Does the "brave new world" truly display a dystophia?

Submitted by SnooAdvice4813 t3_zr3rkl in books

Most argue that hedonism is a problem as it creates a poor foundation in which we stand on that will crumble as we face the real world. A drug addict cannot rely on drugs forever to avoid his problems. But without the problems of the real world, what is the need for anything more than hedonistic pleasure. If science has created a world without famine, war, or any dissatisfaction, why can't we live in a world that is nothing more than pleasure island?

Some argue that the true issue brought up by Huxley is the loss of the free will. People in his "dystophia" cannot choose to learn, do, and like what they want due to social engineering. Well if that makes people happy and that is how they enjoy their lives, what is the problem in that? Additionally, how free are we anyways? Neuroscientists and behavioural geneticists, like Robert Sapolsky, as argued against the existence of freewill for years. We can either rely on randomness of our genes and environment to dictate our behaviours and preferences (where we are given the illusion of Sovereignty without satisfication), or we can allow science to engineer our behaviour and preferences to maximize our life satisfication.

Of course, if one argues that allowing a centralized figure to engineer a population is dangerous, I can fully agree. But I dont think that is the Huxley's point. I believe that he is warning against a world fully indulged in hedonistic pursuit without meaning and free will. But what is the use of meaning that impedes life satisfication and social stability, and how free are we really even without social engineering?

0 CommentsShareSave

0

Comments

You must log in or register to comment.

albertnormandy t1_j11k3ku wrote

This is the same debate that happens in the Matrix universe. Is it better to live in dumb bliss or experience the miserable truth?

There is no objective answer to this question that applies to all people. Huxley seemed to think that even in such a "perfect" world there would be some who question things, meaning that the reprogramming of humanity can never be complete. To those people the world is a dystopia. But if you're fine just taking Soma every night then there is nothing to worry about.

11

SpindlySpiders t1_j11v9mj wrote

>This is the same debate that happens in the Matrix universe. Is it better to live in dumb bliss or experience the miserable truth?

Reminds me something from Hitchhiker's Guide.

>Oglaroon is a large forest planet. The entire intelligent population of the planet lives in one small nut tree. They partake in the smaller version of life, and some speculate other life exists on other nut trees. These 'heretics' are thrown out of the tree. Most dwellers agree any other trees are merely an illusion brought on by eating too many Oglanuts. When one of the dwellers dies, they are strapped to one of the less accessible outer branches of the tree. All beings are guilty of the same small-mindedness to some extent.

1

SnooAdvice4813 OP t1_j11lve5 wrote

I mean thats the “crack a few eggs to make an omelette” type of situation, right? Fundamentally speaking, a-lot more people will suffer and die in a world without such technological advancements and scientific control. So perhaps, although not perfect, it is still a better alternative.

0

albertnormandy t1_j11vefk wrote

And you've touched on another basic philosophical debate. It's easy to break someone else's eggs, not so much your own.

3

SpindlySpiders t1_j11uyxz wrote

Maybe. I think this question is the whole point of the novel.

1

Uzzer_lozer19 t1_j11j013 wrote

NOTE: Apologies for the terminology as its been a while since I read the book.

It's a valid point but I would go one step further and say there is no option or ability for people in Huxleys book to fit in anywhere other than the "norms" of what society has become.

If someone came off the drugs then they would be different and punished, if they decided not to have sex they would be different, if they decided to procreate without science they would be different.

The female lead in the book sees this difference when she meets the son when he is brought back from the wastelands. She begins to question the life she lives although we are lead to believe she already feels there is something missing or more to be had before this happens.

9

SnooAdvice4813 OP t1_j11kkah wrote

I think your argument is that, for the social stability and the Utopia to be maintained, the social norms would have to become extremely tyrannical. But are the norms truly tyrannical or are they merely practical. There will be norms in any human society, and not all behaviour would be socially acceptable. Thus if those norms work to create a utopia where everyone is happy and satisfied, perhaps they are fine. Though, i would say that the scene which you speak of does a good job describing the fragility of a utopia built on such norms, in observation of most people in the society who have not interacted with this person from the outside world (which is, in fact, an anomaly), they seem to be “all good”.

−2

Uzzer_lozer19 t1_j136zw2 wrote

Yeah that's a way of looking at it although I'm nit sure why you're being down voted because of it but maybe there is something I missed from the book.

It's a common theme in most sci fi books and movies where outsiders fight against the social norm. Pop culture examples would be 'Demolition Man', 'The Surrogates', '1984', 'Logans Run' are all the same basic premise

3

e_crabapple t1_j12fv4s wrote

Everybody seems to forget that the easy drug-addled leisure in BNW is only available to a small segment of society; everybody else is intentionally brain-damaged and shunted into dead-end jobs they cannot leave. I don't recall anyone arguing "but is it really a dystopia??" for the Deltas and Epsilons.

8

omgtoji t1_j1370am wrote

exactly what i was thinking.. it’s easy to argue that it’s actually a utopia if you’re an alpha or beta

2

IAmAlive_YouAreDead t1_j13ofsq wrote

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.

2

e_crabapple t1_j14cnpg wrote

> 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.

