IAmAlive_YouAreDead t1_j13ofsq wrote on December 21, 2022 at 1:07 PM

Reply to comment by e_crabapple in Does the "brave new world" truly display a dystophia? by SnooAdvice4813

I seem to recall that everyone is society is educated (or indoctrinated) into believing their class is the best. This is also reinforced by the genetic engineering that takes place: a person who is born into a class has the sort of personality that suits being in that class. The end result is that people are happy with their class because they have been bred with a certain temperament (think of dogs) which is bolstered by indoctrination.

The question then, as far as I see it, is if a person's temperament and the education they receive means they genuinely are happy in the kind of life they live, then how is it a dystopia from that person's point of view?

The world only appears to be a dystopia from the 20th century perspective in which the novel was written, where we value individualism and freedom of choice. Other societies may value social cohesion and individual self worth is derived from performing a specific useful function in society.

If anyone has read Plato's Republic they will immediately see the parallels between the society envisioned by Huxley and the 'perfect' society envisioned by Plato. In both, people are sorted into different classes (gold, silver and bronze) that have different functions allocated to them. Each person is educated to understand their role in wider society and draws value from having that function - it provides the 'meaning' that many people feel is missing from their lives in a modern, atomised society.

I think it touches on the interminable problems of the human condition. Each person wants to find the right balance between having an individual identity that isn't necessarily tethered to what the rest of society thinks that person should be. On the other hand they want to have some sort of meaningful function within society and be part of a cohesive whole. I'd say both of these drives exist in each person creating a constant tension which is just a fact of human existence to which there is no escape.

e_crabapple t1_j14cnpg wrote on December 21, 2022 at 4:06 PM

> The world only appears to be a dystopia from the 20th century perspective in which the novel was written, where we value individualism and freedom of choice. Other societies may value social cohesion and individual self worth is derived from performing a specific useful function in society.

"Individual self-worth" doesn't even enter into it, nobody ever asked how the deltas and epsilons feel about their life because the whole system is set up so their opinion cannot possibly matter. Self-worth is a meaningless concept, their only worth was assigned by the state from birth, and they were engineered by the state to not be able to have an opinion on it at all.

Since you played the "that's just your 20th century western viewpoint, man" card, I challenge you to provide an example of one of these alternative societies you mention, where everybody is fine with the state (not "tradition we all share," the full force of the state) allocating everyone's roles from birth to death. If you go for something like the historical Chinese empire, you'll have to account for why it collapses every few centuries - almost as if everybody wasn't completely happy with it, and "freedom of choice" is a more universal value after all.

IAmAlive_YouAreDead t1_j14fb00 wrote on December 21, 2022 at 4:23 PM

I accept your point that real world societies don't last long if you try to impose a crushing totalitarianism from above but what the society in Brave New World has that real world societies do not is the genetic engineering based on temperament. You can try to impose a system on humans that erases their individuality, like in 1984 where there is nothing left of the individual personality at the end of the novel, or you can breed people who are just content with how their lives are. Asking an Epsilon if they like being an Epsilon I suppose would be a bit like asking a tiger if it liked being a tiger. Or asking a sheep dog would it preferred to have been a guard dog.
Even if you asked an Epsilon would they prefer to be an Alpha, they'd say no. They don't question it because their preferences are determined beforehand by genetic engineering, so the question of freedom of choice doesn't come into it, since given the choice, Epsilons would chose to be Epsilons. That is clearly not true in reality where we don't have the kind of genetic engineering that takes place in BNW.

I think BNW asks can we breed out certain aspects of the human condition (such as a desire for freedom of choice). I don't like that idea, it sounds terrible to me, but if I had been bred in such a way to be happy with my lot, then I'd be happy with my lot.