Brave New World

I've been meaning to read Aldous Huxley's Brave New World for ages. I picked up a cheap copy at a Borders' liquidation sale last March and just got around to reading it while I was traveling the past couple of weeks. All I can really say is: "meh". There are interesting things, but I described the book to a friend who had never read it as thus: The first two chapters, where we learn about the conditioning process that occurs from fertilization through adolescent development for all citizens is very fascinating. Chapters 17 and 18, where our would-be protagonists talk with the Controller about God, Science, Truth, and Beauty and their lack of place in a harmonious society are interesting. Everything else is whiny bitches.

Really, this is a problem with plenty of "dystopian" fiction. It's so concerned with portraying its authors personal take on why humanity is screwed that it feels it doesn't need to tell a compelling story or provide characters with realistic motivations. It's like reading a Platonic dialogue for the plot rather than the philosophy: you're just going to be irked by how much of a Mary Jane Socrates is. In Plato, though, this is tolerable because there really isn't any action beyond the discussion and the philosophy. In Brave New World and other books of its ilk, however, the plot is meant to be somehow meaningful, or at least illustrative, and it takes up a much more significant proportion of the proceedings.

So, the fact that our "savage" and Bernard and, to a lesser extent, Heimholtz are all complete idiots is consistently annoying. Beyond even that, Huxley shoots his entire thesis in the foot with the fate of Bernard and Heimholtz by telling us that failures in the conditioning process are more common than we've been led to believe and that there are effectively numerous colonies of "normal" humans continuing to advance the race on the fringes of Utopia in the form of the Islands. That we then finish the book with a long and completely pointless chapter following John's fate is pointless. We know damn well that, were he not a "savage" and a "social experiment" his grim end would be unneeded.

Furthermore, while Huxley does a good job in early chapters of seeming to take his society seriously and as the norm, the tone becomes increasingly tongue-in-cheek as he delves into the more ridiculous suppositions. The community sing culminating in the mass orgy, for instance, is just absurd. I get that real art is supposed to have disappeared, but that doesn't change the fact that the entire sequence is a chore to read through between the songs and the sudden, inexplicable sexual frenzy that sweeps through. Contrasted to the very well written early portions where Lenina is being scolded for her borderline monogamy (ridiculous, but believable), it's a sad failure. Further, the notion of "Ford" instead of god just became more and more painful as it entered into the character's vocabulary. As what I believed to be a tongue-in-cheek idea in the foreword, I could deal with it. As a foundational aspect of society, it just seemed utterly unbelievable -- though this has more to do with a problem I'll discuss at the end.

Finally, everything to do with the "reservation" is also just poorly executed. The notion that all world religions would have merged over hundreds of years just shows an unnecessary lack of respect for all of them. To be franks, an equally offensive (to a theist) and far more likely suggestion is that religious warfare would have wiped out the remaining "uncivilized" regions or left them with a handful of small factions fighting over scarce resources. Disease, poverty, and monogomy, not simple greed or other human instincts stamped out or tempered by the conditioning process, seem to be the reasons for the reservations to be in such disarray.

That said, Huxley has a lot of interesting ideas about what it would take in order for individuals to live as willing slaves of the government. Specifically, he focuses on the fairly obvious notion of control via the carrot. By keeping people content, you keep them from questioning you. The genetic selection, developmental behavioral training, and biological "surrogate" drugs provide the foundation for this contentment, which is then maintained throughout life by three societal pillars: Soma helps to manage those inevitable moments of disappointment and sadness. The elimination of the family in favor of government "hatcheries" and indoctrination centers reduces the odds of personal attachment and thus strong emotional reactions to overpower logic. Societally expected promiscuity works on both effects.

It's a fascinating approach, but one that time has shown to be absurd.

First of all, Huxley lived in a time where Freud was still taken somewhat seriously and where Psychology was synonymous with Behaviorism. This is no longer the case. We know so much more about the brain and how it operates now that it becomes trivial to question the basic premises upon which so much of the conditioning process is based. More important, though, is the fact that Huxley assumed a society that would continue in the wake of industrialization. He had no idea, even in his addenda and commentary, that the microcomputer, much less The Internet, was on the horizon. Mass, immediate access to information completely obliterates Huxley's future, and while a future where such technology is squashed away, the process to get there would be more violent -- and certainly more prolonged -- even than the war he suggests led to the founding of Utopia.

Of course, The Internet provides plenty of opportunity for a parallel road into a similar future. We have the sort of constant, superficial contact with people that Huxley predicted in the form of social networking. We can sit and anesthetize ourselves to our ills and those of the world by overloading on news to the point that we lose our capacity to care or by playing games or by watching cat videos. The important distinction, though, is that these problems are not government imposed or even sanctioned. They are self inflicted. Fortunately, we live in a society that has smart enough to recognize that Internet addiction and information overload are actual problems. Unfortunately, we also live in a society that continues to pursue ubiquitous computing and the social isolation it promotes before we've begun to solve the problems of the current generation of technology. I'm hopeful, but...we'll see.