1

IAmAlive_YouAreDead t1_j14fb00 wrote

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.

2

wh0ismvs t1_j13le84 wrote

It was mentioned in the story that Gammas, Deltas and Epsilons also get soma after their work shift. However, the theory about BNW being an actual dystopia for the lower classes could potentially be correct if we ever got an insight on that.

1

Electronic_Toaster t1_j12ndef wrote

It's funny, but I see Brave New World as being explicitly based on Capitalism and the assembly line, but I don't really notice other people bring that stuff up. I often see people saying, as you do, that it just does a good job of providing goods, and therefore allows people to live rich and fulfilling lives. I assume that is because we are very far down along this type of way of living, which is why the assumptions that underpin it are hidden to many, because they are many of the same assumptions that underpin our current society.

I haven't read Brave New World for years, so I apologise if I make mistakes.

So Ford is the great hero, because his Assembly line as an industrial process brought great efficiency. It gives you mass production at an even greater pace. It manufactures standardised forms to increase efficiency, so nothing purpose built for a specific situation. It divides the work into components, with each person performing one single task, rather than being involved in a whole process of construction. Each person is a small cog, with a very specific and single purpose.

With this mass production is required mass consumption, which is why everybody has to constantly buy new things. And these things are designed to be complex so as to require more production. This level of complexity is important, because with increased efficiency, you need to produce more to have the same level of work.

And you need to give everybody jobs, because that is important. So more things need to be produced to give them jobs. And now that everybody has jobs, they need to use that money they earn to buy the products to make sure everybody else has jobs. Everybody has to use most of their money on the products to ensure the economy functions and everybody has work.

So the logic is not providing for the needs of the people, but the needs of the people serve the level of production achieved.

Alongside the Assembly line of Ford, you also have the development of management to improve industrial efficiency, like in works by F. W. Taylor. (I read We by Yevgeny Zamyatin very recently, but was already aware of this historical element of management for improved efficiency)

The hedonistic pursuit, I believe, isn't the goal, but a method of providing for societal goals. It helps sustain this society. This type of focus of society does not provide for human needs. People are separated from their work, so they cannot gain meaning because they perform a single task in extreme repetition. And the point of their work is to create more work, because it satisfies no existing human needs. So hedonistic pursuit is a societal good, in that it uses products. Enjoyment and fun are designed around product use, hence stuff like drugs, which require production. Being by yourself and thinking doesn't require the manufacture of goods, therefore it is against society. Other needs, like human relationships, are bent to be about efficiency. Which is that you identify the key performance indicators, and get through them as quickly as possible. You don't get a full choice as to what you want to do, because you might get it wrong, or do it inefficiently. You need to meet your 'need's as quickly as and efficiently as possible. which is why you get drugs that make it feel like you have a few weeks holiday when you only have a very short period of time off. This is about maximising work time, and minimising down time.

And people would also heavily invest in the hedonism because it seems like it is the only break from their work. But since it is organised along the same principles, it doesn't meet any human needs. It is just more work.

But you still get to choose between the products that you buy. So the argument would be that market forces still exist to mean that thing that most fits people's need, the most popular thing, is the one that more people buy. You only get to decide between products, you cannot choose something that isn't a product.

In Brave New World, they even alter the human being itself to fit the Society. The Human being in its natural state, is unable to be properly serviced by this system apparently designed to serve its needs. So you alter the human so as to make sure it can be efficiently serviced properly by this society.

So its not pleasure island, in the sense that any of your actual human needs are met. What is done is that all of you actions are coerced into a small set of actions, and are decided before hand in order to maximise your efficiency in meeting your needs. And by doing this, serves to prevent you meeting any actual need. You are very good at achieving the key performance indicators, but the relation of those KPI to actual human needs no longer exists.

The society it makes stable is capitalist society. Enforced mass product consumption to stablise jobs and the flow of money. Mandatory leisure within proscribed boundaries to ensure product use. Purchasing and using drugs to avoid the human needs void in the middle that is inefficient, cannot be quantified, and cannot be fulfilled by the novelty of the purchase and use of new products.

So yes, if the whole of human needs were met by a product, the novelty of the product being the most important thing, then heaven awaits you in Brave New World. It is possible that a different society that produces as much stuff as efficiently as Brave New World, without all the extreme coercion might be good, but Brave New World has a lot of interlocking elements, and it has a lot of horrors. So I couldn't really guess as to the worth of mass production to meeting all human needs.

6

Jack-Campin t1_j13bb58 wrote

Huxley would have known exactly what Ford was about - he was the single most important individual behind the rise of Hitler, and by the time Huxley was writing, the Nazis were in control of Germany and it was obvious where they were headed. Having him as the prophetic figure for the whole society says it was Nazism achieved by less violent means.

4

Electronic_Toaster t1_j16ulho wrote

That does make a lot of sense. Is there something you can point me towards to find out more?

1

Jack-Campin t1_j17nyqq wrote

Maybe look at the book Fordlandia? It'll probably look at the links between Ford and utopianism in general. (I've only flipped through it casually).

3

Brizoot t1_j11kamc wrote

Compared to the horrors of climate change, nuclear war and neoliberal technocracy, Brave New World seems pretty good.

