This tribute appeared on Garrison Keillor’s “The Writers’ Almanac.”
Today is the birthday of English author Aldous Huxley (books by this author), born in Godalming, Surrey (1894). He was the grandson of Thomas Henry Huxley, a scientist and man of letters who was known as “Darwin’s bulldog” for his defense of the theory of evolution. Huxley wrote a few novels that satirized English literary society, and these established him as a writer; it was his fifth book, Brave New World (1932), which arose out of his distrust of 20th-century politics and technology, for which he is most remembered. Huxley started out intending to write a parody of H.G. Wells’ utopian novel Men Like Gods (1923). He ended by envisioning a future where society functions like one of Henry Ford’s assembly lines: a mass-produced culture in which people are fed a steady diet of bland amusements and take an antidepressant called soma to keep themselves from feeling anything negative.
Brave New World is often compared with George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1948), since they each offer a view of a dystopian future. Cultural critic Neil Postman spelled out the difference in his 1985 book 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. … In short, Orwell feared that what we fear will ruin us. Huxley feared that our desire will ruin us.”
Brave New Word and 1984 were standard 8th grade texts for decades, abandoned as connecting with kids …. time to bring them back? …. what books today that deal with the same topics will resonate with today’s 8th graders?
Both books are classics because they can be read by people of any age. The older you are, the more you get from them. In college, I discovered a third book that belongs with them: “We” by Yevgeni Zamyatin. It too is a dystopian sci-fi book.
The YA dystopian novel genre is huge today. Here’s a sampling: https://www.bustle.com/p/17-ya-dystopian-novels-to-explore-if-you-want-introduction-to-the-genre-70529
1984 isn’t great fare for middle-schoolers. Much better to have them read it in high school and again as adults. And even Animal Farm, which is often taught to young kids, is best consumed, I think, in conjunction with 20th-century Russian history, by high-school kids.
Brave New World isn’t particularly well written. 1984 is a masterpiece. Both are quite important reading today, though, because of their relevance. Contemporary readers will find Brave New World quite dated in both its novelistic conventions and in its science. I reread it recently, and it reminded me of a lot of peculiar 19th century utopian and dystopian novels. Here’s a good list of those: https://www.utopianfiction.com/19th.html Check these out. They are strange and goofy and often unintentionally hilarious. Most of the titles on this second list can be found on Gutenberg for free.
After 1984, my favorite of the early 20th century dystopian novels is Wells’s The Time Machine, which really bears reading. Don’t watch the movies made from it, which are just awful, childish, really. Wells’s vision in The Time Machine is just brilliant, and like 1984, the book has a message that strikes home today.
I love 1984. One of my favorite books. I’ve reread it a number of times. If it’s one that you haven’t gotten around to, I highly, highly recommend that you do so. Here’s an appreciation of it, which I’ve called “The Most Important Book for You to Read Right Now”: https://bobshepherdonline.wordpress.com/2019/03/17/my-candidate-for-the-most-important-book-you-could-ever-read/
Actually, The Time Machine is also 19th-century. It was published in 1895.
The definition of a classic is a book that reads you.
You understand it as an adolescent.
You understand it as an adult.
You see nuances when you read it in old age that you never saw before.
Beautifully observed, Diane! I withdraw my comment about not having the young ones read it!
When I said If you haven’t read 1984 yet, I wasn’t referring to you, Ed. Obviously, you have. Rather, I meant to encourage other readers of this blog who haven’t gotten around to this to give it a whirl. It’s a riveting read. And in a time when our President is sending secret police into cities run by opposition-party mayors, really relevant.
It seems as if they both are right, depending on who the “us” is.
Huxley describing the reason that the most privileged Americans — those who are given so much that they are reduced to passivity and egoism — are allowing this country to be destroyed.
