Aldous Huxley - Brave New World - Episode 4 - The Struggle Between Meaning And Happiness!

How To Love Lit Podcast

Hi, I’m Christy Shriver and we’re here to discuss books that have changed the world and have changed us.

I’m Garry Shriver, and this is the How to Love Lit Podcast. Today we conclude our four-part series on Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World; the world Huxley creates may be New but certainly it is not brave. Michel Houellebecq in his 1998 novel The Elementary Particles references Brave New World in an unusual way. Instead of seeing it as a warning of an evil to be avoided, he, or at least his characters find it a world to aspire to. Let me quote him, “everyone says BNW is supposed to be a totalitarian nightmare, a vicious indictment on our society, but that’s just hypocritical bullshit. BNW is our idea of heaven: genetic manipulation, sexual liberation, the war against aging, the leisure society.”

It’s a conversation, Huxley thought we should have as a society: what constitutes a real human world? What is human society? Are we individuals living together; or are cells in a single organism called society with a small collection of men as braintrusts running it all? In BNW Revisited, he says this, “In spite of the Id and the Unconscious, in spite of endemic neurosis and the prevalence of low IQ's most men and women are probably decent enough and sensible enough to be trusted with the direction of their own destinies. “

The World Controllers in BNW disagree., Mond, in part 4, describes a world where men and women are NOT to be trusted with the direction of their own destinies. And as we reach the end of the book, we listen to Mustafa Mond explain why. And in a nutshell the answer is instability. “Independence was not made for man. God isn’t compatible with machinery and scientific medicine and universal happiness. “It would upset the whole social order if men started doing things on their own.” These are the arguments we read at the end of the book, but their meanings are illustrated throughout starting in chapter one.

After reading the dialogue between John and Mond, so much of what we’ve seen illustrated makes more sense. Really, this is a book that needs to be read twice because when you read those first chapters, you’re overwhelmed and confused. In episode 1, we tour with our omniscient narrator that Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Center in the year of stability AF 632. We learn that vivaparous reproduction (or birth as we know it) has been replaced by the assembly line; babies are manufactured in bottles. The director explains to us that world is divided into castes, and everyone is conditioned to believe they are equal and equally valuable- albeit, they certainly are not equal in the way we think of equality today. We are introduced to a new set of values and the value that prevails is happiness. The World State has solved man’s happiness problem, and we are shown how this is achieved. The way the director describes makes it seem flawless. Caitrin Nicol in her famous essay “Brave New World at 75” describes it a different way, “there is an unholy alliance of industrial capitalist, fascist, communist, psycho- analytic, and pseudo-scientific ideologies has brought about the end of history. The past is taboo - "History is bunk," as "Our Ford" so eloquently said - and there is no future, because history's ends have been accomplished. There is no pain, deformity, crime, anguish, or social discontent. Even death has no more sting: Children are acclimatized to the death palaces from the age of eighteen months, encouraged to poke around and eat chocolate creams while the dying are ushered into oblivion on soma, watching sports and pornography on television.”

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