Brave New World

Just finished this book for the second time this morning. I do think that it was better the second time around. Maybe it was my ability to understand it better thanks to several years of training, maybe I just paid more attention this time. While I found it striking that some of the things the Brave New Worlders got themselves into were similar to what we enjoy today, it does seem overtly science fiction.

My edition of the book contained Huxley's forward where he asserts that his major omission was nuclear fission. After WWII and the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, one can see why Huxley would have made such a statement. Imagine, though, if he would have hinted at something like the Internet! Mustapha Mond often says that the residents of BNW are conditioned to the point that they cannot be alone...that their lives are ordered such that they don't have many chances to be alone. Are we really that different? Our closeness, though, is facilitated more by technology that Huxley imagined. Our cell phones - now smart phones - are attached to our hips unless we are asleep. Most of us have multiple media to access our social networking sites. Our connection is unending, but, as Huxley's tale warns, too much connection can have a numbing effect.

I found two things very interesting. First, Henry Ford's major “contribution” to society - the assembly line - is the starting point of the BNW. Everything is an assembly line, even pleasure. Secondly, the Savage's demise suggests that the future can survive in the past (as Linda did), but that something accustomed to the past (i.e., savagery) cannot survive unchanged in the future. Huxley takes the notion of “adapt or die” to the metaphorical extreme.