Orwell describes the reason that those who aren’t given anything at all can’t see the truth and their fear is why they are allowing this country to be destroyed. They believe the propaganda and they fear that anything beneficial given to the least privileged people will harm them, and everything beneficial given to the most privileged Americans will help them. Even when they saw for themselves that didn’t work, they still believe it.
Well said.
Bill Moyers has a wonderful commentary about Huxley and Orwell and Neil Postman’s 1985 book, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. The comment there are also of interest. https://billmoyers.com/content/orwell-vs-huxley-who-are-you-behind/
Here’s a fascinating website by a Transhumanist type arguing FOR a Soma-saturated world.
https://www.hedweb.com/confile.htm
The place to start with this: https://www.hedweb.com/abolitionist-project/index.html
Huxley’s The Doors of Perception and The Perennial Philosophy also bear reading. The former deals with psychoactive drugs (with mescaline, in particular; Huxley was one of the original psychonauts), the latter with similarities in the teachings of the major religions.
Oh, now you’re talkin’, Bob!
The Prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel dined with me, and I asked them how they dared so roundly to assert that God spake to them; and whether they did not think at the time, that they would be misunderstood, & so be the cause of imposition.
Isaiah answer’d. I saw no God. nor heard any, in a finite organical perception; but my senses discover’d the infinite in every thing.
—William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.
When the sun rises, do you not see a round disk somewhat like a gold guinea?
Oh, no, no! I see an innumerable company of the heavenly host, crying
Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God Almighty!
—William Blake, Vision of the Last Judgment
Keillor’s summary is masterly.
What it tells me– & full disclosure, haven’t read either since k-12, so can’t claim Bob S’ adult lit-anal view, so take this as just what stuck from k-12:
Huxley was way ahead of Orwell. Orwell’s “1984” (published 1948) had the advantage of history, having viewed 1930’s-1940’s European fascism. He was merely projecting it forward, much as Philip Roth did in “The Plot Against America,” but on a global scale.
Huxley is in an entirely different category. What a crystal ball! As early as 1923, he fixed on the ever-faster, self-propelling leviathan of technology– a driver that would prove far more important and lasting than the fits and starts of capitalism vs socialism vs fascism vs communism that occupied much of 20thC politics. Somehow Huxley knew to look beyond the immediate tech of manufacturing goods to the more important future of live storage and instantaneous dissemination of information. All he had to go on here were a handful of 19thC inventions [telegram, phonograph, telephone, radio] plus early-20thC analog computing machines. Somehow he put that together w/contemporary assembly-line manufacture and envisioned a future where “a mass-produced culture of people are fed a steady diet of bland amusements and take an antidepressant called soma to keep them from feeling anything negative.” !!!
On the one hand, that’s too close for comfort to how US govt/ military/ industrial complex has tamed the populace into co-existing w/ decades of steadily-decreasing QOL/ winnowing of middle class/ spiraling rich-poor gap– while remaining oblivious &/or ideologically opposed to other OECD nations’ income-sharing solutions to the challenges of automation and global trade.
OTOH, 4 mos’ pandemic experience suggests that was just a precarious balance, easily upset by the first challenge to neoliberal SOP to come down the pike in 40 yrs. I think we can thank our now-very-diverse population (compared to 40 yrs ago) for triggering outrage at the injustices made plain by a life-or-death challenge.
ALSO: Both Orwell’s & Huxley’s dystopic visions are conspiracy theories, in the sense that they depend on a united, global group of “masters,” unified across national borders in their vision/ plan as to how to enslave the masses. Fortunately– despite scary ‘global trade’– the globe is still divided into nations and trading co-ops competing for dominance. Reality check: that shows no signs of changing.
I particularly like Keillor’s conclusion: “In short, Orwell feared that what we fear will ruin us. Huxley feared that our desire will ruin us.”
