On finally encountering "Brave New World"

again, more capcha problems...

Beware: the "great leader" in BNW is Mustapha Mons, which is both Muslim-y and globalist all in one. Beware the bogeyman. Aggghhhh!

Maybe because the danger of the Handmaid's Tale is so unlikely Atwood herself had to write a new dystopian masterpeice, "Oryx and Crake"?

Oh, I wouldn't think of Huxley as a "social conservative" in the contemporary use of the term. It's telling, though, that to be understood as seeing the traditional family as a bulwark against technocratic manipulation, and positing religion as a bulwark against economic manipulation counts as "socially conservative" in our contemporary context.

This comment seems pretty peculiar:

A little boy, younger than ten, must visit a psychologist because he does not want to indulge in erotic play with a little girl, as his teachers demand: a situation we seem to be fast approaching.

Fast approaching? There have been recent incidents of five- and six-year-olds being expelled or disciplined at school for things like kissing on school buses and pinching rear ends. If the psychologist is called in, it will probably be to lecture the kids about "inappropriate touching." Meanwhile, universities and some businesses have tried to regulate the sex lives of adult students and employees, even where these were unconnected to any professional role or relationship. Puritanism is alive and thriving, even if it takes the (sometimes) laudable form of aiming to prevent harassment and abuse.

Yes, I know, it's a novel, not a fact sheet. But even if BNW's reputation is well-deserved and some of its satirical points vividly made, they don't necessarily all add up. For good or ill, consumerism and Fordist production are both aspects of a kind of capitalism that is too high-powered and dynamic to leave a society in the kind of statis that utopian/dystopian fiction always seems to imagine. (Ironically enough, the better expression of the conservative objection to this is probably The Communist Manifesto's: "Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones.... All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned....")

The book is also an indictment of Americanization - Huxley shared his generations fear of the americanization of Europe - and a lot of the things in the book are exaggerated references to behaviors Huxley saw in America - I think feelies refer to the American obsession at the time with movies and isn't soma a reflection of the American chewing gum habit so prevalent then?

Huxley did not see the family as some bulwark against chaos - the family, marriage, and all the other forbidden things in the BNW promoted chaos - hence the need for them to be eliminated to create stability. Huxley is speaking to a post WWI society utterly exhausted by the chaos and instability of the war - and warning them that stability will have a very high price tag - such as the elimnination of family. He was very concerned with overpopulation and actually thought continued population growth would push us into the sort of society he describes in BNW.

Considering the TV mania right now over Michael Jackson's death it seems to me that his concern that we would become utterly preoccupied with the trivial was right on target.

Rod - follow this up with his essay - Brave New World Revisited.

I recall feeling terrified by both 1984 and BNW when I had to read them in high school - this discussion is bringing back that sense of dread. One thing that Huxley doesn't address - are the limits to a consumption lifestyle - his society ( like ours now) would inevitably collapse because they would run out of the resources needed to maintain that lifestyle. The refusal of a society to acknowledge a "history" and to always live in the present would leave them powerless to deal with an emerging crisis like climate change or peak oil - sounds like us now doesn't it ?

I recommend Handmaiden's Tale - another chilling dystopia.

"A life devoted to instant gratification produces permanent infantilization: "at sixty-four . . . tastes are what they were at seventeen." Example: Michael Jackson mania.

Theodore Dalrymple always has something insightful to say on any subject he approaches, which makes City Journal a regular "must".

After you finish Brave New World, try Island, which is Huxley's Utopian counterpart. The similarities and differences between the two are striking. My guess is you won't like it; it doesn't confirm your prejudices.

But it would be a mistake to ignore the common theme of both novels: many of the practices and technologies that you so abhor become tools for creating his Utopia just as much as his dystopia. The question, as always, comes down to how they are used.

Considering how much of conservatism, especially social conservatism, is not much more than thinly veiled nostalgia

Read some MacIntyre to understand why it seems so to you, and then get off your high horse: social conservatives are not just unreflective nostalgia monkeys any more than most liberals are starry-eyed utopians.

Geoff G. should keep the Huxley quote from 1937 on a small card in his wallet.

