Brave New (West)World

*Westworld and Brave New World spoilers ahead*

Recently I’ve been on a bit of a mission to read classic books and watch classic movies. If you have any to recommend, let me know. The most recent of these is, as the title may have revealed, Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. I can see why it’s considered a classic. In this post I thought I’d try to explain how I interpreted it.

The title itself “Brave New World” refers to a world of possibility and unbounded happiness, at least from the eyes of a nescient John. However, the depictions offered to John of the “civilised” state come from his mum, Linda, who grew up there. It seems to be a “brave new world” only based off the reports of his mother, who’s been Pavlovianally conditioned to value only what is in this “utopia” that she was literally designed to be a part of. Despite his excitement to be going there, it seemed obvious to me that John would not enjoy his time in civilised society. He has a depth of character only a few in the State have. He was taught how to be brave. In an imperfect world bravery is essential to survival. Mustapha Mond says himself that bravery is not required in a world where there is nothing to rebel against, nothing to resist and therefore nothing to worry about. Even if there is something that slips through the cracks, government supplied soma (a drug that makes you happy) rations will get you by, no problem.

However, this seeming “utopia” comes at a cost. The cost is science, religion, art, history… and for John, Hermholtz and perhaps also Bernard, sadness. John explicitly states, towards the end of the novel, that he indeed longs for sadness, or at least hardship, that may have the potential to bring sadness. I think this is what John really wants. He wants a challenge to overcome. He wants hurdles to jump and walls to climb. He’d rather pursue and/or be challenged by something and therefore grant both the possibility of success and failure rather than be guaranteed the Epicurean ideal of a life of pleasure. I think John desires the life similar to that which a Stoic embraces. It is entirely possible his Stoic tendencies came from his reading Shakespeare whose moral compass was influenced by virtue ethicists, including, perhaps especially, the Stoics. In the end he does get the life he yearned for. He’s able to live self-reliantly, and actively engages in the discomfort of whipping himself as an act of enlightenment (an extreme the Stoics probably would not have espoused, though perhaps one extreme outweighs that of the other).

That’s all good for John, but what is Huxley really saying about the plight of pursuing a good life? Huxley and the characters that reside in the State usually refer to John as “the Savage”. Conversely, the Statesmen are generally described as “civilised”. The two descriptions have opposite connotations, the former positive, the latter negative. The first deliberate juxtaposition between the two ideological states occurs when Marx and Lenina visit the Savage reserve; Marx and Lenina on the background of “savagery”. Later, John, the Savage, is compared to the civilised world when Marx brings John and his mother, Linda back.

However polarised the terms used to describe the respective sects, Huxley’s protagonist is Bernard Marx, a thoughtful, though not necessarily insightful, misfit. Huxley’s only view therefore is of a disconcerting “utopia”. Throughout the post I’ve put “utopia” in quotes because I think Huxley is positioning that way, as a “utopia” to most of the people within, but for the reader it has eerie dystopian undertones. He wants us to question what an actual utopia would look like to us, and perhaps question the very things we strive for every day in order to achieve a personal utopia, the kind that lives in the mind. To say “disconcerting utopia” is a kind of oxymoron to begin with. Huxley resolves this apparent oxymoron in the discussion between Mond, Helmholtz and John. Mond acknowledges that a utopia for some, such as Lenina and everyone of a lower caste than hers is not necessarily so for the Alphas who have been conditioned to think independently. They have the potential for self-actualisation. It is both a pursuable and desirable direction to orient one’s energy towards as an Alpha. An interesting parallel I drew here was to that of Nietzschean philosophy (after a rather quick DDG search it seems I’m not the only one). Helmholtz is the most obvious example of a Nietzschean ideal, along with Mond, however the lines are blurred for Marx and John. Marx is capable of deep thought, after all we see most of the events unfold from his eyes. However he’s not able to convince himself well enough of a higher morality, like Helmholtz can, to take real action on it.

