[Barrin92]

BNW remains to this day one of my biggest disappointments when it comes to the classics. I remember reading it maybe fifteen years ago and I went in with this expectation to read this brilliant critique of modern consumer society everyone was referencing, what did I get? The antagonists of the book are called Marx, Lenina and Mustapha (read: muslims, women and commies running the world government), and the hero is a guy called John the Savage who reads Shakespeare in the redneck reservation and is the real woke one compared to all the sheep on soma and sex.

If someone wrote this book today you would think they have listened to too much talk radio, and I think it's one of the best examples of what Leo Marx called 'the machine in the garden' myth.[1] the anxiety of (predominantly anglosphere) authors that technology and industrialization disrupt their naturalistic and God given, pastoral community.

I think I might be one of the few people who read the book and came away liking the one world government more, because the book completely and utterly failed to convince me how it is anything but fear of modernity, technology and the liberation of women from reproductive obligations. That last part is very important and in that respect the book has aged particularly poorly. The author of the essay at the end calls the book a warning of 'feminine tyranny', and I think that's exactly right. Huxley seems to be dead afraid of a society in which the monogamous family is washed away by technology and higher forms of social organization, without really making the case why hanging out in the reservation is supposed to be any good.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Machine_in_the_Garden

[leto_ii]

My take on the book (which I think is the more common one) is that it's a criticism of a form of 'soft' fascism. People are placed on a rigid hierarchy where everybody is biologically conditioned to belong to a certain caste. At least the individuals of the upper caste live a carefree life of empty consumerism and everybody is constantly intoxicated with happiness-inducing narcotics.

While it's not unfair to suspect Huxley of primitivist nostalgia, I don't think his reaction is against progressive modernity, feminism, leftism in general. The fear to my mind is of something like Taylorism/Fordism taken to its extreme [1].

What I've always found more compelling in BNW as compared to explicitly totalitarian dystopias (1984 etc.) is precisely that the dehumanizing, alienating, oppressive nature of the system is hidden. On the face of it it's a utopia, nothing to complain about. The abomination shows itself when you read a bit between the lines.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_New_World#Fordism_and_so...

[psydefbooks]

As the writer of this review, I agree that the book's fame sets expectations that cannot possibly be met. And perhaps my enthusiastic review which ignores its inadequacies, in favor of focusing on the value I saw in it, also inflates one's expectations to the determent of the work.

It's not a masterpiece of literature. Huxley himself did not believe it was a great work of his. It has, however, become a symbol for an insidious type of tyranny that I have called "feminine tyranny."

> Huxley seems to be dead afraid of a society in which the monogamous family is washed away by technology and higher forms of social organization, without really making the case why hanging out in the reservation is supposed to be any good.

These "higher forms of social organization" can only come at the expense of the individual. This is one of Huxley's main anxieties.

Huxley was not a racist, he was not a sexist: he was a creative individual. He saw how collectivization movements were killing his kind. Brave New World is his cry. Given that Huxley was a writer, who names several of his books with the words of Shakespeare -- Brave New World itself is a bit of dialogue from The Tempest, -- I believe John IS Huxley's avatar. And John commits suicide at the end.

I find myself incredibly sad that you've interpreted him this way. I truly don't believe he was the type of individual you claim he was.

[Barrin92]

I mean don't get me wrong, I don't think he's sexist or racist (at least not any more than most of his peers at the time) but I don't think he actually transcends his anxieties or sentimentality.

What the book boils down to, and you touch on it a few times, is a criticism of manufactured society. But the book never gives this a fair shake. John's experience is authentic because it is 'natural', synthetic desires are not. People choose the brave new world because they're genetically brainwashed, not because Huxley generally considers if there's something to that world that would make people chose it. Individualism is good, collectivism is mindless, driven home by characters who are largely neurotic caricatures without Soma.

The kind of questions I think a work like this needs to deal with are, what if there are collective experiences, more real, more genuine than anything any individual could ever feel, what if John is actually wrong, is he just limited in his perspective? What makes John more authentic of a character, aren't his drives just as biologically determined, but merely by chance rather than by design?

John is a sort of Neo among bluepilled people, everyone else is just an 'NPC' as people would say today. The one thinking guy who has walked into the Borg cube etc. And i think like the Matrix as real social criticism this is kind of trite. It does not take alternatives to individualism seriously.

[throwanem]

I'm not sure that's a complete perspective, either. It's been a minute since I last read the book, but doesn't the world society offer an option of exile for those who can't tolerate participation in it? I recall Mond offering that to John, anyway.

Read in retrospect, one could find in it a cri de coeur on behalf of what is today called "authenticity" and, oft as not, itself manufactured (#vanlife).

