Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

In a 1949 letter to George Orwell, Huxley defends the legitimacy of his future-world against 1984's by emphasizing the importance of efficiency in today's society. Orwell's nightmare government would waste far too much energy keeping their boot on the face of the lower classes, whereas Huxley's government spends their resources slowly training each individual to accept their lot in the caste system.

I've read 1984 twice, and to this day there are only two things about it that have really stuck with me. One is the mere image of a man hunched over a small table writing furiously, and the other is Orwell's extensive footnote on the development of “doublespeak.” I remember the presence of the journal making 1984 a very psychological experience: Freud would be proud of the revelations the protagonist has concerning his own thoughts. The concept of “doublespeak” is so insightful that I don't doubt our politicians have always engaged in it. Orwell's textbook description of the details of what might be called both a dialect and a distinct psychology is absolutely wonderful. I could read it a million times over.

Now, with the requisite comparison out of the way, let me say that I might be more of a Brave New World kind of person. The plot, granted, is less bombastic. You are thrown a number of different characters, but remain unsure who the plot will focus on and towards what ends. In a way, this is a shame. Huxley demonstrates, specifically through Bernard, his ability to put a fine point on a complicated emotion. Each character encounters some amount of confusion or bewilderment, as they are heavily conditioned to accept a world that some core of their being is opposed to. One could tease this out into a discussion of the philosophical “linguistic turn” quite easily: how do we describe our defection from society when society is the sole provider of our language?

In Huxley's hyper-industrial world, the answer is Shakespeare, or at least what the literary arts stand for. Reading and thinking are consistently toted as unproductive and pointless, and books of poetry and fiction have slowly been phased out of society. In some way, this story is about an artist himself. This is a subtle notion, one that didn't occur to me until the very last chapter of the book.

The overwhelming degree to which Huxley's upper classes have learned to control all classes (including their own) is frightening, but presented almost fairly. Their philosophy is standard to any aficionado of dark-future science fiction: emotion is the root of human problems, we must curtail or eliminate it. This goes far more interesting and complex places than merely addicting the population to an uber-Prozac. Children are conditioned throughout their youth in a number of different ways, as well as physically-manipulated in infancy to reinforce their social caste in their bodies. A numbing narcotic of some sort is provided to the different castes in different ways, ensuring that the lower classes complete their work and the upper classes avoid critical thinking.

There are many more details to Huxley's vision of control, but listing them here (and I would certainly need to list them) would ruin their surprise and, I think, realism. Like any book about the future written in the past, there are possibilities that have gone unaccounted for. Take it at face value, give it the benefit of the doubt and you won't be disappointed. Remember that the real gist of this book is in the details of the power structure – the characters and the plot don't really do much. They exist as portals to flesh out the specifics of the ruling class' development and philosophy, including the wide range of human individuals it affects. If anything, read this book so that you can see all how many people it has influenced – especially in cinema.