[review] “Brave New World” by Aldous Huxley – a dystopian novel
It took me a long time to read this novel because the style is far from great literature. But I plucked up my courage by first reading the graphic novel version (Amazon link, Fnac link), then the text version (Amazon link, Fnac link) and I found a lot of insight in it. Brave New World (“Brave New World”) describes a future society completely controlled by a world state from birth. The main goal of society is stability: suffering, conflict, and strong emotions are avoided through psychological conditioning, constant consumption, and an euphoric drug called soma.
Between 1984 , and Brave New World (“Brave New World”), I find that Brave New World is very similar to the world today. I will quote a passage published in The Guardian by Neil Postman’s son (author of “Amusing Ourselves to Death“) :
What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture. […] An Orwellian world is much easier to recognize, and to oppose, than a Huxleyan,” my father wrote. “Everything in our background has prepared us to know and resist a prison when the gates begin to close around us … [but] who is prepared to take arms against a sea of amusements?
“What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared that truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture.” “An Orwellian world is much easier to recognize, and to oppose, than a Huxleyan,” my father wrote. “Everything in our background has prepared us to know and resist a prison when the gates begin to close around us… [but] who is prepared to take arms against a sea of amusements? ?”
Recently, I read “Tao Te King” (Amazon link) and “The Art of War” (Amazon link), books once banned, reserved for elites or emperors, people killed each other to get a copy, and yet now that they are freely available and still contain just as much wisdom and value, no one cares about them anymore. Because they are drowned in a sea of irrelevance. We have never had access to so much information, resources, there are even leaks every day brought by hackers to open our eyes… when I see the list of books freely available at my local library, I tell myself that I never need to pay for a single book again; and yet, we can no longer self-control and access “elite” knowledge, TikTok videos require less effort and bring more satisfaction.
Only the information from our “echo chamber” or “mainstream” info reaches us. For information to become mainstream, it has to organically resonate with a lot of people (and that’s rare!). Or someone has paid a lot of money. I learned in a Les Echos article that such a pistachio producer association had paid $10 million in advertising in 2024 to maintain the “Dubai chocolate” phenomenon (a kind of chocolate + pistachio). The article specifies that it’s not enough to create the trend, you have to ensure these chocolates are available in as many supermarkets/stores as possible. Another article highlights the trend of “kombucha” and “ginger”. It’s the same strategy: lots of buzz, and products accessible even in the neighborhood Carrefour express. They target the non-alcoholic and soft drink market. You see, even for small products like that, millions of dollars are spent to influence us; imagine how much effort and money are spent on more serious things! Ask yourself why micro-dosing has become mainstream. Why Netflix made a documentary about it and there are even laws voted in the USA to use category 1 drugs in certain cases? It’s because the lobbyists have sniffed out the potential and want to use Schedule 1 drugs to (1) take market share from antidepressants (2) create a new market – the micro-dosing fight against attention loss. While we have other means that produce results very close to LSD without resorting to drugs.
In Brave New World, doctrines are whispered via micro-speakers to children during their naps, but we know these doctrines, these phrases, because they’re repeated xxxx times throughout a lifetime, and everyone repeats the same slogans. Today, the mechanism is more discreet: first an idea is established as “consensual,” then it becomes a “politically correct” linguistic norm, and any dissenting opinion is immediately labeled “far-right” to discredit the speaker. In Brave New World, they use words A that mean B like “Ford” (for “God”), “pneumatic” (for “plump”)… this closely resembles Gen Z, who, to bypass the Facebook or TikTok algorithm, self-censor with silly words like “unalive,” “grape”…
Just like in the novel, now we avoid suffering, conflicts, and strong emotions.
One detail struck me particularly: the author often mentions synthetic music. This topic resonates with me all the more because I played electronic keyboard for over ten years. Despite technological advances, it remains very difficult to infuse real vitality into synthetic sounds. The sensitivity of the keys, for example, will never match that of a piano. I then wondered why contemporary music moves us so little. It’s not just because compositions and lyrics have lost richness, but also because a real orchestra is expensive to produce. As a result, most tracks rely on artificial sounds. And unfortunately, no machine has yet managed to reproduce the life and warmth that instruments played by real musicians emit.
