"But I like the inconveniences."
"We don't," said the Controller. "We prefer to do things comfortably."
"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."
"In fact," said Mustapha Mond, "you're claiming the right to be unhappy."
"All right then," said the Savage defiantly, "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 Mond shrugged his shoulders. "You're welcome," he said.
-- "Brave New World"
Finally read "Brave New World" today after years of having it on my "To Read" list. I am happy to say that all of the "hype" (of 80 years) was not misplaced, and it was just as thought provoking and terrifying as promised.
And, as a side note, if you are like me and have never read the book for some bizarre reason, an (80 years too late) SPOILERS AHEAD WARNING! But if you are like most people and have read, or at least know in passing pop culture references to the work, then forge onward.
I was surprised at it's length - I thought for sure it would be at least as long as "1984", and I was also surprised at the large and varied cast of characters. Of course, I tried to read it on its own merit, but it was difficult not to compare it to its equally, if not more famous, Orwellian counterpart.
Immediately I was reminded of my friend Mitchell's facebook post, in which he shared a comic that showed how Orwell posited that what we hate would destroy us, while Huxley posited that what we love (or desire) would destroy us. Indeed, both are terrifying, but there's something particularly truthful in Huxley's telling that Orwell's lacks. Of course, here I'm thinking of America's propensity towards engorging and indulging itself in the quest for happiness - at whatever cost. Huxley's prediction that we would be okay with a vapid, shallow substitute for happiness at the cost of dignity, humanity, liberty, and high art seems to be fulfilled in a "lite" form of our 21st century hook-up culture, drug and alcohol addiction, demand for immediate gratification, and lack of interest in pursuing anything that seems to have "insurmountable" odds against us.
It's rather shocking, for instance, how unlike Orwell's subverted morality, Huxley assumes a passive one. It's not that we need to completely mask and change our quest for virtue, but make the journey seem completely and wholly unappealing - to tell the Consumer (for that is what the denizens of Huxley's world are - Consumers and Cogs in Community that are dispensable and stable) that the journey for morality is not worth the discomfort and patience in comparison to the pleasure they could have today. Morality isn't eliminated out of suppression, but out of apathy. No one cares about old fashioned values if they get in the way of better progress.
Indeed, the clearly dismissive tone of the satire in regards to religion (obviously contrasted by the various quotations from forbidden books by the end of the novel) is not far from the "enlightened" progressive of today, who preaches and praises science (or at least a watered down version of it, akin to what's described in the novel), rather than superstitious and antiquated religious beliefs. For rather than religion being the end of man, the pursuit of happiness is all that exists in a world of the material, corporeal now (in comparison to a world that understands the ethereal, spiritual eternity).
The dizzying cast of characters Huxley introduces is also spectacular. Indeed, I would be hard pressed to say who the "hero" of the story is - or even if there's a character that exhibits real, sustainable virtue and/or enlightenment. Certainly Bernard would be a good candidate if it wasn't for his pathetic cowardness, oddly placed arrogance, and lack of criticism for his world's inescapable caste system as long as he benefits from it. Then there's John, the "Savage" who seems to be the most human of all the cast (having read Shakespeare, grieved at the death of his mother, concern with the state of the soul, and interest in marrying/loving Lenina rather than solely lusting after her). However, he too is prone to moral corruption as evidenced by his rage against everyone from Pope and the people he lives with on the Reservation to Lenina and the people he encounters in Civilization. Which, speaking of, Lenina may be a hopeful heroine - she is the only female protagonist, and in particular she gets plenty of exposure to the ideas of the learned band of outcasts who long for something more. Yet she fails to grasp any of the (admittedly incoherent) exclamations of dissatisfaction and yearning for something more that the men shout. She has no conception of the virtue found in monogamy, dignity beyond what she can offer with her sexuality, or of a life where unhappiness can't be escaped from with a simple "soma" holiday. Certainly Mustapha Mond, this world's "O'Brien" (from "1984 ) equivalent, wouldn't be the hero, (and his part is more like a secondary character). However, aside from Mr. Watson or John, he is the only other truly "learned man" in the novel that understands that the order of the brave new world has gone against nature.
In short, there is no Winston to root for in this dystopia - merely a cast of complex characters who, in turn, try and fail to achieve a sense of dignity or enlightenment. Each attempt and each person too weighed down by years of subversive conditioning and social order, lack of education, and failure to meaningfully pursue any type of moral progress (or indeed even have a teacher to show them how). This in turn shows, which I like, how just because a man has access to Shakespeare or the Bible, without a mentor (and a meaningful relationship therein), works still fall short of teaching the Truth. Like Bowie's character said of television in "The Man Who Fell to Earth, "The strange thing about television is that it doesn't tell you everything. It shows you everything about life on Earth, but the true mysteries remain. Perhaps it's in the nature of television. Just waves in space."
Another point of interest that I enjoyed was how Huxley, like Orwell and Burgess (in "A Clockwork Orange's" famous torture scene), was interested interested in how thought, behaviour, and morality were linked, although Huxley approached the scene unlike the other two. Rather, Huxley chose to start the conditioning at the point of conception instead of introducing torture after a "defective" morality or thought-crime. His description of the treatment to embryos and children is certainly one of the most jarring and arresting opening scenes I've ever had the pleasure to read. Not to mention how all three men use language in an ingenious way to make their point about how language and thought are also intertwined, although Huxley's is more clever word play than the dizzying complexity of Burgess' narrative or Orwell's systematic newspeak.
So all in all an excellent dystopia that definitely proves why Huxley's book has been labelled a classic for decades.
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