Brave New World (is Here!)

New York Post ^ | April 28, 2012 | KYLE SMITH

[DogByte6RER]

Brave New World (is Here!)

If Orwell’s “1984” is a cautionary tale about what we in the capitalist West largely avoided, Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World” is largely about what we got — a consumerist, post-God happyland in which people readily stave off aging, jet away on exotic vacations and procreate via test tubes. They have access to “Feelies” similar to IMAX 3-D movies, no-strings-attached sex, anti-anxiety pills and abortion on demand. They also venerate a dead high-tech genius, saying “Ford help him” in honor of Henry Ford just as today we practically murmur “In Jobs We Trust.”

In many ways the book, which was published 80 years ago this winter, has become sci-non-fi. It is still developing, taking on additional richness according to the times in which we read it.

“Brave New World” is a satire set in a unified and peaceful 26th-century “World State” in which a frustrated London loner named Bernard Marx feels unease with the serene functionality of the ingeniously well-ordered society around him. After a chance encounter on vacation, he brings to London a Shakespeare-loving “savage” named John from outside the tech bubble (he grew up untouched by modernity on an Indian reservation in New Mexico) who becomes even more distraught by what has happened to mankind.

The book isn’t nearly as political or as outspokenly dire as “1984,” so much so that it’s easy to picture a young reader saying, “What is supposed to be so bad about all this?” Unlike in the book by Orwell (Huxley’s pupil at Eton), in which independence of mind earns you torture and brainwashing, Huxley’s freethinkers are threatened with expulsion to a small island (Iceland) —

[jobim]

I think, DJ, that your original logo is the single best use of Obama’s I have yet seen. Excellent work!

[DJ Frisat]

Thanks for your comment. Sadly, ‘soma’ has taken on so many different meanings in recent years that the original use of the term in Brave New World is lost on a lot of people.

[shove_it]

Just for grins, I Binged ‘Soma’ and the bra ad is what popped up first. BTW, there is an actual pain drug called ‘Soma’ ... http://www.rxlist.com/soma-drug.htm

[the invisib1e hand]

That is a splendidly-written comparison of Huxley’s vision with our present-day world. I don’t know Kyle Smith, but I will keep an eye out for him now. Huxley’s book is extraordinarily prescient, and Smith relates these parallels convincingly.

omg what are you kyle's mom pretending not to be?

It was readable, but "splendid?" Chesterton was "splendid." This is 8th grade essay stuff.

[elcid1970]

When it comes to Soma, I’ll take the bra ad. That gal is so Catherine Zeta-Jones.

By the way, does CZ-J know that she is the pinup girl for FReepers?

;^)

[DJ Frisat]

Yep. I think there’s either a band or a song called ‘Soma’, too. As I said to another poster, it’s kind of lost its meaning because of all the new, different references.

[jobim]

Huxley also foresaw a disturbing partnership between the state and capitalism but didn’t anticipate how little need for government collusion sophisticated marketers would need to reorder society.
And again: The cycle of challenges confronted and mastered, the flow of meaningful work, has largely been taken away from Huxley’s world citizens.

Not only is the syntax here well above 8th grade, the ideas indeed are.

I like your reading list on your personal page. Intrepid and Orthodoxy make any list worth taking note of. And yes, splendid is a word that Chesterton would use either satirically or in reference to something outstanding, such as an essay by Newman. Perhaps I was watering it down by using it here, in comparison with Newman, or Chesterton himself. But then again, I never claimed that Smith soared aloft with those superlative writers, did I?

Pretending to be Smith's mother? Are you serious about that accusation, even if lodged hyperbolically? I stand by my contention that it was a laudable essay, and to my mind covered major points in Huxley's book accurately.

I am more interested in your response. I am fascinated by someone who cites Chesterton and "omg" in the same response. You would seem to be of a supercilious nature, and if I am wrong, I apologize in advance. Maybe you just had your 5th Manhattan. Been there myself.

[jobim]

The Invisible Hand? Bueller? Bueller? Invisible Hand? Anybody? Anybody?

[the invisib1e hand]

Piss off, asshat.

meditate on that.

[jobim]

I pity your wretched state of mind, and will gladly end this fruitless dialogue.

[GOPJ]

“Community, Identity, Stability”...

[x]

Interesting article in last month's Commentary, "How Highbrows Killed Culture":

In 1931, as Huxley was composing Brave New World, he wrote newspaper articles arguing that “we must abandon democracy and allow ourselves to be ruled dictatorially by men who will compel us to do and suffer what a rational foresight demands.” It was Huxley’s view that “dictatorship and scientific propaganda may provide the only means of saving humanity from the misery of anarchy.” Many of the elements in the “brave new world” that contemporary readers find jarring actually appealed to Huxley. The sorting of individuals by type, eugenic breeding, and hierarchic leadership were policies for which he had proselytized. The problem with the world he created is the lack of spiritual insight, spiritual greatness, on the part of its leader.

Most of our teachers probably took Huxley as a good democrat concerned about elitism and the evil effects of technology, but according to this, Huxley was an elitist and an enthusiast for reproductive technology who only wanted the guardians and new technologies to reflect older spiritual values.

I guess you could find a similar ambivalence in Orwell, who was enthusiastic for the "classless society" he saw in wartime Barcelona but repelled by Stalinist dictatorship. Huxley, though, was apparently a far more conflicted character than Orwell. Maybe his book was a success and has lasted because it wasn't simply a tract attacking modernity, but reflected a deep ambivalence about what was going on and what he expected from the future.