A couple of weeks ago I finished putting together this puzzle. Fifty of the “Best Classic Books.” It was great fun. I took a certain amount of pride in the fact that I had read 31 of the 50 on this list. One of the 31 is Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. I originally read it back in college when I thought I knew everything. As I recall, it made no lasting impression on me then, but there it was on my library shelf. So I decided to give it a second read. This time it felt different. What I remembered of the plot landed in a far different way for 66 year old me than it did the 20 year old version. Although written almost a hundred years ago, it remains freshly relevant.
The basic story concerns a world civilization from an unidentified year in the future where all human emotions, activities and pursuits are controlled by the State. This control has been achieved through the complete elimination of traditional childbirth, replacing it with artificial reproduction performed at a series of State operated “Hatchery and Conditioning Centers”, where everything from height and weight to intelligence is predetermined. The results of this new science is the division of humanity into several categories from Alphas to Gammas, and the complete elimination of mothers and fathers. The society that is created by such fine tuned humans is one where free unfettered sex and state encouraged drug use—a magic holiday inducing euphoria drug called Soma, insures peace and tranquility. The world controllers are proud of the world they have created which is undergirded by the three word mantra Community. Identity. Stability. One widely held belief of the society is the value placed on consumption, a citizen’s highest calling. One of the slogans pumped through the pillows of developing children as they sleep in the vast Neo-Pavlovian Conditioning Nursery—ending is better than mending…the more stitches the less riches. Its difficult to read this book without a certain level of discomfort!
The timing of having read this book this week has been fascinating. After having read about the strange process of “creating” a human being all the way from a test tube through a birthing decanter, controlling for every variable through scientific manipulation of the process was mind blowing. But then yesterday I sat on a comfortable sofa in a dimly lit examining room watching a television monitor filled with my 21 week old grandson squirming around in vitro, as a highly skilled sonogram technician measured his bones. The jumpy grey images danced around as she moved the probe from side to side. There was his beating heart. Here were the soles of his feet. There is his nose and the undeniable proof of his gender. We hung on every word the technician spoke, and our hearts were calmed with every “completely normal.”
In the Brave New World, society and science has done away with birth defects and by eliminating the traditional family and the possibility of abusive mothers and fathers, insured an easily predictable life for every child. It has also eliminated art, beauty, love, and faithfulness along with the risks of the old ways. Everyone belongs to everyone else. Nobody belongs to anyone.
As I watched the little guy moving around I thought of how all of life is one giant risk. So many things could go wrong. No guarantees exist concerning his future. We hold on to hope that everything goes well. We pray for his safety and flourishing. But, a flourishing life can only come by taking risks. Risk is as much a part of life as life itself. I don’t want a world without risk. I don’t want a life where I have to trade art, beauty, love and faithfulness for personal safety and comfort. There is absolutely nothing brave about such a world.
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