This post was written by Mark Hansard on April 5, 2007
In my last post on Brave New World, I mentioned that contemporary culture is listing toward a confluence of unbridled hedonism and increasing government parentalism, something similar, but not as extreme, as Huxley’s new society. Today I want to discuss another prophetic facet of Huxley’s story (This post contains spoilers. If you have not read the book and do not want the ending revealed, read no further).
In the climax of Huxley’s book, Mustapha Mond, a leader of Huxley’s fictitious civilization, explains the price to pay for creating a completely happy, pleasure-filled society. He admits that civilization has sacrificed truth on the altar of happiness. A whole society was created in which Shakespeare, William James, Cardinal Henry Newman, the Bible, and other great works of thought and literature are censored and unknown to the general population because it would interfere with their soma-filled, risk-free lives.
As Mond, explains (I should note here that Huxley’s society worships Henry Ford as the model of this new, mechanistic utopia):
“It’s curious to read what people in the time of our Ford used to write about scientific progress…knowledge was the highest good, truth the supreme value. All the rest was secondary and subordinate. True, ideas were beginning to change even then. Our Ford himself did a great deal to shift the emphasis from truth and beauty to comfort and happiness. Mass production demanded the shift…”
Comfort and happiness replaced truth and beauty. Are we already observing the beginnings of this shift in Western culture? It seems to me two aspects of contemporary culture lend themselves to this view.
First, we are increasingly living in a technological age in which our virtual worlds are more important than the real one. High-definition television, ipods, increasingly realistic video games, fantasy baseball, you name it, are separating us from the real world and real relationships. Why have a conversation with an actual person when one could, say, watch a DVD in the family SUV? Or listen to music on an ipod? Or chat online with Instant Messenger? Don’t get me wrong, I like the new gadgets as much as the next guy. But when technology can give us ever more realistic virtual worlds, what’s to keep anyone engaged with the real one?
When we combine these virtual worlds with the commonplace attitude among the young that everyone ought to believe what makes him or her happy, we can now see the beginnings of Huxley’s utopia. Truth gets pushed aside in the name of individual fulfillment. After all, who’s to say my virtual world isn’t actually the real one, and the outside world is actually the unreal one? Who cares? Besides, I can create my own virtual world through believing what I want to believe! Who are you to tell me that your world is the real one?
As Mustapha Mond says, “God isn’t compatible with machinery and scientific medicine and universal happiness. You must make your choice.” Indeed.
In Part 3 of this series, we will examine the implications of these cultural trends for academia.
Part 1 Part 3
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