Aldous Huxley - Brave New World - Episode 3 - The Two Dystopian Worlds Collide!

01/28/23 • 46 min

I’m Christy Shriver and we’re here to discuss books that have changed the world and have changed us.

I’m Garry Shriver and this is the How to Love lit Podcast. This is our third episode in our four part series on Aldous Huxley’s negative utopia Brave New World. In episode 1, we met Huxley and toured London’s Central Hatchery, covering chapters 1 and 2. In episode 2, we discussed chapters 3-5 meeting two characters from the novel. I want to point out that they are main characters, and when they were introduced, I expected them to be heroes, but these two are definitely not heroic- Bernard Marx and Lenina Crowne. Through the first five chapters we accompany them on an average evening, an average evening for everyone in the brave new world- not just for them- and average evening in this world consists of two things- soma-taking and sex. Now in episode 3 we accompany these two as they cross the Atlantic to the American continent and then return in chapters 6-11. They bring back with them a character who comes closest to being a hero, he comes closest to being us, John Savage from the reservation. Our plan today is to explore primitive life on the reservation and the contrasts Huxley creates for us as well as watch John the Savage as he interacts with the Brave New World on his return.

Christy, before we get into that I want to revisit a few important ideas from earlier episodes. As we think about how Huxley drew these standardized humans, and their lives, it’s more and more obvious that Huxley, himself, is not advocating for life a comfortable and happy life, at least in the way he defines these terms. Comfortable meaning no anxiety; happy meaning full of distractions and entertainment.

No, we have to read this entire book as irony- everything he is defending is the opposite of what he’s describing. It’s what makes this book confusing to many readers. The farther we get into the chapters, the more bitter the irony- even positive words like hygienic and beautiful and happy are used by Huxley to make us question if even these are really good things at all.

One place to pay attention is when reading how the characters talk to and about each other. What we see is that there is zero sense of what we consider to be meaningful relationship. They talk about each other and to each other as if they were merchandise, or to use Huxley’s term- meat- dead or alive. Huxley as a student of biology and psychology really pushes the scientific boundaries and even our imaginations to the limits. He asks how far will society, or the power structure of our world go when it comes to psychological manipulation through conditioning? Are there ethical limits or boundaries in the messages we hear from political or commercial leadership- and Huxley does not really see that there is a difference between these two. And not just through repetition and peer pressure but also through government/cultural sanctioned drug use and sexual behaviors. All of this, of course always expressed as being for the common good. Not even the world leaders in a Brave New World have nefarious motives. There is no obvious villain, no Hitler or Stalin out there murdering innocent people. The government is doing everything in the name of general good, and yet, we, as readers are made to question if this is really the case.

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I’m Christy Shriver and we’re here to discuss books that have changed the world and have changed us.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Previous Episode

Aldous Huxley - Brave New World - Episode 2 - The Best World Science Can Create!

Hi, I’m Christy Shriver, and we’re to discuss books that have changed the world and have changed us.

I’m Garry Shriver, and this is the How to Love Lit Podcast. This is episode 2 of our 4 part series discussing Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Today we will finish our discussion of part one of this book, chapters 1-5 and begin the transition into the second part. In other words, we will explore a progressive world of perfect containment and stability before shifting to a primitive one of risk and possibility. In episode 1, we introduced Huxley, the writer and thinker. We toured Brave New World’s Hatchery in chapters 1-2- the beginnings. The Hatchery is where they mass-produce humans- assembly-line style. We see that the world is genetically and biochemically engineered into fixed classes: Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta and Epsilon. For Huxley the political and economic leadership in our world has an interest in freezing the path for upward mobility, making sure all the political and economic power stays exactly where it is. Whoever is at the top has an interest in using the power of science and technology to produce a controllable standardized man. This standardized man would be a “perfect” man—or at least an artificially crafted perfect one, perfectly engineered for his predetermined role on this earth- Huxley uses a theological term- predestined. The overarching metaphor that pervades the novel is inspired by Henry Ford. In 1903, the Ford Motor Company was formed. The first product was the Model A, introduced in the same year. In order to produce a standardized car that everyone could afford, Ford introduced to the world the concept of assembly-line production. Their most successful product ever, the Model T, came out in September 1908. In 1909 a new Model T cost $850, but by 1924 the price had gone down to only $260. The average assembly line worker could purchase one with four months' pay in 1914. Everyone could drive a Model T. Eventually 15 million model Ts were manufactured and sold. It is estimated that 40% of American households owned one.

