This post was written by Mark Hansard on April 2, 2007
This year marks the 75th Anniversary of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, and for many reasons, Huxley’s Orwellian story remains as relevant today as it did when he wrote it.
In fact, in two important areas, Huxley’s novel is remarkably prophetic. The opening scenes in which we are introduced to a genetic engineering factory, observing as new embryos are created, assembly-line style, with certain genetic proclivities to fit within their needed castes, are chilling. After embryos are created, named, and “bottled,” for example, they make their way on the conveyer belt to the “social predestination room,” in which they are genetically examined, chosen for their future caste according to the needs of the society, and carefully environmentally engineered.
While we are a long way from social and genetic engineering on this scale, we are taking our first steps toward such engineering through market forces already at work. Recently ABC News ran a profile of a woman in Texas who runs an embryo bank out of her home, in which she includes “Ph.D. sperm,” and eggs donated from “attractive” females with at least a college education. You can read about it here. There is certainly enough market interest to make such “designer babies” ubiquitous. I would be grieved (although not surprised) if eventually we saw the government design “aggressive” babies for use in the military. Huxley reminds us that such abuses are a realistic possibility.
Another thought provoking facet of Huxley’s story is the use of soma, a drug that the government uses to keep people blissfully ignorant and peaceful, “happy” at all costs. As one character admonishes a distraught friend, “What you need is a gramme of soma…One cubic centimeter cures ten gloomy sentiments.” Here he is repeating a mantra with which he was blissfully brainwashed as an unsuspecting embryo on a conveyor belt.
It seems to me these scenes are remarkably prophetic in that in contemporary American culture we see a confluence of unbridled hedonism and increasing government parentalism. These days it’s not just that every individual has a right to pursue happiness, it seems that the government is increasingly seen as the institution that must provide such happiness for the individual (e.g. making trans-fats illegal in New York restaurants—do we not have the ability to make these decisions on our own?). The use of soma in the novel allows the government not only to control the population, but to keep them happy and to protect them from themselves. Are we headed toward our own drug-controlled, parental society? Only time will tell.
One thing’s for sure. Every once in awhile, we all need a good dose of Brave New World.
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