A brave new world ?

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
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I have just finished reading the book “Brave New World” by Aldous Huxley and I have a question. But first I shall recapitulate the relevant parts of the story for those that have not read the book yet.

The book describes to us an utopian society in which happiness is the highest ideal, even at the cost of art and science. Babies are not born from a loving couple but manufactured in big factories, and they are conditioned into a certain social class. Because of the conditioning these people only desire the things they can or must have. They are also encouraged to spend all their free time pursuing mundane pleasures. This in addition to an euforia inducing drug ultimately leads to happiness for all.

My question is whether happiness is indeed the highest ideal ? Because if it is, I don’t see anything that prevents us from heading towards such a future. But I think happiness should not be attained. Isn’t pain the main motivator in all human endeavors although, paradoxically, pain only exists because we have not attained happiness ? Maybe a platonic relationship with happiness is a wise compromise ?

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I think it all depends on how one defines happiness. Also there is a difference between the notion of the highest (or best) and the most sought-after ideal. It is be easier to argue for the latter.

There is also another point I’d like to raise with your post–I’d argue that the so-called happiness as described in BNW is anything but notionally happiness, if even given that. Huxley carefully created a dystopia where the society seem alien, inhumane, and loveless; and he is very successful in conveying that imagary. However, when I read that excellent novel many years ago, I couldn’t help but to think that Huxley was trying too hard to influence the readers to agree with him. I argue that the very same science mentioned in BNW can be used to create a very different society that the one depicted. An excellent essay that I happen to read afterward was to show that there are others who had similar reactions to BNW.

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If you decide for yourself which ideal is your highest, how can you possibly want to seek after another ideal more ?

I also briefly considered the possibilities with the science mentioned in the book, but I assumed it was not Huxleys intention to portray a sensible utopia. In fact if I recall correctly I think he just wanted to provide a good literary experience. The essay proved to be an interesting read but the incessant techno-babble confused me and made me wonder what the point of the author was. Did he mean to say that all will be well and we need not worry ?

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Aldous Huxley failed his task, in my mind. He attempted to illustrate the dangers of a society where free will was manipulated to an extreme degree. However, it does not stand the test of time. When my mother read this, she felt ill hearing of the various sexual encounters, the homoerotic play times for children, the birthing from canisters (or “decanting” as I believe he called it), the drugs for recreational and control use, the sterilization techniques, the class system, the burial system, the entertainment… everything disgusted her.

I remember her telling me this as I finished the last chapter of this book as a teenager.

I grew up in a much different society, though. She was a teenager during the 1960’s. I was a teenager during the 1990’s. She lived in a highly Christianized world where God is God and nothing more. She lived in a world were only crazies went to therapy (remember Ford/Freud are diefied in this book), she lived in a world without test tube babies, she lived in a world of sexual repression, she lived in a world where Reefer Madness was standard anti-drug propaganda, she lived in a world where segregation was being indoctrined as wrong and integration was the correct ideal.

Fast forward to my time. in vitro fertilization is commonplace, Half Baked is an awesome flick, my mother has turned into a hippie, then a yuppie, then a hippie again (read: Reefer Madness failed), integration has not been quite as successful as it once was hoped it would be creating a naturalized class society, my mother is an Atheist and has raised an Agnostic son (she tried to give me God, but I rejected it), she is a psychotherapist, and my father is a bigger pervert than I am (I love my dad!). When I read this book… all I could think was…

[size=200]PASS THE SOMA![/size]

In its time, Huxley’s book was appauling. People related to the “savages” more than anything else. However, I looked at the savages as being counter-progress, as being harmful overall to the world. I did not and do not relate to the savages.

However, and this I think was Huxley’s point, were they really happy? Look around… are people really happy? I’m sure some people are, but on the whole, is the world happier than it was when this book was written? No, they weren’t happy. The very idea of requiring a drug… of “better a gram than a damn”… the DAMN has to come BEFORE the GRAM. People in that world were overdosing on soma every day because they gave a damn.

