In Brave New World, Huxley writes about our world five centuries into the future. Humans are lab grown and indoctrinated until the age of 18. They are split into five castes, each conditioned into believing their caste is the best one to be in (how they managed to convince anyone from the Epsilon caste that literal slavery is a good deal is beyond me). Marriage and monogamy are silly concepts of the past; everyone is polyamorous and can ‘have’ each other at will. Drugs are ubiquitous, and you are encouraged to take them any time you feel unhappy. Death is believed to be positive, so there is no suffering to be had in the passing of an acquaintance.
Which world would you rather live in? One where each rung of Maslow’s hierarchy barring self-actualization is granted to everyone, or our current world, where the priviledged (like myself) can experience life to the fullest, while billions of others have a lower quality of life than they would otherwise have in Huxley’s utopia?
Throughout the book, this question was in the back of my mind. Life is full of painful and unpleasant experiences. Sure, suffering is what gives meaning to the positive emotions, but the suffering in some people’s lives (and in their minds) becomes unbearable. If humanity is more well off than ever before, why is suicide the leading cause of death for my demographic group (Asian-Americans age 15-24)? Becoming a resident of the utopia—living a life of blissful content and carelessness—is an alluring alternative.
Huxley must have anticipated the reader asking themselves this question, since he proceeds to dismantle our desire for the utopia, leaving not a shadow of a doubt that such a world should be avoided at all costs. He does this by introducing us to a character named John the Savage. John is a white man who was raised on a savage reservation, a part of the world that has not yet been “civilised.” John had a rough upbringing, and on paper, the civilized world would improve his life by every metric. However, after arriving in Britain, things start to go downhill. For lack of better words, John finds himself surrounded by NPCs. The Brave New World* he was so excited to see turned out to be a dystopia. Social stability and material abundance come at the expense of individual freedoms and individuality altogether. The shallow happiness of the citizens can more accurately be described as ‘overcompensations for misery.’
The fundamental choice faced by John and Mustapha Mond, one of the architects of the utopia, is whether to prioritize happiness or truth. By choosing truth, we claim the right to freedom and self-expression, but we also claim the right to suffering. This seems self-evident in hindsight, but perhaps this is because Huxley was able to communicate it in such a powerful way that I now see it as common sense.
IRL Update (05/20/2023): This was a much tougher read compared to Orwell’s 1984 (which I should probably re-read sometime), but I’m glad I finished it. Instead of reading a consistent 1 hour a night, I find myself reading in longer sittings but less often now. I think a reason for this is that many weekdays, once I get back from my internship and work on my summer courses for a bit, I’m too tired to do anything except lie on my queen size bed in an air conditioned room and watch funny videos on my phone. First world problems :/
*John educated himself by reading Shakespeare while growing up on the savage reservation. He refers to the outside utopia as a ‘brave new world’, which is a reference to Shakespeare’s The Tempest, in which the phrase is also used with much dramatic irony.