I invite you to discover an excerpt from the novel:
“The result of the Cyprus experiment was convincing.”
“What is that?” asked the Savage.
Mustapha Menier smiled.
“Well, one could call it a re-bottling experiment if one likes. It began in the year 473 of A.F. The Administrators had the island of Cyprus evacuated of all existing inhabitants and recolonized it with a specially prepared batch of twenty-two thousand Alphas.” (note: alphas are people of the upper caste).All agricultural and industrial equipment was entrusted to them, and they were left to manage their own affairs. The result was exactly in line with all theoretical predictions. The land was not properly worked; there were strikes in all factories; the laws were held in contempt; orders were disobeyed; all those assigned to lower-order tasks spent their time plotting to get higher-order tasks, and those with higher tasks plotted counter-intrigues to stay where they were at all costs. In less than six years, they were in a first-class civil war. When, out of the twenty-two thousand, nineteen had been killed, the survivors unanimously sent a petition to the World Controllers asking them to take over the government of the island. Which they did. And that was how the only society of Alphas the world had ever seen came to an end.”
The Savage let out a deep sigh.
“The optimum population,” said Mustapha Menier, “is modeled on the iceberg: eight-ninths below the waterline, one-ninth above.”
“And they are happy, below the waterline?”
“Happier than those above. Happier than your friends here, for example.” — He pointed at them.
“In spite of that dreadful work?”
“Dreadful? They don’t find it so, themselves. On the contrary, it suits them. It’s light, childishly simple. No excessive strain on mind or muscles. Seven and a half hours of light, not at all exhausting work, and then the soma ration, sports, unrestricted copulation, and the Feelies. What more could they ask for? Certainly,” he added, “they could ask for a shorter working day. And of course, we could give it to them. Technically, it would be perfectly simple to reduce the working day of the lower castes to three or four hours. But would they be happier? No, not at all. The experiment was tried more than a century and a half ago. All of Ireland was put on the four-hour day. What was the result? Unrest and a considerable increase in soma consumption; that’s all. Those three and a half extra hours of leisure were so far from being a source of happiness that people felt compelled to escape from them on holiday. The Bureau of Invention is crammed with plans for labor-saving devices. There are thousands of them.” — Mustapha Menier made a sweeping gesture. — “And why don’t we put them into practice? For the workers’ good; it would be sheer cruelty to inflict excessive leisure on them. The same goes for agriculture. We could synthesize every bit of our food if we wanted to. But we don’t. We prefer to keep a third of the population on the land. For their own good, because it takes longer to get food from the earth than from a factory. Besides, we must think of our stability. We don’t want to change. All change is a threat to stability. That’s another reason we are so reluctant to use new inventions.”
Yet the novel raises a question that is both horrifying and realistic: if individuals are not worthy of the freedom they are granted, should we still allow them to have it? The final face-off between Mustapha Menier and the Savage, where this question is explicitly debated, is chilling and terrifyingly cynical. This excerpt already shows the outcome of a universal basic income. The question is: How can we be worthy of our intelligence, our freedom, our free time made possible by AI, without squandering it on passive distraction?
Admittedly, some passages are hard to read (e.g., when he mixes dialogues of several characters at once; it’s easy to follow with the illustrated version, but not in the text). Some details of the novel’s dystopian world are unconvincing (drug use solely with soma; the few differences in eugenic treatment between Alphas and Betas, overly lenient punishments…). These are the weaknesses of a novel that’s too short to properly build its world, but the idea is there. I found it a bit odd that Aldous Huxley, the person who introduced LSD to the world, would denounce the use of soma in his novel.
In any case, the novel is a warning that has become reality. I highly recommend it: the graphic novel version (Amazon link, Fnac link), the text version (Amazon link, Fnac link)