Sci-fi and speculative fiction has its foundation in modernist thought which tends to be pretty optimistic about Humanity's prospects. In BNW Huxley inverted this assumption and pointed out how an instrumentalist approach to managing society could strangle the highest forms of Human thought.

Huxley probably wasn't thinking about how all the poets and philosophers would survive the collapse of agriculture and genocidal resource wars.

5

SnooAdvice4813 OP t1_j11lm2o wrote

I dont fully understand your last point

2

Brizoot t1_j11noqx wrote

Despite BNW being a subversion of modernist thought it is still wildly optimistic compared to historic events and what science has revealed since the book was published.

Banishing all subversive and creative people to remote islands where they get to spend all their time thinking about things still seems like a pretty good future compared to what's on the horizon IRL with regards to climate change and ecological collapse.

1

KhanHulagu t1_j11tebu wrote

It's not the worst kind of society. But it's still a dystopia for sure. They produce low iq people to do legwork.

3

wh0ismvs t1_j13o8ib wrote

It's exactly what I thought after reading the novel, however what you say in the last paragraph is not entirely true. If you consider "free will" in BNW the same as it's in the real world, Alphas and Betas do have it, and the overwhelming majority of them choose to exercise hedonism (the minority being the people sent to Falkland islands). As for meaning, everyone in the world is doing their job, and everyone is necessary for the society to exist, even the Epsilons, as shown in the experiment set by the government where they took a group of Alphas and told them to build a society (you remember how it went, don't you?).

The dystopia factor is present in the fact that "free will" in Alphas and Betas is the only thing that's left from the "social" in the "biosocial" human being that we know, whereas Gammas, Deltas and Epsilons don't even have that. Humanity is reduced to the level of animals. They do their job for the survival of society, fulfill their biological necessities (the "procreation" part is the most described one in the novel) and then take soma to destroy any thoughts that can make them human.

Don't know about you, but I don't want to be an animal, neither do most people, and that's why it's considered a dystopia by the majority.

3

Jack-Campin t1_j11p666 wrote

For a more extreme version of Brave New World that does take on even more nightmarish futures - Lem's The Futurological Congress.

1

usurij t1_j11somw wrote

Hi. I think the free will aspect is really strong motive in the book. And also comparing this "dystopian world" to world in the reservation and the world (rules) of Shakespeares books. The conclusion is in my opinion the "draw" between this different settings, each of them has its flaws and free will cant be aplied in neither of them. If this is close to reality somehow, Huxley really didnt meant his imaginatory social setting like dystophia, but also definitely not like utopia. Which u maybe slightly implied?

​

If i think about it, we are almost already there, (mainly if youre from richer country) so would u compare your life to dystophia or utopia? :)

1

Jack-Campin t1_j13antu wrote

What's going on with all the downvotes?

Somebody's got an agenda. I've re-upvoted all the comments except mine.

1

[deleted] t1_j14navs wrote

[deleted]

1

SnooAdvice4813 OP t1_j14notl wrote

Ya if u take it out of all of its context. Within the paragraph, the post, and the book, the meaning seems evident.

1

pheisenberg t1_j160zio wrote

Brave New World in many ways simply describes the world today, but a few things are very different. Classes aren’t assigned at birth in most countries, obviously. More importantly, Huxley wrote in the days of mass production where society-wide prosperity meant workers could have a Model T in any color so long as it’s black. But now everything is hypercustomized. Yet there is till tons of conformity as people eagerly imitate perceived success on social media. In both reality and BNW, individual choices don’t matter to the system at large: we all live in a giant social machine that produces incredible amounts of goods by the combination of our alienated labor.

1

KrisKros_13 t1_j133v82 wrote

It is very good question, because although "Brave new world" is considered to be dystopia I think it much closer to being utopia.

Freedom and free will is such strange concept that probably no one can find two people thinking about it the same way. Social norms, civil laws, religion laws, expectations of other people, upbringing and education undobtly shape our behavior and thinking.

Are people from Huxley's world deprived of free will? Maybe yes.

But do we live in true freedom and decide on our own? I do not how you, but I cannot.

Is freedom for everyone possible in the case we aren't alone on this world?

​

Now we are diving into philosophy, because we have to ask why we live on this world?

If for happiness then hedonistic approach towards life is totally ok and Brave new world is the direction we have to head. If for other aims, we have to find what can be other aims for us to achieve (and if we choose universal aim for everyone can we still consider that our citizens are free?).

That's the question with no answer.

0

IAmAlive_YouAreDead t1_j14hmxe wrote

In our current society we have freedom to choose things we desire, but our desires are formed by the society in which we live. In the BNW, I think the desires of the Deltas/Epsilons are determined by genetic engineering and indoctrination so that they never really desire a life other than the one they are assigned. So they don't question being 'unfree' because the life they have lines up with the life they would have chosen.

1

MinxyMyrnaMinkoff t1_j11x7vo wrote

I can’t believe it’s a true dystopia because of the ending. I mean, how dystopian can a society be if their punishment for stepping out of line is… getting sent to the bohemian island of free thinkers?

−2