brave old world

I finished Huxley’s infamous Brave New World this morning. I could not believe he had published the work in 1932. His envisioned future world is my own in so many respects, and his story exemplifies problems I have communicating ideas to people.

We as Americans presently wake up to enter a world where truth and beauty have been, not explained or rationalized away, rather all but forgotten because of the myriad of entertaining distractions that surround us, and through the conditioning agent of, if not hypnopaedia, the television (which accomplishes similar results). No one has officially denounced reason, truth, God, beauty, or art, at least not convincingly or with final authority, but all the same we have been and are being more and more conditioned not to care about these things; worse, to find that they don’t seem to matter at the end of the day. Huxley wrote out of fear for the approach of such a day; but the day is already here.

Below is an excerpt from the speech of the Western European World Controller, Mustapha Mond, taken from a sort of debate with the ‘Savage’ at one of the climactic points of the work; the ‘Savage’ (taken from the uncivilized world to the London Utopia) is about to be told that he must leave the city and the two have been discussing the characteristics of the old world vs. the new, having a God vs. having no God.

“My dear young friend,” said Mustapha Mond, “civilization has absolutely no need of nobility or heroism. These things are symptoms of political inefficiency. In a properly organized society like ours, nobody has any opportunities for being noble or heroic. Conditions have got to be thoroughly unstable before the occasion can arise. Where there are wars, where there are divided allegiances, where there are temptations to be resisted, objects of love to be fought for or defended – there, obviously, nobility and heroism have some sense. But there aren’t any wars nowadays. The greatest care is taken to prevent you from loving any one too much. There’s no such thing as a divided allegiance; you’re so conditioned that you can’t help doing what you ought to do. And what you ought to do is on the whole so pleasant, so many of the natural impulses are allowed free play, that there really aren’t any temptations to resist. And if ever, by some unlucky chance, something unpleasant should somehow happen, why, there’s always soma [psychotropic drug] to give you a holiday from the facts. And there’s always soma to calm your anger, to reconcile you to your enemies, to make you patient and long-suffering. In the past you could only accomplish these things by making a great effort and after years of hard moral training. Now, you can swallow two or three half-gramme tablets, and there you are. You can carry at least half your mortality about in a bottle. Christianity without tears – that’s what soma is.”

And here we are, in a country which, according to the polls, is filled with a brand of Christianity without tears. Perhaps we’ve walked backward, right into Huxley’s world, without even the need of the drug substitute. To judge from the cultural climate around me, I’d have to say there’s no chance of a good deal of nobility, heroism, even individuality, in danger of arising any time soon on the American front. This conditioning is one of the reasons that as a country, again, we will simply choose between the two “options” offered us at election time. It is why I get so many blank stares and semi-sympathetic (but uncomprehending) “I hope you find what you’re looking for” replies when I introduce reason or art or truth into conversation.  Apathy is becoming the new American hallmark. John’s (the Savage’s) reply to the Controller is telling:

“But the tears are necessary.”