Aldous Huxley - Brave New World - Episode 1 - Is It Dystopian Or Utopian?

So, let’s get started, first, it’s important to note that this book was published in the UK in 1931.  So, for context, let’s think about what was happening or really what hadn’t happened yet in Europe or the rest of the world.  The book is pre-Hitler, pre-Stalin, pre-internet, pre-mass-media, pre-social engineering, he predates a lot of the things that define what we call the modern world, yet you might not think that just reading it.  It pre-dates Orwell’s 1984, too.  That book wasn’t written until…1948…yes, he just switched the numbers there.  So much of the science in this book had to seem so strange and futuristic at the time.  For example, DNA wouldn’t even be discovered until 1958.  In-vitro fertilization wouldn’t be invented until 1971, yet Huxley’s book opens with test-tube babies, a term all of us have heard of today.  I’m also sure a world where all people are on psychiatric drugs also seemed far-fetched in 1931; today, one in six Americans self-report regularly taking a psychiatric drug, and that number is likely just a fraction of the reality if you consider all the different variations of both legal and illegal and semi-legal forms available today. Huxley’s Brave New World is about achieving happiness.  It’s about total sexual liberation.  It’s about the exaltation of science over faith and religion.   It’s about an entirely efficient and centralized government worldwide that fabricates “peace on earth good will towards men”, to quote the Biblical phrase and the stated purpose of the coming of Jesus Christ as announced by the angels at Christmas.  And yet, even the title Brave New World reeks of irony. Every single person in this Brave New World is undeniably happy; that is never questioned, yet we’re left with the feeling that maybe even happiness really isn’t always good.  Huxley’s Brave New World is a comfortable world.  There is no violence, no rule by fear, like in Orwell’s novels.  There is no illness or aging…in fact, it is a world genetically engineered to preclude unhappiness or anxiety of any kind.  The goal of achieving unending and unlimited pleasure for all has been achieved….and yet, as we read it, it feels wrong.  We get a sense that we wouldn’t like living this reality, but why? We feel something has been lost, and Huxley asks us to ask ourselves- what?   It’s satire.  It mocks us, and the irony wears on us as we go through the story.  Remember, the word irony means opposite, in other words, we feel that things should be the opposite as how they are described as being.  Christy, we talked about satire with Johnathan Swift, with Orwell and with Bradbury, but let’s define what that is.  If you say something is satirical, I immediately expect it to be funny, but there’s nothing funny in this book.     Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.