Aldous Huxley wrote his dystopian novel “Brave New World” in 1931. It was published in 1932. We are just 7 years away from its centenary, but we are already living in the brave new world.
Summary of Brave New World
The book is about a world state with London as its capital or main city. People living in this technologically advanced state are “civilised” while some people living on “reservations” are savages and uncivilised. Looks like a hat tip to the “reservations” for the indigenous people of America which is where this book was written.
Essentially in the Brave New World, children are born and conditioned in factories inside bottles, they grow up according to their conditioning to be leaders or workers and all their aging is managed with pills, soma (intoxicating drink or a cocktail of psychotropic drugs). Everyone is perpetually happy, with children getting exposed to sex very early and everyone is polygamous.
There is no mourning when one dies because they simply take an overdose of soma and slip away. In this world a Savage, named John is brought in by one of the characters. He tries hard to explain Shakespeare to some people and finally leaves London to stay in isolation when he isn’t allowed to even mourn his mother’s death.
As I was reading this book, it felt surreal because WE ARE ALREADY living the “perfect” life. The book starts in the Central London Hatching and Conditioning Centre, where the Director of the Hatchery and one of his assistants, Henry Foster, are giving a tour to a group of boys. The hatching centre is for human babies who spin around in bottles and are conditioned on different thoughts as per their starting “caste” Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, or Epsilon….. Alpha being the most intellectually advanced and Epsilon getting to do the grunt work. Babies are then decanted and off they go into their respective caste groups’ work.
Read the following excerpt “…. For you must remember that in those days of gross viviparous reproduction, children were always brought up by their parents and not in state conditioning centres.” And just recently the ex-POTUS said “birthing person” not mother !!! We have had test-tube babies for a long time now, and the number of IVF centres keeps on increasing. The number of Caesarean births are increasing significantly. Read this 2017 HT article – C-section Vs Natural Birth: Why are Expectant Moms increasingly coming under the scalpel? Then there is surrogacy, renting a womb. Soon, we shall decant babies and birthing persons will not be needed.
Have taken the following excerpt from another page – “The embryos still have gills. We immunise the fish against the future man’s diseases.” Here’s a comparison of the number of vaccines that were administered in 1986 versus the number administered in 2019.
Everyone in the novel takes Soma pills – exactly the way we take pills. Feeling anxious, pop a pill. Headache ? Pop a pill. Feeling low ? Pop a pill. Menopause is natural, but no, take Hormone replacement therapy. Vitamin D deficiency? drink that syrup. Diabetes ? Oh take Metformin. Do watch the web series called “Painkiller” if you don’t believe what I am saying – Web Series “Painkiller” Explores Big Pharma’s Profits Over Health.
A fellow alum from ISB wrote a short article on LinkedIn regarding how we assume that we are making choices about what we wear and what we eat, when in reality these choices are made FOR us…. Do read Jyoti’s article – Are we choosing ?. Am pasting screenshots here to make my point –
Isn’t the world exactly as Aldous Huxley imagined it to be in Brave New World ? All our choices are being made for us …..So next time you think you are choosing something, think again. Would you have bought it if it wasn’t worn by your favourite actress? Would you drink that cola if your favourite sports star didnt advertise for it? Influencing is a science and some people use it as an art… its both, but when it manipulates, then its no good.
Am not even going into the “multiple partner” norm in the novel …. it’s distasteful to watch young girls dancing to sexually explicit lyrics and the memory of Epstein’s Lolita express is still fresh (pun intended) in people’s minds. With all the “woke” $h1T going around, with people choosing their gender, well, we have exceeded Huxley’s wildest fantasies :(:(.
Do read the book. It’s fascinating to see that we are truly living in the Brave New World, just that there is nothing brave about it and definitely nothing new …. we are fast forwarding to our extinction unless we reverse the damage. But hey, AI will save us, right ?