I think what the book is really missing, in the light of a century hence, is a discussion of how this exquisitely planned, designed, and constructed society handles a crisis - a change in circumstances that calls the assumptions of its design into question or invalidates them outright. When Huxley wrote, it was still possible to repose one's faith in technological positivism, which was after all the vastly prevailing intellectual current of the day. These days, maybe not so much - if nothing else, the last few decades have put a lot of deep dents in the idea that we, as a species in the large, can and will engineer ourselves out of any difficulty we encounter. I'd like to see someone take on the question of what happens to the Brave New World society in the face of that.

[psydefbooks]

I value your critique. You're right that the work does not fully explore these questions.

> What makes John more authentic of a character, aren't his drives just as biologically determined, but merely by chance rather than by design?

This is a really good question. John is more authentic because he's an individual -- I know, don't scoff yet. He's looking to create a personal connection with Lenina. He doesn't want to "have" her like the other men have her: he wants to love her. Lenina cannot form love bond with John -- that's not in her programming. She can only sample his sexuality.

Now, we may ask: what's the value of personal connections? I have a hard time answering this in the abstract right now, but all I can say is that I've enjoyed intense personal connections in my life that could never be replaced by impersonal collective relations.

[throwanem]

This really isn't a useful axis of distinction, not least because (iirc) the work under discussion effectively disposes of it during Mond's disquisition. You'd do better to distinguish between John's self-ownership and Lenina's total lack of awareness that she might even have any responsibility of self-determination. That I think is what you're groping toward with this ill-defined, handwavey claim around "individual".

You'd likewise do better to look further beyond the text - you have, after all, a century of perspective on which to draw, but your analysis reads as if uninformed by anything newer than Nietzsche or maybe Evola. Whether that's intentional I've no idea, but either way it seems to have caused you a harder time finding anything new to say here.

You can, I hope, do better than "hedonistic nihilism is bad actually", and I'd be interested to see what might come of the attempt.

[psydefbooks]

I appreciate your challenge here. You're right that my reply was handwavy. I'd love to read your analysis of the question if you'd oblige me. I'll also make another attempt as you ask.

I ultimately believe that there's a progression system of consciousness related to the nature of our being. Modifying our being by forming different kinds of attachments and detachments, in the Jungian sense of alchemy, allows us to achieve different states of consciousness. It appears to me that there exists an "enlightened" state of consciousness that is associated with the "perfect being." I believe the greatest achievement and goal of human existence is to transform ourselves into this perfect being, i.e., attain enlightenment.

Lenina has subordinated her prima materia to the macro alchemical work. Whereas John reserves his prima materia and seeks to work it himself in solitude. John is thus on the path to enlightenment, but Lenina has abandoned the path. If John keeps going, he may develop a pure enough being to see the kingdom of God, i.e., attain enlightenment (see Matthew 5:8). This is why John is ultimately superior to Lenina.

The beings of Helmholtz and Bernard offer us perfect examples of superiority and inferiority in being. Bernard is attached to the collective, but his attachment to the collective is not yielding its expected returns -- hence his misery. Helmholtz, on the other hand, is attached to the collective, but the yield on that bond is not enough to complete him: Helmholtz is yearning for a higher state of development, i.e., for a higher state of being.

When Bernard's status is elevated in the collective by his exploitation of John, he is overjoyed and complete. Helmholtz exploits John in a different way: he uses the Shakespeare in John to help him develop his potentialities, i.e., evolve into a higher state of being. The better man is seeking to evolve, while the lesser man yearns to fit in his place.

This is a brief sense of the metaphysics I subscribe to and the judgement it produces.

That's the hackernews comment "attempt" in any case.

[throwanem]

That's one hell of a reading of Matthew 5:8. In this deontology of yours, how are "superior" and "inferior" defined, precisely?

[antihipocrat]

I wasn't too impressed with the writing, especially after hearing so much about the book. However, I think it provides an interesting alternative to the fear based absolute authoritarian control used by governments to varying effect currently and throughout history.

Huxley's description of a biological determinant (arbitrary or otherwise) as the basis upon which to build a discriminatory caste system for all of humanity is horrifying enough. To then drug the population in order to prevent them from feeling bad about being slaves to their biological betters is the icing on the cake.

Whether an Alpha or epsilon, that's not a world that I would want to live in.

[cryptica]

Were we're heading, we will wish that discrimination was based on biological factors. Instead, it will be based on mental factors. Cruelty, deception, hypocrisy, psychopathy, inhumanity will be rewarded. The determinant of class will be good and evil, with evil at the top.

At the top, there will exist a form of altruism so superficial and devoid of substance that only insane people will be able to join the elite class.

The best we can hope for is that the elites will be so insane that they won't last very long; that way we can get enough churn to ensure that no individual ever has enough time to enforce their insanity on the rest of the population.

As a group, we can hope that they will be so insane that they won't be able to agree on anything; their power will be constrained by their heterogeneous irrationality.

The worst case scenario is that we end up with homogeneous irrationality... Sadly we can see some signs of this today. Let's hope it can't sustain itself.