Huxley’s point, which I think is missed more and more as time goes by, is that happiness in quantity is not desireable. However, quality happiness, quality… that’s what we want. Consider the time this was written, that 1930’s. This is after the stock market crash. People were poor, people were hungry, the world was upside down. This seems like a message to a people who are now gone or quickly dying out to old age. It’s saying, “Life Ain’t So Shitty, take pride in what you have and be happy with that.”

Even Aldus Huxley stated that he did not feel he did a proper job getting his message across. I agree with him. I do not think the world he depicted came across as bad as he intended. However, upon further reflection, it IS a bad world. A very bad world.

A Bad New World that has such people in it.

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Isn’t it hard to find quality happiness if you don’t have happiness in quantity ? If you don’t take every chance for happiness how can you hope to experience quality happiness ? Maybe there’s a parallel with love: most people have to go through many prospects before they find true love. Seeking only true love is probably not reasonable because people can’t handle being lonely. People can’t handle being unhappy, either.

The problem is that one might get accustomed to happiness in quantity. One might lose the ambition to find quality happiness. Marriage is happiness in quantity and because of the intrinsic security few people miss the quality happiness bachelor life might hold. Another example is the consumption of alcohol: sure, cocaine might very well provide you with a higher quality of happiness, but the general availability and acceptance of alcohol makes it a certain source of pleasure.

So stability is an important factor to consider when discussing happiness. I think most people would choose stable quantity above unstable quality. That’s why an imperfect utopia like BNW is not that far fetched.

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man does not strive for happiness, only the englishman does that. --Nietzsche

in terms of philosophy, you can interpret BNW as a critique of Ethics by british philosophers such as Bentham and J.S. Mill… i would say that BNW is a good depiction of Nietzsche’s “last man”…
i also see it as a critique of scientific idealism and the dangers of social engineering which was rather rampant among intellectuals in the early to middle 20th century…

there other ideals to strive for such as beauty, justice, the destiny of one’s soul, etc…

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I had never thought of the two as going together, but as I read your description of Brave New World, I felt a great urge to recommend you read Skinner’s “Walden 2”. It’s an attempt to describe a workable utopia. It may have some things in common with Huxley’s, which occurred to me when you mentioned the communal raising of children, and will certainly paint a happier picture of a planned (controlled) life.

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First of all I want to say that I have read the BNW and found it a nice example of a so called utopia, perfectly structured community, which nevertheless had its weaknesses. I don’t suppose that Huxley’s intention was to emphasize happiness being the highest ideal. I assume that happiness would save people from becoming rebellious. As long as they were satisfied with their lives (how couldn’t they be after being conditioned to be happy!?), nothing else could break down that system. All the history was destroyed so that even those who had the ability to ‘think’, couldn’t compare it to the world in the present, nor to criticize anything (“History is bunk”). And all their ‘problems’ were solved by swallowing “soma”. Hence I don’t think this artificial happiness could ever be the highest ideal.

But upon this all, to come back to your point:
You say that happiness, if not achieved, leaves only a feeling of pain, which makes us try again. Well, I think you can’t compare the happiness in the BNW to our happiness nowadays. Happiness, like love, sadness and so forth, is very relative and a private expirience after all. The things which make you happy, may not mean anything to an other person. Of course there is such a thing like ‘common happiness’. That is what Huxley depicts in the BNW, since there was no individuality. A single person didn’t matter, a group, therefore, did. Thus I think everyone has aims and seeks his happiness, but there is a hard way to find it and of course, untill you have achieved happiness, you may find pain and sorrow on your way, which can encourage you to fight for your happiness, but once you have achieved something and have your triumph, but it won’t stop you from going on and looking for some other pursuit of happiness … there always be new things to achieve which will bring you that happiness.

And by the way, if you liked the Brave New World, I would recommend you to read “1984” by George Orwell. The book is in some ways similar to the BNW, but I won’t say much about it. Just give it a try. I think it must be read, by those who have read the BNW.

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I see huxley’s World all around us, except instead of soma it’s prozac and dictated from the bottom up with a little subtle help from the top. So many people just seek pleasure, and consumerism is rampant, and children don’t need to be taught by the Godvernment, they already are by the TV.