Brave New World Part I

I felt I had to read Brave New World for my Bioethics class coming up this fall at Lake Avenue Church in Pasadena and my priority interest in this topic.

It is a quick read and very enjoyable in a very disturbing way. I had never read it before, mainly because I thought it would be repetitive of the likes of Fahrenheit 451, Animal Farm and 1984. In some ways, it is of course, but then it is really not, and not just because of the test tube eugenics element.

The fundamental difference is that the first 3 books I mention, mainly focus on fears of the totalitarian states of Communism and that was represented in reality by Soviet Russia and Red China. Now the inner workings of these states turn truth on its head but as to its ideology and its need for a worker ethic, communism actually deals strictly in moral absolutism according to Marxism and most often becomes as puritanical as any possible theocracy in all areas of life.

Now Huxley's premise in Brave New World is that after apocalyptic wars, there is a convergence of regimes, a coming together based on an economy of high consumer wants, total employment, and assured social stability (Aside: China is perhaps at the vanguard of such a hybrid society - still totalitarian in nature but allowing economic "freedoms" to boost both consumption and export. A sort of neo-fascism of "opportunity" that creates a dynamic economy that communism has notoriously been unable to achieve previously.)

Although the test tube babies are what we focus on as we consider the consequences of genetic manipulation, Huxley’s prophetic words were basically his effective way of engendering such a society. If we have no father and mother, then the concept of family is simply gone, and the very idea of such relationships becomes obscenity. A fake religion (worshipping our Ford!!) is created to promote communal activity (both spiritual and otherwise - orgy-porgy) while eliminating real personal faith in a Creator God or any eternal principles at all.

A person's value cannot be left individual, and so the primacy of "society" is encouraged in community, work, and consumer settings. But beyond that, living for pleasure is the highest value (as long as you put in your 8 hours) not any greater purpose for yourself or others, and if that gets tiresome, there is "Soma" to sedate you and potions to purge your need for passion, commitment, or pregnancy (Need I mention the availability of paxil and prozac and contraceptives).

Anyway, instant gratification (of physical needs) and moral relativism are strangely enough the bedrock principles of the Brave New World's social stability. And unlike the double-speak of "black is white" of the other aforementioned books, when one of the "world directors" admits to a world where love is bad, and apathy is good, he is telling the truth.

Gratify their immediate desires, make them forget commitments and purpose, and you're halfway to a content society. Eliminate the eternals of family and faith, and celebrate a diverse but ordered society (pre-ordained genetically) and you will have only some little need of even a police force that will quiet any situation with happy words and happy gas. Today's modern society often mirrors such priorities - our preoccupation with material needs and convenient and "open" relationships, and our intolerance of the intolerant fundamentalist faiths that would interfere with personal freedoms and often foment social discontent at all levels. Lip service is still paid to family, but the focus is indeed "that it takes a village" and that "village" should have a progressive ethic of openness with economic and personal freedoms under a guiding compassionate hand of social planning.

Well such are my thoughts on how it is the "moral relativism" of a society that will drive the need for uses of technology including the medical and biological advances coming upon us. I will speak more to Huxley's prophesies of this eugenic "utopia" later.