It does sometimes seem that mentally unstable people seek stability by leaning on other unstable people who are afflicted with the same kind of irrationality... Instead of looking to lean on mentally stable people who are different from them.

It seems as if mentally unstable people hate stable people. Maybe there is a deep seated jealousy behind this. Which is kind of ironic because they could probably get there themselves if they surrounded themselves with stable people. But they lack the humility to see this and nobody in their circles will ever point it out to them since they suffer from the same problem.

[WriterGuy2021]

I have a book recommendation for you: book of Ephesians in the bible.

"For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places." - Ephesians 6:12

Today we're calling it "mentally unstable" or "psychotic" or "sociopatic," but yesterday we simply called it "evil."

It's the eternal struggle.

[rhn_mk1]

> Were we're heading

What makes you think we're headed that way? Are there other plausible directions?

[cryptica]

I just see a strong correlation between mental instability and career success. I'm only speaking from personal experience. Sometimes it feels like it's the instability itself, not any specific action which leads to success because unstable people seem to recognise each other and help each other. Even among those who are psychopathic.

[abruzzi]

I've actually known quite a few people that liked the society depiceted in the novel. I had one friend that felt that it was ideal because what was depicted was a less painful version of the mindless drudgery that most of the world spends their life in, and those that don't fit in are sent somewhere where they can be themselves (Falkland Islands) He saw it as a better version of the divisions already present in our society. (His opinions, not mine.)

I've found the novel to be a bit of a Rorschach blot since people read their whole view of current society, and their place in it into the novel. As has been pointed out, Huxley was an artist, so his interpretation of his novel is heavily guided by a creative personality, and for many creative people, individuality is one of the highest goods. Others read their own views into it, and interpret the novel very differently. My personal reading has some sympathies with Huxley's version, but it is not the same. I'm not a fan of the way society (both at the macro and micro level) is structured now (or in 1932), so there are aspects of BNW that appeal to me.

[cheeseomlit]

>Huxley seems to be dead afraid of a society in which the monogamous family is washed away by technology and higher forms of social organization, without really making the case why hanging out in the reservation is supposed to be any good.

The case he makes is his horrifying depiction of the alternative to the monogamous family. You're correct in identifying his fears, but I personally don't see that they're unfounded. I can't help but feel an instinctual revulsion at "the monogamous family being washed away by technology and higher forms of social organization", its a profound loss of individuality

[gremloni]

Calling the caste system a higher form of social organization compared to monogamy couldn’t make me disagree with your perspective more. Additionally I share Huxley’s belief and preference for a pastoral lifestyle and the odiousness of a feminized society. Your classification of child rearing as a “burden” doesn’t make your views palatable.

The only things we agree on are that I like the heads of the one world government as well.

[decasteve]

The warning from Huxley is regarding what happens when the choice of child rearing (and bearing) are removed by both government and social pressures. He explores this to the extreme but many aspects of his thought experiment in Brave New World exist today.

More and more of child rearing is controlled by state institutions: child care, preschool, grade school, trade school, university, sports/activities, work, etc. Some are mandatory and some people are left with no other choice, e.g. both parents have to work to make ends meet, extended families live farther apart. A mother or father working as homemakers and child rearers are negatively viewed and social pressure mounts against one who chooses to do so (speaking from experience).

[drw85]

I agree, i also found the writing to be very "try hard" and pretty unpleasant to read.

That might be because i'm not a native english speaker, though.

[ByteJockey]

You're just going to ignore the entire engineered caste system part of the book?

[Barrin92]

I actually do entirely ignore it because I think it's purely a creation of the author for the purpose of making his point. Caste society is not a symptom of modernity, in fact the opposite. It's an anachronism in the book, sort of like putting your ideological opponent into a Nazi uniform and giving him a tiny mustache and making him speak with a scary German accent.

Slavery (which is really what it is in the story) you are more likely to enounter in the Antebellum South than in a modern metropolis and high modernity. Limiting the intellectual capacity of your subjects would never be the point of the kind of society that Huxley envisions, and it's one example of how he does not take the thing he aims to critique seriously.

A society so advanced it could realize Huxley's fears is not at the same time going to build itself a medieval army of slaves. Even at the time of Huxley's writing Taylorism was already well past its peak and criticism of mechanized production was everywhere.

[throwanem]

> I think it's purely a creation of the author for the purpose of making his point

It's a deliberate critique of eugenics, which was a popular and little criticized school of thought at the time of writing, and which did in its original iteration claim to offer the prospect of engineering people to fit assigned social roles.

[gremloni]

Nope, it’s the central theme. It’s a deeply feminized society with preassigned behaviors and motivations and zero agency.

[drfxyjhdyfrhgc]

>Huxley seems to be dead afraid of a society in which the monogamous family is washed away by technology and higher forms of social organization...

It would be rude of me to ask about your family of origin.

[AndrewDucker]

I felt likewise.