'Often in the past he had wondered what it would be like to be subjected (soma-less and with nothing but his own inward resources to rely on) to some great trial, some pain, some persecution; he had even longed for affliction. He imagined himself courageously resisting, stoically accepting suffering without a word.'
Today we have time travelled to the World State of A.F. 632. We have our bottles of soma and our contraband copies of Brave New World and are taking a little vacation to the Savage Reservation.
We're discussing mass production, conditioning, dystopian literature as satire, perennial philosophy, social predestination, biological determinism, books and nature vs consumption, feeling like an outsider, political and social systems, soft totalitarian technocracies, and much more.
Please do feel free to enjoy the discussion even if you haven't read these parts of Brave New World yet. Huxley's work is a novel of ideas and, as such, you can enjoy our talk before, during, or after your reading in the way that best suits you.
Timestamps:
0:00 ‘oh brave new world!’
2:00 individual as island universe
4:00 The Doors of Perception
6:00 Huxley’s Perennial Philosophy
8:00 island metaphors in utopia
10:00 do we ever reach dystopia?
12:00 did Huxley predict correctly?
14:00 analysing Huxley’s foreword
16:00 ‘Brave New World Revisited’
18:00 welcome to the World State
19:00 ‘a squat grey building…’
20:00 Community, Identity, Stability
21:00 on reading a novel of ideas
23:00 the importance of Henry Ford
25:00 assembly lines & consumption
27:00 mass production in biology
28:00 on Bokanovsky & Podsnap
29:00 the influence of H. G. Wells
32:00 satire & parody in dystopia
34:00 mankind’s fear of mortality
35:00 ‘to owe our health to disease’
36:00 when knowledge is ignorance
37:00 Social Predestination Room
39:00 do we really have free will?
40:00 the dystopian caste system
42:00 how conscious are we really?
43:00 ‘fertility is merely a nuisance’
44:00 the secret of happiness & virtue
46:00 neo-pavlovian conditioning
48:00 books & nature vs consumption
50:00 Huxley’s subtext & world-building
52:00 the extinction of liberalism
53:00 what does democracy mean?
55:00 monarchy, oligarchy, autocracy
57:00 anarchy, theocracy & chaos
58:00 capitalism & free market art
1:00:00 what does socialism mean?
1:01:00 what does communism mean?
1:02:00 is meritocracy actually possible?
1:03:00 soft authoritarian technocracy
1:05:00 ‘the campaign against the Past’
1:07:00 conditioned class consciousness
1:09:00 Huxley’s thoughts on Freud
1:10:00 the idea of ‘history is bunk’
1:12:00 ‘appalling dangers of family life’
1:15:00 a world where monogamy is scorned
1:17:00 Bernard Marx vs Lenina Crowne
1:19:00 ‘I am I, and I wish I wasn’t…’
1:21:00 why do people want to take soma?
1:24:00 the downsides of taking soma
1:27:00 Helmholtz Watson’s propaganda
1:29:00 on style vs substance/meaning
1:30:00 ‘words can be like x-rays…’
1:32:00 Bernard at the Solidarity Service
1:35:00 Huxley’s thoughts on mysticism
1:37:00 self being at one with existence
1:39:00 individual alone in the collective
1:41:00 needing sacrifice to know love
1:42:00 time is for walking & talking
1:43:00 nature makes you feel yourself
1:45:00 ‘everybody’s happy nowadays’
1:46:00 ‘I want to know what passion is’
1:47:00 ‘the individual is the only reality’
1:49:00 passion is a threat to social stability
1:50:00 travelling to the Savage Reservation
1:52:00 longing for trials, affliction & suffering
1:54:00 John the Savage caught between worlds
1:56:00 we need rituals for meaning & maturity
1:57:00 crucifixion as a cure for unhappiness
1:58:00 physical scars speak to inner character
1:59:00 you need to die in order to be reborn
2:00:00 heading back to the brave new world
Resources to Explore:
Aldous Huxley: If you're enjoying Huxley's extended dystopian thought experiment in Brave New World, you might find it interesting to check out his Brave New World Revisited. He wrote this work of non-fiction almost thirty years after his novel to explore how the world was moving closer to his vision faster than he thought. His last work, Island, would be a utopian counterpart to Brave New World. If you found our discussion of his non-fiction works interesting, then you might like to check out The Doors of Perception or The Perennial Philosophy.
