It looks like Aldous Huxley wrote this book as a reaction to some of the Utopian books that authors like HG Wells wrote glorifying scientific progress. Huxley wrote this vision of dystopia and was a few years ahead of the more famous George Orwell's 1984.
It is amazing to me that Aldous Huxley wrote this in 1931. Here is a list of things he manages to predict will come true in the brave new world of ours:
- Bell Bottoms! (this is true..he predicted bell bottom pants)
- LSD. He calls it Soma.
- Cloning
- Anti-depressant drugs
- Helicopter Taxis (well, we dont have these yet - although there is a helicopter taxi from Wall Street to JFK airport)
- Contraception
- Test Tube babies
- Sexual Revolution
- Unlimited consumption
- Planned obsolesence
- Instant gratification
- Atheistic societies (maybe this was already there in Leninist Russia - can't say)
- Social Engineering (think Great Society or the Great Leap Forward)
- Botox and cosmetic surgery
- Vaccination (this I dont know if it already existed then)
- Super bugs
- Brain washing
These are some things I just happen to remember off the top of my head. There are tons more like that.
I found that while the style of the book is fiction, the heart of the book is non-fiction. I was a bit scared that this book might end up like an Ayn Rand dissertation of objectivism. My chief complaint with Ayn Rand is that she created cardboard characters that mouth her philosophy. Aldous Huxley thankfully escapes that fate (but barely!)
His characters are still emotionally shallow and the interactions superficial. But there is just enough juice in the plot (although riddled with coincidences) that propels you through his vision.
True to form, several years later he wrote a sequel called 'Brave New World Revisited', where he dispenses with the fiction and just wrote it as a series of essays.
Some themes from the book:
I. We look for mitigating strategies for every problem we face. Pain
medication for pain. Anti-depressant medication for depression. Video games or TV for boredom. Botox for skin sag. And on and on and on.
This feels like we want to escape life rather than live it. I am obviously not saying don't take Tylenol. But I suppose I am saying that the sum total of all our consumption is tending towards an escape from living life.
II. Our best efforts to 'control' nature is futile for two reasons. One nature will overwhelm us. And two, we are not separate from nature - we ARE nature.
III. We are creatures of conditioning. We should set aside hours in a day and days in a month to carefully consider our in-built assumptions about the world, about our society and fellow living beings and ourselves to figure out whether we are operating on platitudes or operating on what we arrive at for ourselves as the truth. i.e. leading the examined life
IV. When cultures clash, it is of serious consequence. (It is happening today as we can see between religions and between societies). The clash is because of a radically different set of assumptions within each culture that views its own values as good and the other culture's values as not just different, but antithetical and inimcal.
Overall, this is one of the most satifisfying books I have been through in a long time. Protienaceous and not bubble-gum! Having said that the fiction layer was mediocre at best, and the non-fiction layer was a tour de force.
No comments:
Post a Comment