At first, when reading the description of the structure of this “brave new world,” I didn’t feel any beauty, only aversion. Here, people lose their freedom, are constrained, almost every aspect of life is arranged, with unchangeable racial discrimination and class solidification. Many wrong ideas are implanted in their memories from childhood, and their thoughts are manipulated.
“In the end, the child’s mind is these suggestions, the sum of the suggestions is the child’s mind. And not just the child’s mind, the adult’s mind is too — for the rest of their lives. The mind that judges, desires, decides — it’s made up of these suggestions. But all these suggestions are our suggestions!”
Where is the beauty in this? This is simply hell.
But as I read further, I began to waver. Here, people only need comfort, no need to suffer from illness, everyone belongs to each other so they don’t suffer from loneliness, they don’t even need to think, just follow the people around them and the suggestions adjusted in their brains. Even when encountering unpleasant things, there’s soma to escape from the painful present.
Because our world is different from Othello’s world. You can’t make a Ford without steel — and you can’t create tragedy without an unstable society. This world is now stable. Everyone is happy, they get what they want, and they never want what they can’t get. They are wealthy, they are safe, they never get sick, they are not afraid of death, they happily know nothing about passion and old age, they have no mother or father to torment them, they have no wife, children or lover to arouse strong feelings, they are so conditioned that they actually can’t help but behave as they should. And if anything goes wrong, there’s soma.
And the loss of freedom, discrimination, and class solidification mentioned above are not problems for the “inferior” races themselves; they never thought it was a problem. The people here have not lost all their freedom; they have freedom limited by the laws of the new world, which is enough for them. All channels of information won’t let them know the whole truth, and as long as they don’t know and continue to be in the dark, they won’t feel any pain.
For them, they are not victims; they are the most unresistant strain. His conditioning has laid the tracks along which he should travel. He can’t help but do it; he is destined to.
As someone who has suffered pain and torment, I cannot deny that I felt a longing for this environment when reading this, despite the many repulsive descriptions at first, despite knowing the price is losing oneself, giving up true freedom, and giving up noble spirit. But here, people don’t need to bear pain, they just need comfort. It’s easy to let go like this, and I think most people would prefer this choice, not to make changes.
If you are an insider, it’s hard to discuss and judge these issues; your thoughts are limited by the world itself. If I were a member of that world, I would probably be like most people, thinking that so-called true freedom and pain are absurd. Now let’s go back to the God’s-eye view of the bystander. The content mentioned above is completely opposite in the new world: choosing to have self, freedom and pain, or comfort and happiness.
As the Controller said:
The emphasis has shifted from truth and beauty to comfort and happiness.
Universal happiness keeps the wheels turning steadily, but truth and beauty cannot.
The new world is formed in this way. Pursuing truth and beauty cannot be comfortable and happy; truth and beauty come from experiencing suffering, destructive changes. This reminds me of the view mentioned in Camus’ “The Happy Death” that high-quality happiness needs to be reflected through pain. At the same time, Shakespeare’s works, famous for their tragic beauty, appear repeatedly in the dialogue between the Controller and the Savage, which is also a good example. Indulging in comfort and happiness cannot seek truth; every scientific discovery has potential destructiveness, and breaking through this destructiveness will not make comfort and destructiveness. In comfort and happiness, the beauty of human nature cannot be reflected either. Professor Luo Xiang gave an example:
If there is a pornographic book, a Guo Degang cross-talk, and a Shakespeare, all three will bring you some happiness. But even if you sincerely believe that the pornographic book brings you pleasure and the Guo Degang cross-talk brings you happiness, if you can only keep one book, which one do you keep? Shakespeare. This story tells us that the happiness that can better reflect human dignity is the greatest happiness, because it is related to human dignity.
For the “new world,” they cannot know all this, and most people have no right to choose. For the real society, we can fully understand all this and choose both, just more or less. As Professor Luo Xiang also said:
Reading Shakespeare doesn’t prevent me from listening to Guo Degang’s cross-talks, but if your eyes always only care about the ground, you will never know how happy it is to look up.
However, our current “small world” already has such shadows in many aspects, gradually losing the right to choose. In terms of thoughts, people’s thoughts come from the environment, society, and regional culture they are in. This reminds me of certain brainwashing propaganda and certain well-known places that constantly try to block people from seeing the truth. Since you can’t know the truth and other answers, and there’s only one option in front of you, you probably won’t consider whether this option is right or wrong. In addition, I thought of the term “alienation” that a friend mentioned when we chatted yesterday:
The so-called “unfreedom from freedom.” You have a certain ability to freely divide labor and migrate, but precisely because you are deeply invested in a certain social division of labor, you are trapped in the “unfreedom” of this environment.
The people of this “world” are all like this, gradually losing part of their freedom, and this unfreedom is caused by the “world” they are in. Most people follow the “sleep teaching method” like Alpha, some people like Bernard peek a little, some people like the Controller see it all. Even if they see everything, we are still imprisoned, just the “bottle” we are in may not be so small, but we don’t know when this bottle may shrink very small. I think this is what the author was worried about, worrying that people would lose their right to choose everything, worrying that everything in people’s lives is arranged.
I cannot assert whether such a world is good or bad. If you choose to experience suffering, you need to have the ability to face suffering, you need to constantly experience pain and discover truth and beauty. If you choose comfort and happiness, you will give up yourself and give up freedom. The choice between the Controller and the “Savage” is a very strong contrast; when both know everything and have the right to choose, one chooses the former and the other chooses the latter. No matter which one you choose, you have to pay the price. In such a world, most people actually have no right to choose, but in the real world, most people still have the right to choose. If you can only choose between these two, do you want to be a Savage or a Controller?