Music: 'After silence that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.' So wrote Aldous Huxley in his collection of essays, Music at Night. One can tell the idea of a world in which passionate music is whisked away, along with art, literature, and history, caused Huxley deep pain. Treat yourself to a listen of one of Huxley's favourite classical pieces: Beethoven's Missa Solemnis (particularly the Benedictus of the Sanctus movement). Huxley would say that Beethoven gives expression to the mysterious blessedness lying at the heart of life.
Documentaries: In Brave New World, citizens of the World State make the sign of the T on their stomachs in honour of the mass manufacturing of Ford Motors' Model T. In the World State, this iconic car manufacturer has become Our Ford. If you're interested in going deeper into the history of Henry Ford, and get a feel for the time in which Huxley was writing, you might enjoy this documentary. If you find yourself more interested in the psychological allusions in the work, then you could check out our discussion on Sigmund Freud or enjoy this video on Ivan Pavlov.
Radio Drama: We spoke about the influence of H. G. Wells and how Brave New World began life as a parody of Men Like Gods. Wells is a fantastic and prolific writer of speculative fiction and is rightly considered one of the fathers of science fiction. He managed to write four of the most influential works in the genre in a three-year span of enormous creativity: The Time Machine, The Invisible Man, The Island of Dr. Moreau (my favourite), and The War of the Worlds. There are many great editions (like this one and this one) that include these stories in one volume. But if you're ever in the mood to listen to some radio history, then Orson Welles' dramatisation of The War of the Worlds in 1938, which terrified listeners into believing a Martian invasion was upon them, is marvellous fun.
The Power of Myth: We spoke about the need for trials, hardships, and rituals of initiation when we met John the Savage. If you find this interesting, then the writings of Joseph Campbell, like in The Hero with a Thousand Faces, are always fantastic to dip into. In a PBS series from 1988 with Bill Moyers, Campbell spoke passionately and compellingly on Jungian psychology, archetypes, mythic rituals, and the hero's journey. He talks about the importance of initiation rituals here and the idea of following your bliss here.
Film Appreciation: Treat yourself to a screening of a great science fiction film this week and enjoy the cross-pollination of cinema and literature. For a classic film choice, check out the masterpiece of early cinema that is Fritz Lang's Metropolis from 1927. Quote: 'It was their hands that built this city of ours, Father. But where do the hands belong in your scheme?' 'In their proper place!' For a comedic classic, Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times from 1936 captures the anxiety of living in the industrial world of assembly lines. For a highly complementary cyberpunk movie and modern classic, The Matrix from 1999 would be a fun one to return to. For a more recent masterpiece, check out the eerily prophetic 2013 Spike Jonze directed Her.
Book Club Reads: All the great works we read build upon each other. Reflecting upon previous reads, and connecting them to your current book, is a powerful way to build rereading into your program. Whilst reading Brave New World, one can't help but think of the topics we tackled when reading David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest, Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow, and John Milton's Paradise Lost (to name just a few). If you've not come to those great books yet, you might find it interesting to dip into some of those lectures and see if they're works you'd like to tackle in the future. What themes from other works have you been pulling into your reading of Huxley? Do you find any of our previous reads this year (Faulkner, Garcia Marquez, Ovid, Chaucer, Shakespeare) have left some cognitive or emotional residue that informs this work too?
Reading Assignment:
Our next discussion will cover the second half of the novel, taking us from chapter nine up to and including chapter eighteen, which is around another hundred pages in most editions. And we will be discussing this part this coming weekend.
Now we're going to find out what John the Savage makes of the Brave New World. So continue bringing yourself to Huxley's dystopia, making notes on any themes or ideas that capture your attention and imagination.
Questions for You:
1) What is the most dreadful aspect of the brave new world for you?
2) Did Huxley get it right with his dystopian vision of the future?
3) What do we lose when we remove trials, hardship, and suffering?
4) Is happiness worth the sacrifice of freedom?
5) What is the significance of Shakespeare in this novel? And why does the World State remove literature, art, religion, and history?
If this is your first experience with Brave New World, I would love to know how the work is meeting your expectations. If this is a reread for you, what is it like engaging with this dystopian vision again? And please do share with us your favourite passages, characters, and ideas from the novel so far.
Happy reading, everybody!