[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?

[psydefbooks]

Purity of being. In the same way a saint would be considered superior to a murderer in Christian deontology.