Brave New World

Before there was The Matrix and Bladerunner, before there was even 1984, there was \’Brave New World\’. It is astonishing that Aldous Huxley wrote this tale of technological dystopia in 1932. The social elements from the story are similar to those in Orwell and Kafka and others, namely a society of obedient sheep run by the state and benevolent dictators through brainwashing and groupthink. But whats striking about the novel is how it so astutely anticipates a society taken over by benevolent technocrats rather than politicians, a scenario that appears increasingly likely in the age of AI and genetic engineering. Huxley came from an illustrious scientific family with social connections. His grandfather was Thomas Henry Huxley, Darwins close friend, publicist and bulldog, whose famous smackdown of Bishop Samuel Wilberforce has been relished by rationalists fighting against religious faith ever since. His brother was Julian Huxley, a famous biologist who among other accomplishments wrote a marvelous tome on everything that was then known about biology with H. G. Wells. Steeped in scientific as well as social discourse, possessing a deep knowledge of medical and other scientific research, Aldous was in an ideal position to write a far-reaching novel. This he duly did. The basic premise of the novel sounds eerily prescient. Sometime in the near future, society has been regimented into a caste system where people are genetically engineered by the state in large state-run reproductive farms. Anticipating The Handmaids Tale, only a select few women and men are capable of providing fertile eggs and sperm for this careful social engineering. The higher castes are strong, intelligent and charismatic. The lower castes are turgid, obedient and physically weak. They dont begrudge those from the upper castes because their genetic engineering has largely removed their propensity toward jealousy and violence. Most notably, because reproduction is now the responsibility of the state, there is no longer a concept of a family, of a father or mother. There is knowledge of these concepts, but its regarded as archaic history from a past era and is met with revulsion. How is this population kept under control? Not shockingly at all, through sex, drugs and rock and roll. Promiscuity is encouraged from childhood onwards and is simply a way of life, and everyone sleeps with everyone else, again without feeling jealousy or resentment (it was this depiction of promiscuity that led the book to be banned in India in the 60s). They flood their bodies with a drug called soma whenever they feel any kind of negative emotion welling up inside and party like theres no end. They are brainwashed into believing the virtues of these and other interventions by the state through subliminal messages played when they are sleeping; such unconscious brainwashing goes all the way back to their birth. People do die, but out of sight, and when they are still looking young and attractive. Death is little more than a nuisance, a slight distraction from youth, beauty and fun. Like Neo from The Matrix, one particular citizen of this society named Bernard Marx starts feeling that there is more to the world than would be apparent from this state of induced bliss. On a tryst with a particularly attractive member of his caste in an Indian reservation in New Mexico, he comes across a man referred to as the savage. The savage is the product of an illegitimate encounter (back when there were parents) between a member of a lower caste and the Director of Hatcheries who oversees all the controlled reproduction. He has grown up without any of the enlightened instruments of the New World, but his mother has kept a copy of Shakespeare with her so he knows all of Shakespeare by heart and frequently quotes it. Marx brings the savage back to his society. The rest of the book describes the savages reaction to this supposed utopia and its ultimately tragic consequences. Ultimately he concludes that its better to have free will and feel occasionally unhappy, resentful and angry than live in a society where free will is squelched and the population is kept bathed in an induced state of artificial happiness. The vision of technological control in the novel is sweeping and frighteningly prescient. There is the brainwashing and complacent submission to the status quo that everyone undergoes which is similar to the messages provided in modern times by TV, social media and the 24-hour news cycle. There are the chemical and genetic interventions made by the state right in the embryonic stage to make sure that the embryos grow up with desired physical or mental advantages or deficiencies. These kinds of interventions are the exact kind feared by those wary of CRISPR and other genetic editing technologies. Finally, keeping the population preoccupied, entertained and away from critical thinking through sex and promiscuity is a particularly potent form of societal control that has been appreciated well by Victorias Secret, and that will not end with developments in virtual reality. In some sense, Huxley completely anticipates the social problems engendered by the technological takeover of human jobs by robots and AI. Once human beings are left with nothing to do, how does the state ensure that they are prevented from becoming bored and restless and causing all kinds of trouble? In his book Homo Deus, Yuval Harari asks the same questions and concludes that a technocratic society will come up with distractions like virtual reality video games, new psychoactive drugs and novel forms of sexual entertainment that will keep the vast majority of unemployed from becoming bored and potentially hostile. I do not know whether Harari read Huxley, but I do feel more frightened by Huxley than by Harari. One reason I feel more frightened is because of what he leaves out; the book was published in 1932, so it omits any discussion of nuclear weapons which were invented ten years later. The combination of nuclear weapons with limitless societal control through technology makes for a particularly combustible mix. The biggest prediction of Huxleys dystopia, and one distinctly different from that made by Orwell or Kafka, is that instead of a socialist state, peoples minds are much more likely to be controlled in the near future by the leaders of technology companies like Google and Facebook who have formed an unholy nexus with the government. With their social media alerts and Fitbits and maps, the tech companies are increasingly telling us how to live our lives and distracting us from free thinking. Instead of communist regimes like the Soviet Union forcibly trampling on individual choice and liberty, we are already gently but willingly ceding our choices, privacy and liberties to machines and algorithms developed by these companies. And just like the state in Huxley and Orwells works, the leaders of these corporations will tell us why its in our best interests to let technology control our lives and freedom, when all the while it would really be in their best interests to tell us this. Our capitulation to their inventions will look helpful and voluntary and will feel pleasurable and even noble, but it will be no less complete than the capitulation of every individual in Brave New World or 1984. The only question is, will there be any savages left among us to tell us how foolishly we are behaving?

