking pissed and whips them a little bit, and they fuck off. But then loads return, and he's really annoyed. The Lenina turns up, and she's walking over to him when for some reason or another that currently escapes me, he is reminded about how she represents all that is shallow and wicked about the society. He calls her a whore or strumpet or something. He whips her loads with his whip, it's not revealed if he kills her or just mutilates her. Anyway, the crowd is excited by this visceral activity and I think eventually has an orgy.

So John hangs himself the next day. The END.

Huxley presents a world which is wholly understandable and reachable from where we are now. He puts forward rational arguments for why the society uses soma, and doesn't search for any more consciousness-raising or empowering methods of social control- soma was the first easy way to do it, and humanity has a propensity for using the bare minimum.

The concept of people being encouraged and conditioned to feel and consume rather than think and reflect is something that is extremely becoming more and more familiar in human life. What with the invention and mass production and mass consumption of TV, as well as the homogenisation of entertainment sources worldwide with the invention of the internet...and the lowest-common-denominator direction that entertainment takes on the broad scale, one is all too regularly given a sharp reminder, albeit simplified, that the world Huxley invokes is not a million miles away from our own. Conditioning is less overt in our culture but it is very present. One reflects that conditioning need not be from higher ups- the social conditioning of peer pressure is extremely useful for corporations to mould and use to their advantage.

The narrowness of the majority of society's minds' today invokes that of the members of Huxley's society. Artistic diversity is slowly crushed underfoot, as social conditioning and economic pressures force true art to the background, and poor quality embarrassments to our proud history of art are wheeled out into the centre stage. But let's be fair, this was happening just as much in the 1930s as it is now. The crap that was considered popular music back then...when compared to the true music that was being made by people such as Stravinsky, Schoenberg and Shostakovich...and even when compared to the blues music that was being created and formed in America, it seems extremely vapid and frivolous.

The question of what should be wanted in a perfect society is regularly approached. Does one *really* want perfect order? Emotionlessness? Why not just have a society of robots? Why not just filter out our capability to experience anything? Surely, humanity completely defeats the point of existence if we remove all reasons for living? Huxley's society simply exists to propagate a replica that will exist for as long as the Sun does, in an infinite and stable cycle. One must be wary of such a goal, I feel, as I think a lot of simple-minded and unphilosophical people can consider the path of least resistance to be the path towards societal improvement. I think that a lot of life and society would have to be cleaned out of the way, and it would be extremely messy.

It's definitely possible that humanity will not move anything like as quickly to anything like this sort of direction. It may simply fluctuate around a generally similar pattern, and there might always be a backlash against progression and 'improvement'. However Huxley presents the world 'as is' and it makes good enough sense for one to be able to pontificate on the society he provides. In many ways, the 'imperfection' of the society has a brutally honest tone to it- humanity can be expected very rarely to really do the right thing, imperfection seems to be sewn into our collective nature.

When all is said and done, however, the world that Huxley presents is not objectionable to 99.99% of its residents. They live a life of very few lows, and experience regular sensory satisfaction. The conditioning they undergo, whilst robbing them of any free thought or useful sentience, does mean that very few of them will ever be upset or feel inadequate with their station in life.

My overall impression of the society proposed was that this is not necessarily a worse method of existence for humans, just a radically different one. And it was very interesting and engaging writing.

I found the book to be extremely intellectually gripping. At times, the pace struggled to drag me along, mostly along the first half. The book, however, played a fantastic crescendo, rewarding the patient reader with an ultimate page-turning experience. I found none of the prose to be jarring or clumsy, as opposed to Dan Brown for example who is a complete embarrassment. I wouldn't say it's great writing, but I would commend Huxley's extensive lexical freedom and ability to write fairly respectably and informatively about some concepts which are displeasing or vulgar. There is also a degree of absurdly ostentatious humour in the novel, but I didn't find it prevalent enough to make any more comment on it than this sentence.

I also have to commend Huxley, posthumously of course, on how well-read and well-thought-out his philosophical argumentation was, as well as how enjoyable the literature references were.