So should most of the leftists, liberals, and libertarians who post here.

That quote is their Bible and they should keep it with them, since they thump it all day every day.

"It's telling, though, that to be understood as seeing the traditional family as a bulwark against technocratic manipulation, and positing religion as a bulwark against economic manipulation counts as "socially conservative" in our contemporary context."

That is a fair point, and says something about the failure of language. In many ways, some things that are described as conservative can be described as counterculture, and vice-versa. I've had left-liberal friends describe becoming a stay-at-home mom as an act of rejection of the corporate career track and American corporate culture, while a lot of people, including a lot of feminists, act as though a woman working for a large law or accounting firm is somehow performing an act of liberation. (The topic came up when my wife became a stay-at-home mom.) Plus, the idea of religion as a bulwark against economic manipulation reminds one of the part of Marx's famous quote about religion that many militant atheists seem to forget: "Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions."

Hey, maybe someone should write a book about these sorts of cultural phenomena.

Michele, how is "civil unions" different from "legally recognizing homosexual unions in every single respect except for calling it marriage"?

Because my understanding of civil unions is that it is, in fact, civil marriage in all but name.

Rod,
BNW contains the most horrifying passage of any book I have ever read--at least for me--kicking me in some deeply visceral way. It's the passage where they are conditioning the babies of the worker caste to shun beauty, showing them roses and then electrically shocking them if they try and reach for them.
I see this part of Huxley's dystopia being all too accurate as well as the things you mentioned. But instead of shock treatments we drive people away from beauty by substituting "popular culture." Our artists increasingly assume that only an elite few can appreciate their work, and if the masses find something beautiful it must be schlock (part of the disdain for Thomas Kinkade).

It is very interesting to compare Brave New World, 1984, and Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 to see what part of moderna society they got right. See what part of BNW got the revolution in biological techbnology right. See what part of politics & poltical correctness (i.e. language) Orwell got right in 1984. See what part of popular culture and better living through pharmacology Bradbury got right in Fahrenheit 451. Compare everything to Thomas More's Utopia & see how long we've been on this journey.

Jon W and MargaretE, point taken, I overstated the case and humbly accept correction.

Kevin F. Very interesting comment about shlock and Kinkade.

John E asked Michele, how is "civil unions" different from "legally recognizing homosexual unions in every single respect except for calling it marriage"? Because my understanding of civil unions is that it is, in fact, civil marriage in all but name.

In the BNW of babies being hatched in hatcheries and no one being biological parents, then there'd be no difference, since marriages wouldn't have any right to have biological offspring. But in our world, we still have biological children, and indeed we actually consider being allowed to have biological children using our own genes a basic civil right of man, and a right of marriage, at that. That's why we don't let siblings marry, because we don't let them conceive children together.

Civil Unions that are defined as having all the rights of marriage are indeed marriage in all but name, because same-sex conception is not prohibited the way incest or procreating with children is. But CU's don't need to be defined that way, they should be defined as "marriage minus conception rights" and all forms of genetic engineering and same-sex conception should be prohibited, leaving only male-female procreation using unmodified gametes. That'd allow for all the equal protections that same-sex couples call for, as well as preserve marriage and prevent the Brave New World of manufactured people.

"Never got what was supposed to be negative about BNW's utopia."

TR: I've seen this with many young people and it's vaguely terrifying to hear.

That said I seem to recall the BNW does seem to have islands where people can be smart and genuinely creative. As well as the savageland. If you have the option to live differently this does make it a bit better than many totalitarian regimes in real life.

Foreword to Neil Postman's book Amusing Ourselves to Death

We were keeping our eyes on 1984. When the year came and the prophecy didn't, thoughtful Americans sang softly in praise of themselves. The roots of liberal democracy had held. Wherever else the terror had happened, we, at least, had not been visited by Orwellian nightmares.

But we had forgotten that alongside Orwell's dark vision, there was another - slightly older, slightly less well known, equally chilling: Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Contrary to the common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally-imposed oppression. But in Huxley's vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no reason to ban a book. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to expose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions." In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.

This book is about the possibility that Huxley, not Orwell, was right.