These are two sides of the same coin– fear and desire. Voting populations are moved by both, simultaneously. Yes, I’m talking about Nov 2020. Both of these classic 20thC literary works apply. US Election 2020 will occur during an unprecedented era, amidst a global viral pandemic the likes of which we haven’t seen in over a century. I think voters will be looking for stability, and sensible, logical, life-preserving responses to a novel threat to human lives. But there’s always the threat that scared folk will just cross their fingers and vote for whoever yells loudest (or whatever else calms them)… Logical-thinking folks need to get the polls en masse, & drag all their likewise-thinking friends with them.
Yes, Ginny. You are spot on, ofc, that Huxley was prophetic. And there are wonderful bits of invention in the novel–soma, the feelies. I just think he wasn’t much of a novelist. Awkward dialogue. Weak plotting. Shallow characters and poor character development. As fiction, BNW is amateurish. But Huxley certainly had enormous prophetic gifts, and my take is that the book is definitely worth reading for this reason.
And you make an important point, Ginny, that both novels rest on visions of absolute control by a single party–not globally in 1984, but certainly in the state of Oceania–and we aren’t there. However, we are seeing, of late, the rise, again, of fascist nationalism around the world–of single-party models. Orwell might have just been off by a few years. I suspect that if you were to reread the book today, you would see the relevance of a lot of what is there to present tendencies, such as Donald Trump’s attempted creation (and in the minds of his base, successful creation) of a post-truth world.
And what is a Tucker Carlson segment but a two-minute hate, directed at a fabricated enemy–George Soros, invading hordes of rapist and murderers? In 1984, the Emmanuel Goldstein who is the object of the 2-minute hate is a creation of the Party, as the Antifa railed about by Trump and Carlson and Fox News and Breitbart and Trump MiniTru generally, is likewise a creation–giving the Trumpanzees something to hate.
And what were and are press briefings by Sean Spicer, Sarah Huckster-bee Sanders, or the current Miss Communications, Kayleigh McInanity, but Winston sitting in his office in the basement of MiniTru rectifying yesterday’s story?
And what are phrases like “Fake News!” except Orwellian NewSpeak with the intent of making any discussion of an opposing thought impossible? And Trump’s Thought Police attacking people in the streets of Portland who might dare think that black lives actually do matter?
Bob,
It occurred to me last night that the purpose of the invasion of Portland by Trump’s Storm Troopers is to create chaos and film it for use in campaign commercials. Trump has abdicated any responsibility for controlling the pandemic, so he has to change the subject. He will ignore the pandemic and focus instead of “law and order” and how “he alone can save us” from the “American carnage” that he created.
Laurence Tribe, the Harvard Law School scholar, urged demonstrators not to play into Trump’s hand. Show restraint. Trump craves confrontations and deaths. The ads will play well with his base.
And about conspiracies, I think that George Carlin nails it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAFd4FdbJxs
Orwell was a great visionary, but even he could not foresee the powers that technology would place in the hands of the totalitarian in the 21st century–ubiquitous real-time surveillance; computer networks; personality profiling tests; artificially intelligent data mining; facial recognition software; GPS tracking; the ability to collect, to store, and to search, using AI algorithms, vast quantities of data; malware in enormous and obscene variety; fake news; memes as propaganda tools; drones; autonomous war-fighting machines; technologically enhanced soldiers and police; DNA databases, sequencing, and identification; social networks like Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and TikTok; spoofing and deepfakes; collocation centers with enough storage to sock away every electronic communication on plant Earth in real time; cryptography; the “Internet of Things”; automated personal assistants; and so on. Simply making a list of the tools now in the hands of the would-be totalitarian is a considerable undertaking. These technologies make Orwell’s telecreens and Thought Police helicopters and Ministry of Truth seem extraordinarily prescient.
Here’s the thing: Our federal government changes hands every four years. Any power that is conferred upon the government today will be, in the future, in the hands of the worst leaders in our history at the most calamitous time in history. Put together concentration of wealth and income and influence in a few hands, a would-be despot of the future with broad emergency powers, a bunch of enablers in Congress, a judiciary bought by a wealthy cabal, a severe economic crisis, and all of those technologies for command and control, and you have a recipe for the emergence of a totalitarian state here in the land of the free.
