Are We Living in Huxley's Brave New World? | Book Review and Cultural Insight

Those us who love reading know that there are titles that stay on the TO-READ list for a while. For me "Brave New World", written in 1932 by Aldous Huxley was one of them.

After reading "The Doors of Perception" and "Heaven and Hell" in high school, I was intrigued by this man's forward thinking and insights into human psychology and culture. For those of you not familiar with this author's works you may want to check out some of his writings as they are as relevant today as they day they were written.

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This book draws out issues of an apathetic, complacent, disengaged and homogenous culture. The similarities between our modern civilization and this imagined future state is a little creepy in its accuracy.

"Brave New World" is a classic book and essential reading for anyone interested in a unique cultural analysis and insightful fiction. Written in 1932, the book is amazing in its analysis of a possible future which is at times frighteningly similar to the present. Huxley pulls from an extensive understanding of human behavior to draw parallels between his imagined future reality and socially conditioned relationships. Not just a cultural analysis, yet more than a work of fiction, this book takes the reader into a satirical utopia where citizens are not born but decanted and the social stability is upheld through deep and thorough subliminal programming.

We are being programmed and manipulated into believing we live in a freedom-based civilization and fall into believing the State has our best interest at heart.

This book does a great job of creating a fictional future and, in doing so, is able to stimulate a unique criticism of modern culture. This future is one where God is replaced by Ford (the originator of the mass production), family ties are abolished in favor or the belief that "everyone belongs to everyone else" and hypnopaedic conditioning (subliminal sleep programming) replaces unique or individual thoughts. The society is based on stability, "the primal and ultimate need" and the State goes to great lengths to create a population of unwavering and unquestioning citizens.

One parallel that struck me as intriguing was the idea that members of a society were unwilling to question the virtues of the current cultural paradigm. Members of the society are programmed from a very early age to hold a narrow and strict view of acceptable beliefs. Unwilling (or perhaps unable) to be freethinkers, the social order based on stability is upheld. How may folks have you talked with that are unable to comprehend or imagine another reality that what they know?

People are so deeply conditioned, they are unable to consider reality outside of the one they are living.

The citizens unquestioningly fit into a well defined class system, determined at birth. While this takes it farther than the current inequality, it also brings up a lot of question of race and class that may not evident from those steeped within the paradigm of culture. The Epsilon semi-morons do the dirty work for all other classes, whereas the Alphas are the elite class charged with ruling and managing. There is no questioning of this distinct hierarchy.

Social social order is maintained in part due to constant distractions.

The population is constantly stimulated by activities such as electromagnetic golf or feelies (a movie with felt sensations). The idea of spending any time alone is ludicrous, and works of art are outlawed.

The past is erased as it is irrelevant. The individual is dissolved into the collective culture that is manipulated into a constant state of distraction or consumption.

A population that forgets the past and is busy consuming experiences is certainly easy to manipulate and control.

This makes me think of the modern electronic age where we are being programmed to have an ever decreasing attention span and thrive on instant gratification. Consuming one experience and form of media or another; anything to take the attention away form the social inequalities and state of the world. We are being shaped into Sheeple that are great at following the herd. This imagined world does diverge from our current culture in that the "I" phenomenon is much stronger than the collective mind described in this book. One constant though is the push towards consumption.

Consumption is the Key to a thriving society

Both Huxley's future and modern culture share this component. In Brave New World all activities are geared towards consumption- be it through favoring complex forms of recreation that require equipment or the prevalence of personal helicopters among the upper classes. There is no reason to take a walk in the countryside as this consumes few resources.

Just like in this insightful work of fiction, we are duped into believing that consumption is the only road to personal satisfaction. In reality it is benefiting a societal structure, not the collective wellbeing of its members.

Huxley cleverly uses phrase like Ford speed to drive home the innate reliance and focus on consumption. Mechanisms of mass production and consumption replace religion and ideas of God or any force beyond the human-manipulated reality are abolished. This rings true in an era where consumption and convenience are favored over creativity and authenticity.

This book was an insightful and interesting read

Both the historical context (written pre WWII) and modern cultural comparison are worthwhile aspects of the book. For anyone interested in human behavior and how culture affects us as a collective and as individuals, this is a MUST READ. Of course, we still have access to non reference books (not so in this Brave New World) and an ability to execute our freedom of thought and expression. I feel this should be required reading as it points out some serious dangers of an increasingly mechanized and consumption-based culture where we lose a large part of our humanness.

We are living in an age where States are perpetrating heinous crimes and creating mass destruction in the name of progress. What culture do see yourself creating?