Brave new world, Aldous Leonard Huxley

en pt

2023-01-22T22:26:22

Everybody's happy now.

The World State in the Year of Our Ford 632 is perfectly constructed: humans are produced in laboratories, engineered and conditioned for their societal purpose, kept young until their death, with free access to drugs and all sorts of technological amenities.

Women are infertile or expertly trained in contraceptive rituals, encouraged to have as many partners as possible, and, if they ever "feel out of sorts", administered a passion surrogate or pregnancy substitute.

Life is for pleasure and pleasure is always available. Everyone belongs to everyone else, history is bunk, progress is lovely, and so on go the commanding edicts, instilled from infancy. Yet, despite the comfort of their perfect, sanitized life, despite the abundant happiness, citizens yearn for something else, though they cannot name it. To be free to be happy, in your own way. To feel something strongly. To do something much more important, more intense, more violent.

Huxley's novel is remarkable in its prophecy — now more than ever since its publishing in 1932. But it is primarily an ode to the human spirit and its rebellion against the forces that seek to dominate and control it.

But I don't want comfort.

I want God,
I want poetry,
I want real danger,
I want freedom,
I want goodness.

I want sin.

[…] I'm claiming the right to be unhappy. […] I claim them all.

-- John, the Savage