Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

I am not sure how it happened, but I got through high school and college without ever reading “Brave New World” by Aldous Huxley.  I did read a number of other works that dealt with utopian concepts.  Being on vacation and having extra time, I decided to read it this week.  I was forewarned that it was depressing, but I managed to read it in less than a 24 hour period with no signs of needing “soma.”

“Brave New World” was written in 1932.  The copy I read had a foreword written by Huxley 15 years later.  We are now 80 years later and the degree to which we have progressed toward this world is frightening.  A few observations follow.

“Sleep learning” or hypnopedia is not inflicted on children today, but practiced by them willingly.  Many children, teens and young adults fall asleep in front of televisions or next to sound systems which provide a night full of background music and/or dialogue.  If this “music” was soothing and beautiful, I would not be so concerned.   What I have observed in young people is that they listen at night to the same type of music they listen to by day.  The beat throbs and pounds.  The lyrics are filled with profanity.  The concepts described are vile.  They walk around with earplugs in listening all day, and then leave the CD player or radio on all night.  Please don’t try to tell me this doesn’t impact their philosophy of life and their behavior.

We are perilously close to the time when “Feelies” will be available in the form of virtual reality.  We can already insert ourselves into video games.  What happens when the line between the real and the virtual disappears?  Even now, we have plenty of mentally ill people in our society.  If reality is lost, we will have many more.

In this book, young children are encouraged in erotic play.  We haven’t quite gotten to this yet, but younger and younger children are being exposed to sexuality.  Television programs that a few years ago would have been relegated to “after the kiddies are in bed,” now are shown in endless reruns during late afternoon.

Procreation has been totally separated from sexuality in the Brave New World.  Sexuality is strictly for pleasure.  Having an exclusive partner is frowned upon.  Procreation happens in bottles.  Women carefully practice birth control.  If they have an urge to bear a child, they can take a series of chemicals to fulfill this need without the inconvenience of a pregnancy.  I am not saying that birth control is a bad thing, but we are moving in the direction of sex strictly for pleasure whenever and with whomever, and that is a bad thing.  I am watching it ruin young lives.

Religion and family life have disappeared in the Brave New World.  They are viewed as vile and disgusting.  A mother breastfeeding her baby is repulsive.  All of the tender emotions of family relationship are shunned.  Religious books are locked away, considered dangerous for the masses.  We do have in our society today an increasingly vocal and influential element that mocks what was once considered sacred.

The main goals of the Brave New World are happiness and stability.  Stability is achieved through social engineering.  All aspects of life are controlled.  Happiness is achieved through medication…in the book it is called “soma.”  According to the CDC, anti-depressants are the most commonly prescribed medication in the United States today.  None of them go by the name soma, but they are plentiful and used freely.  (There is actually a medication with this name, but it is a muscle relaxant.)

I have not even begun to discuss the characters in “Brave New World,” and the way in which the life of each one is tragic.  Suffice it to say that this is not a world I want to live in, and I do not know if we ever will reach this point, but we have moved a great deal closer to it in 2012 than we were in 1932 when the book was penned.