The pleasure cube experiment was the topic of one of my blog posts about a year ago, but in case you didn’t catch that, it’s a thought experiment centered around a single question: if you could choose to be happy forever and never feel any semblance of negative emotion, would you?
Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley, explores this idea on a larger scale. Despite coming from the early 1920s, its relevance and main themes seem especially important in the current age where we rely heavily on technology in our day to day.
Plot Summary
The story follows the main character Bernard Marx, an outcast in a society where everyone is genetically engineered to love their work and stay happy. There are no families, strong attachments, feelings, or biological children; the World State has hormone treatments and a soma drug that is designed to make them feel happy. The other characters in the society somewhat mock Bernard because of his physical stature, despite his place in the highest caste, and Bernard feels unsatisfied with this society as a result.
Bernard goes on a visit to a “Savage Reservation”, a place that has not been overtaken by the World State. Here he meets John, the unexpected son of the Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning (DHC), who was raised in a place where none of the technology of the World State exists. Initially John is excited to visit this place that he has been raised to idolize. Once he gets to the World State, he realizes its many flaws.
Thematic Elements
The part that makes Brave New World such a masterpiece is its falling action, where John discusses the values of beauty and depth in the modern world with the World Controller (the “big boss”) Mustapha Mond. Not only does it lay out the themes of the book clearly and plainly, but it also provides what most dystopian books don’t: the chapter provides an argument for the dystopian world. The author’s tone remains clinical and analytical during the entire novel, and this dissection of philosophical values is no exception.
The Infinite Pursuit of Happiness
The easiest theme to identify in this novel is the pursuit of happiness; the characters strive constantly to be happier and remain happier. Entertainment and consumption drive the society, which pushes both industries to invent endlessly and create ideas out of virtually nothing. The industries barely have anything to work off of, since the society has no experience or understanding of struggling or sadness, so they rely on the instantly gratifying pleasures of promiscuity. Whenever the citizens feel any semblance of negative emotion or deeper thought, they take the drug soma, which induces a happy delusion. The citizens are reminded over and over again that “everyone is happy now.”
However, this happiness comes at a steep cost. It has its roots in superficial connections and short-term instant pleasures, which ultimately results in a lack of deep thought in the majority of the entire society. The citizens, although with great ease, skip over everything unpleasant in their lives by drugging themselves over it. The possibility of rejection, feeling anticipation, anger… just take soma. John describes it as a poison, and suggests that those who use it are imprisoning themselves. Which takes me to my next point.
Freedom of Thought and Action
Although the characters are technically allowed to have freedom of thought and action, in reality they don’t. Soma essentially drugs them into an apathetic haze of happiness and pleasure, and they are encouraged to take it when they think anything that deviates from the societal standards of chasing instant gratification. This numbs all deep or creative thought; all citizens are unconsciously controlled to avoid thinking of depth and beauty.
Additionally, the people are “conditioned” from before they are decanted (children were not born but were grown from bottles) based on their predetermined roles in society. They are taught to associate pain with underconsumption and inefficiency, and death with chocolate eclairs. This process expedites the thought control of the society from the fetal stage; ideas that seem “natural” to the people are really just instilled by the government. The people are also given moral values in their sleep, a practice named hypnopaedia, to create communal agreement with the upper powers. Even their stigmas are conditioned.
Loss of thought results in a loss of action. But since the citizens are happy about their loss of thought, they don’t care that they are essentially being “imprisoned” and choose not to take action. This is how the government controls the society.
Commitment to Ideals
This theme is more of a subtle topic than a theme, but is found throughout the novel and the character development of both Bernard and John. They appear to have the same values of honour and valor and depth and beauty, but do they really? And is a value really a value if the individual that holds it has contradicting actions?
This is explored in the novel when Bernard, who at first and in theory, wishes the society to change because he thinks that the people treat each other like meat. He has grandiose ideas of depth and true emotion, showing relative commitment to these ideas when he doesn’t take threats from upper powers seriously. When these upper powers act upon their threats however, Bernard shows his true colors and panics. He doesn’t appear to be as flippant and apathetic to the technologies of the World State when he is presented with the threat of exile.
In contrast, John carries his relatively primitive views of how society should function, and continues to stick to them even when he is pressured and isolated from multiple societies. Even when presented with his most grandiose desires, he resists because he is completely committed to his values. But because of this constant pressure, he is eventually forced to give in.
All this ultimately to mean that the author’s message on an individual’s commitment to their values can often bend or snap when put under societal pressure for long enough.
The Significance of Brave New World
Huxley’s Brave New World is ultimately revered because it brings up a number of questions about the human condition, and how we handle BOTH the development AND the applications of new technologies. These include:
- Should the development of science and technology be controlled?
- How can we push the limits of human behavior control and psychology? Should we?
- Is it selfish to want pain and suffering, primarily in the less fortunate, to create the possibility of the existence of depth and beauty?
- Is it wrong to want universal happiness, efficiency, and peace at the cost of consciousness, internal freedom, and deep emotion?
- What is the real definition of happiness? Does it differ from complacency or denial?
TL;DR
Brave New World is a philosophical dystopian story that explores the ideas of true human existence, the meaning of happiness, and the dangers or pleasures of developing technology and behavior. It provides extensive food for thought!