In Huxley’s world Ford is divine. The assembly-line model is the template for life. Community, Identity and Stability are globally accepted ideals, and man is standardized- produced in the hatcheries like the one we’re visiting- the Central London Hatcheries and Conditioning Centre. We observe the process of fertilizing the eggs, bottling them, putting the lower castes through the Bokanovsky’ process then finally decanting them- or preparing them for independent existence.

We might call that birthing, but you can’t really be birthed out of a bottle, so I think the word decanting as a replacement for birthing slightly funny.

The Bokanovksy process in particular involves grotesque biological engineering. It’s where lower castes are prenatally treated with x-rays then then are basically doused with alcohol and other poisons to be almost subhuman but capable of performing mind-numbing tasks. It’s fetal alcohol poisoning scientifically administered for the purpose of subjugation. But they don’t just poison the embryos, they also deprive the brains of oxygen during the assembly line process for and I quote the director here, there is “nothing like osygen-shortage for keeping an embryo below par.” This is not considered immoral because these epsilons are still perfect. They are perfectly designed to do what they were designed to do perfectly. Christy, I used a chiasmus there!

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Next Episode

Aldous Huxley - Brave New World - Episode 4 - The Struggle Between Meaning And Happiness!

Hi, I’m Christy Shriver and we’re here to discuss books that have changed the world and have changed us.

I’m Garry Shriver, and this is the How to Love Lit Podcast. Today we conclude our four-part series on Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World; the world Huxley creates may be New but certainly it is not brave. Michel Houellebecq in his 1998 novel The Elementary Particles references Brave New World in an unusual way. Instead of seeing it as a warning of an evil to be avoided, he, or at least his characters find it a world to aspire to. Let me quote him, “everyone says BNW is supposed to be a totalitarian nightmare, a vicious indictment on our society, but that’s just hypocritical bullshit. BNW is our idea of heaven: genetic manipulation, sexual liberation, the war against aging, the leisure society.”

It’s a conversation, Huxley thought we should have as a society: what constitutes a real human world? What is human society? Are we individuals living together; or are cells in a single organism called society with a small collection of men as braintrusts running it all? In BNW Revisited, he says this, “In spite of the Id and the Unconscious, in spite of endemic neurosis and the prevalence of low IQ's most men and women are probably decent enough and sensible enough to be trusted with the direction of their own destinies. “

The World Controllers in BNW disagree., Mond, in part 4, describes a world where men and women are NOT to be trusted with the direction of their own destinies. And as we reach the end of the book, we listen to Mustafa Mond explain why. And in a nutshell the answer is instability. “Independence was not made for man. God isn’t compatible with machinery and scientific medicine and universal happiness. “It would upset the whole social order if men started doing things on their own.” These are the arguments we read at the end of the book, but their meanings are illustrated throughout starting in chapter one.

After reading the dialogue between John and Mond, so much of what we’ve seen illustrated makes more sense. Really, this is a book that needs to be read twice because when you read those first chapters, you’re overwhelmed and confused. In episode 1, we tour with our omniscient narrator that Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Center in the year of stability AF 632. We learn that vivaparous reproduction (or birth as we know it) has been replaced by the assembly line; babies are manufactured in bottles. The director explains to us that world is divided into castes, and everyone is conditioned to believe they are equal and equally valuable- albeit, they certainly are not equal in the way we think of equality today. We are introduced to a new set of values and the value that prevails is happiness. The World State has solved man’s happiness problem, and we are shown how this is achieved. The way the director describes makes it seem flawless. Caitrin Nicol in her famous essay “Brave New World at 75” describes it a different way, “there is an unholy alliance of industrial capitalist, fascist, communist, psycho- analytic, and pseudo-scientific ideologies has brought about the end of history. The past is taboo - "History is bunk," as "Our Ford" so eloquently said - and there is no future, because history's ends have been accomplished. There is no pain, deformity, crime, anguish, or social discontent. Even death has no more sting: Children are acclimatized to the death palaces from the age of eighteen months, encouraged to poke around and eat chocolate creams while the dying are ushered into oblivion on soma, watching sports and pornography on television.”

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