Cesur Yeni Dünya (Brave New World)

Warning: this gives away the ending of the book.

In this world no one suffers. There is no illness, no aging, no poverty, no war.

No one rebels, because there is nothing to rebel against.

How it is set up

People are produced in a laboratory. There is no such thing as a mother and father; these words are considered obscene.

Before they are born, the class they will belong to is determined: Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, Epsilon. The development of the lower classes is chemically limited, because people who will do simple work are not wanted to think too much.

Suggestions are given during sleep. For years, at night, children listen to sentences telling them to be content with their own class.

Sex is free and seemingly compulsory: being with one person for a long time is considered shameful. Attachment is an illness.

Whoever is unhappy takes soma. A pill with no side effects, no addiction, that wipes away restlessness instantly.

I read it after 1984

And it frightened me more.

In Orwell order is built with fear. You can see it, you recognize it, there is something to oppose. There is surveillance, there is torture, there is prohibition; all of them can be marked as the enemy.

In Huxley order is built with pleasure, and there is nothing to oppose. No one needs to be forced, because no one wants anything else.

The sturdiest state of a system is the state in which people love it.

Boredom being forbidden

This is the detail that really stopped me.

In this world no empty moment is left. People are constantly somewhere: obstacle golf, the feelies, evening parties, collective rituals.

A person who gets bored takes soma.

The reason is clear: in an empty moment a person may start to think about their own life, and the order does not want that.

While reading this I looked at my phone.

In a queue, in the elevator, while cooking, while walking, in the toilet. I leave no empty moment. Not because I am unable to be bored, but because I do not give boredom a chance.

I think what Huxley describes does not need a pill. It sits in my pocket and no one forced me.

Wiping away discomfort at once

The pill in the book removes every restlessness instantly.

The problem is this: restlessness sometimes carries information. That something is going wrong, that a decision is mistaken, that a relationship is not working.

When you wipe away the discomfort, you wipe away that information too.

This became the most useful idea the book left me with, and it moves very easily out of science fiction into everyday life.

Bernard and Helmholtz

Two characters who do not quite fit the system.

Bernard is an Alpha but short; it is said to be a production error. His outsiderness makes him critical, but it is a false criticalness. The moment an opportunity for acceptance arises, he forgets all his objections.

Huxley builds this character very well: he says that most people who object to the system actually want a better place in the system.

Helmholtz, on the other hand, is truly different. He has everything, is very successful, and is dissatisfied. He wants to write but has nothing to write about, because in this world there is no pain and without pain there is no art.

In the end he is sent into exile and likes the exile.

John

Someone raised outside the order, on a "Savage Reservation." His mother is from this world and ended up there by accident.

He grew up reading Shakespeare, the only book he has.

He is brought to the "civilized" world and becomes an object of spectacle.

He demands the right to suffer. To fall ill, to grow old, to be unhappy, to be sad because he loves.

When I first read it, this demand seemed exaggerated to me. Then I thought: I cannot answer the question of whether a life without pain counts as a life, but I accept that it is a serious question.

Mustapha Mond

The best chapter of the book, the long conversation between John and the World Controller.

Mond knows everything. He has read Shakespeare, he understands science, he knows the price of the system. And he defends it knowingly.

His argument is simple: a choice was made between happiness and art, science and truth, and happiness was chosen. People want this.

In this chapter Huxley gives both sides his strongest sentences and does not take a side. The philosophical weight of the book is there.

The end

John shuts himself in a lighthouse, whips himself, tries to purify himself.

A journalist finds him, films him, and John turns into a tourist spectacle.

Crowds come. In the end he hangs himself.

Huxley offers no solution, and it is right that he does not.

Where it shows its age

It was written in 1932. Some of its predictions are too accurate, and some places carry the prejudices of its time: in the sections on class, race and women there are sentences that are disturbing today. The "savages" section is especially problematic.

You need to read these while noting them. The central idea of the book stands; its surroundings do not.

Where to start

The first two chapters are heavy with information: the production process, the classes, the methods of conditioning. It is told in the form of a factory tour and feels dry.

Get past that threshold. After it, it is fast and around three hundred pages.