One way to analyse Bernard is by looking at his namesake Bernard Lowe of Westworld. Lowe is incapable of achieving higher moral values than those given to him, by, wait for it… Ford — the name of the God-like figure of Brave New World. Ford creates Lowe, and most importantly, his mind. There now exists an interesting semantic hurdle when discussing the effects of nature vs nurture. When examining Marx’s character this semantical problem also arises. There is no clear distinction between nature or nurture in these scenarios. Lowe was not born of natural selection; was Marx? What parts of them can be considered nature and what nurture? Lowe’s memories were inserted, which would for him, be nature (they are a part of his creation), yet a memory implies past experience and therefore environmental nurture. Marx’s creation is just as problematic. How are the hypopaedic lessons to be blamed for the development of his character? Is it nurture? What about how he was grown as foetus though? That is surely a constructed sort of nature.

Why do we even need a distinction between nature and nurture though? We need to know because to know means we can derive a level moral responsibility in line with the extent they are actually responsible for their actions. Are all Lowe’s actions to be blamed on Ford? Before he becomes conscious? After? Are the scientists who grew Marx responsible for Marx’s actions? What about the hypnopaediac poetry writers? This question of moral responsibility and the extent to which they are responsible is only relevant if one posits a position of free-will. If we accept determinism for a moment, it does not matter whether Lowe was always going to kill Elsie because someone programmed him to or because his consciousness decided it was the best course of action. The causality of events is all that mattered, the fact that it indeed happened is all that is required for the next causally related events to take place, continuing the cycle. Another way to do away with moral questions of absolute responsibility of nature or nurture would be to view it through the lens of compatibilism.

From the compatibilist perspective, Lowe is an agent, albeit one that is restricted by predetermined causes. Thus, Lowe can be responsible for his actions despite having been programmed a certain way if rather than the program running exactly as it had been programmed, it ran in another, though determined way, you could consider it a thought made by that agent. So some action can be causally determined by a preprogrammed bug that is by chance going to switch a switch up or down. This switch is switched inside the person and therefore it is of their own will that the action caused is effected. Thus, the extent of nature or nurture do not matter as immediate causes of an agent’s actions, though, if some actions influencers took — e.g. Ford programming into Bernard his child’s death — were self-determined, they can be held responsible as a causal determiner of some future event. A more concrete example would be to blame the child and the parents for the child torturing a dog.

So then, away from the Metaphysical and returning to Huxley’s commentary on the pursuit of a good life for Marx or people like him. It seems futile for Marx to try to become someone like Hermholtz, for he is clearly not predisposed to such thinking, at least during the events we see. He is much more concerned with fitting in socially, which may have been due to uncontrolled social conditioning, based of they physical conditioning mistake that made him shorter and less attractive than an average Alpha Plus. It may be possible that by some series of events he is able to break free of this slave morality he is clearly seduced by and define his own morality by making decisions himself, just as Westworldian Bernard does.

For Helmholtz, who was named after German physicist and philosopher Hermann von Helmholtz, most well-known as a philosopher for his philosophy of science, it is a different path to eudaemonia. One of Hermann’s particular contributions to the philosophy of science was on the civilising capacity of science. Helmholtz Watson knows, sees and creates this civilisation with a contrived version of science (which is really more like manufacturing), however, is somewhat dissatisfied despite his creative contributions to the state. The dissatisfaction exists because of his predisposition to conditioned behaviour, his last-name after all is Watson, coming from that of psychologist John Watson, who was the father of behaviourism. Hence, Helmholtz’s job as a propagandist for the State. However, he himself has not been conditioned in such a way. He knows he’s an individual, yet he’s actively involved in the creation of anti-individuals, conformists and is annoyed by Marx’s petty complaints about the State. Helmholtz is a contributor to his own problems. So, in order to achieve eudaemonia, Helmholtz realises he must remove himself from conformity entirely, not just in his mind, asking to be sent to an island with bad weather. He is asking for solitude, a Nietzschean requirement on the path to finding one’s higher self.

In the very end, John kills himself. Given the virtue driven character that he is, Huxley is commenting on the unavoidable nature of epicurean pleasures. By having John kill himself, Huxley is asserting that killing himself was the only way to ensure he commits no other vices, it is his last virtuous act. A truly sorrowful way to end what we may now consider a dystopian novel.

So, like John, be brave in a scared world. Just, be careful.

Credit where it’s due:

Post title credit goes out to redditor DrMcProfessor whose post I came across after searching for just a comparison!