ROBERT’S RULE: If you are wondering whether a new policy, procedure, technology, law, regulation, or system is a good idea, just think of the worst person at the worst time in the future wielding its power.
Bob, we don’t have to project into the future. Our government is currently in the hands of “the worst leaders in our history at the most calamitous time in history.” We have that despot in the highest office of the land, in a time of concentrated wealth and income, encouraged by enablers in Congress…….
I entirely concur. It’s a very, very dangerous time. I do worry, though, that even if we get this vile subhuman out of the office, that the next one will be more vigorous, younger, more charming, smarter but equally utterly amoral. If our country can make Trump president, OMG, what might be possible in the future? Especially if there is a severe economic downturn.
And oh my Lord, Diane. Bill Barr is Attorney General and John Ratcliff is Director of National Intelligence. Extraordinarily powerful.
And what is it? July 31? that the moratorium on evictions and the additional unemployment insurance run out?
Going to be a lot of people living in their cars
Really off-topic: today is the 30th anniversary of the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act), which became law in 1990, George H.W. Bush, President.
& still law, thank G-d!
(Although, perhaps, this anniversary shouldn’t be drawn to the attention of WHit Admin.)
Surely the WHit & surrounding psychophants don’t have a clue.)
A great anniversary! Thanks for mentioning it!
Hurricane Hanna blew over some of Trump’s border wall in Texas today. It is a perfect punctuation to this dystopian discussion. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6NyZLeyXXs
My son said to me, today,
“What else is going to happen in 2020?” Dad? “I’m thinking that maybe the Earth-invading hordes of insectoid extraterrestrials are lurking behind Europa saying, ‘Oh, boy, guys! Guess what? We’re up next!'”
I LOVE it!!! Thanx for this, retired!
Thanks, Bob, for all that feedback to my not-well-anchored mental meanderings on Orwell & Huxley. I am humbled to be mentored by you, & grateful to Diane’s platform for making that possible. I remain hopeful we’ll find a way out of this– first step, by electing Biden. But I have a woe-some pulling-down sensation… I worry so about the life we’re leaving to our boys… All I can tell myself is. we’ve done the best we could. They are wonderful people, with good minds and empathetic souls. The future is theirs…
You are so right. Sad to think of the world our children will inherit.
I remember the enormous optimism in 1990 after the Berlin Wall fell.
Francis Fukuyama wrote a book about “The End of History” because it seemed at that moment that the big problems of the world were being solved and could be fixed.
I was quite impressed, Ginny, as I usually am, by your extremely thoughtful analysis!
Ginny, here’s what gives me hope: the young people are so woke. And impressively aware of what’s going on. I just came from teaching in a high-school in Southern Flor-uh-duh, half suburban and half redneck rural. These kids were light years ahead of their parents, for the most part. When I don’t think I can stand another day of Don the Con and Mike Dense and Moscow Mitch, I go listen to AOC or a young comedian like Sarah Cooper and think, there is hope. Or I look at the polls that show where the kids stand on the issues. Really, really heartening. I’m sickened, though, by the mess we’ve left for them. And over 40 percent of Americans still support the dumbest, most venal, most unbalanced American politician I’ve seen in my lifetime. And an entire political party has cheered this wannabe fascist idiot traitor. It’s mind-boggling.
Not where I thought we would be when I was 16 and cheering the progress we were making toward civil rights, women’s rights, opposition to the war. I thought we would be so far, far beyond where we are. And I worry that nothing can stop the juggernaut created by the concentration of wealth and power here, not even all those woke kids.
And I would also add:
Happy Birthday, Carl Jung!
And here is the best part:
You’ve got a head start
If you’re among the very Jung
At heart.
I’m sorry, Bob, but…eeewww!
(& I am a longtime member of the International Save the Pun Foundation.)
I will spare you, then, further punditry.