Do NOT bother with the Kindle version. Specifically the one with the picture of the eggs and blood. There IS a kindle version that is the correct text (with the title in red banner) listed for $10+. But the eggs and blood version is completely different, simplified, dumbed down version of the physical book. The paperback format as pictured on the product page is what I have for my physical copy and they are vastly different. I read the kindle version while at work on my computer during slow periods and then came home and attempted to read the book version where I left off, only to find that chapters didn\’t line up, there were entire pages of conversation missing towards the end of the book between Mustapha Mond and John, the Savage. ENTIRE. PAGES. Very upsetting to learn this. It shouldn\’t be on the same product page listed as a kindle version. It\’s a completely different version. DO NOT PURCHASE THE KINDLE VERSION.

I bought the Kindle edition for $1.49 (the one with eggs on the cover) and it is NOT the actual, original version; it is a watered-down, summary of sorts of the actual book. It basically takes the original version, changes the prose and wording to make it more \”readable\” and understandable in more modern language, I suppose. If that\’s what you\’re looking for, then I recommend this edition but if you\’re looking for the original, you\’ll need to spend a little more money to download the original with the man on the front cover. Maybe I missed some kind of disclosure but I don\’t remember seeing anything saying this was a different version. Even though I\’m only out $1 and some change, it\’s still kind of disappointing that I wasted it on a book that\’s seemingly advertised as the original. If they\’ll sell a book that\’s not the original for $1.49, I wonder if they\’ll try to sell one that\’s not the original for $10 or $15? If you didn\’t know what you\’re looking for and didn\’t know this wasn\’t the original, you\’d just think you got a heck of a deal on a classic when, in reality, you were ripped off. I don\’t typically give bad reviews and this review does not reflect the content of Brave New World but rather that of the actual sale/this particular version of the book. You can see on the pictures I\’ve attached the differences in the wording from the original to the version I purchased.

The problem is not Huxleys writing, it is that this version is horrible, missing paragraphs and pages. I expect much better from Amazon, please refund my money and send me a full version of this classic. Thank you.

\”Brave New World\” by Aldous Huxley was written in the 1930\’s. The first time I read this book I was in either middle school or high school. I recently re-read this book with a group of 12th grade students as a part of their english curriculum. It is so interesting how differently I view the book now as opposed to how I viewed the book 30+ years ago. Aspects of this book that I found either shocking or unbelievable when I was younger, such as the ability to customize a human baby, have now seemed to come true. Other parts, like how society became numb to humanity and emotion feels like a prophecy that is fast becoming a reality in the present world. If it has been a while since you read \”Brave New World\”, it\’s tme to read it again with fresh eyes and different point of view. You won\’t be disappointed and you may be pleasantly surprised at how well the book has held up. If you do decide to read it again, it is kind of fun finding all the Shakespeare references in the book. Kind of like the 1930\’s version of finding the \”easter egg\” in a show or video game. Some Shakespearean references are more obvious and some are seemingly impossible to see. Good Luck and happy reading.

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