Going into today, I had yet to really even start a book for this week. Fortunately I am pretty much snowed in for the weekend. We got at least a foot and a half of snow in DC, and some nearby suburbs got as much as 3 feet. I examined my current book list, and while there are some short books that I could have easily read, I decided to tackle something a little more substantial, but not so long that I wouldn't be able to finish it today. I went to my bookshelf and found "Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley. This is one of those books that I'm not sure why I never got around to reading. I started it once or twice, but never got more than 20 pages in. So here we go:
Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
"Brave New World" is Huxley's story of a supposedly utopian future in which all aspects of humanity have been engineered in order to foster societal order. Sex for procreation is outlawed - contraception is mandatory. Fertilization takes place in a labratory/factory, and a special process is applied to the fertilized egg, causing them to divide into many identical beings - there can be any where from 8 to 96 clones from a single unique fertilization. The fetuses are separated into castes, predetermined for the type of work they will do. The lower castes are stunted in their intellectual and physical development, so that they will better accept their station in life. Extensive indoctrination is performed so that each member is well conditioned to accept the rules of society. There are no parents, no siblings. Promiscuity is encouraged, and a drug called Soma, distributed by the government, keeps the masses from feeling any strong emotions, good or bad.
Nonetheless, a few members of society emerge with individualistic tendencies. Bernard Marx is an enigmatic fellow. Born to an upper cast, but for some reason physically smaller than others in his caste, causing him to view himself and to be viewed by others as somewhat of an outcast, to the point where his career is in jeopardy. Lenina Crowne fights urges to be monogamous. Helmholtz Watson, a member of the upper-most caste, yearns to express himself artistically.
In a trip to see the "savages," Native Americans that live on a reservation and are not part of the artificial society that has been created, Marx befriends a man who is born by natural childbirth to a woman of society that was stranded there years before. He brings mother and son back to society for the purposes of research, and suddenly enjoys a degree of celebrity because of it. The savage grows tired of being on display, and backs out of a major appearance, thrusting Bernard out of favor once more.
Written in 1932, Huxley's view of the future is somewhat dated, but it is often very prescient. Soma is not far off of modern day psychotropic drugs such as Prozac. His imagined reproductive technology is very similar to what could actually be achieved today. The scenario of giving the workers just enough education to do their jobs and keeping them entertained during their leisure time, looks very much like modern day America.
Huxley's attempts to describe this world wind up being somewhat heavy handed, however. This society has done away with religion, but reveres Henry Ford, as the father of efficiency and automation. This is a joke Huxley can't let go of, and dialog is frequently peppered with the use of Ford's name as an oath or an expletive ("Oh, for Ford's sake!"). The notion of promiscuity being morally right in this society is also beaten into our heads ("every one belongs to every one else"), as is the sexual indoctrination of children. There are however, profound truths buried in this book. What it means to fit in to a society, what it means to be an individual, what it means to be happy, what it means to have passion, what it means to maintain order, and most of all, the cost of each of these things.
So do I recommend it? It seems to stand up fairly well over the years and still be relevant, so sure, why not?
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