Brave New World by Robinson

I've never been one to call something my "favorite" and trying to think of a book that has been the most influential to me is no easy task. However, perhaps it is the reason that this prompt is about influence and not favorites that I am able to declare what book has had the greatest impact on my line of thought. Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley... a book that I had heard of and had unknowingly seen many references to before I got the opportunity to sit down with the book itself. A book that I most likely did a disservice to by reading it sporadically over nearly the entire school year, but a book nonetheless that I could relate to on nearly every page. A book so ahead of its time yet often forgotten in favor of other classics such as Fahrenheit 451 and 1984 that followed it. A book that is more relevant and foretelling than both.

I am quite cynical of modern society, and am more willing to place shortcomings of civilization on the people at large rather than the government or corporations. I have noted that our world today has more information than ever, and with a brain that hasn't evolved much since the pre-industrial era, our only hope is to cram that information into small, far away compartments of our head to sit there and not be deeply analyzed or emotionally cared for. More news than ever and less time to care for it. More relationships than ever and less actual friendships. Perhaps these trends have been in place for centuries, but they have only seemed to become large issues within the past decade. Somehow Huxley, in 1931, was able to predict these issues in shockingly accurate portrayals.

Brave New World features two main characters—Bernard Marx, a social outcast of modern life that is disillusioned by its soullessness, and John, a social outcast of "savage" life that gets to experience modern life and also begins to hate it. The title itself echos Shakespeare's The Tempest, used when Miranda is overcome with joy after escaping the island she was banished too. Although John is overcome with joy when he escapes "savage" life at first, this quickly turns to disgust with modern society. Society in the novel, despite having more options in life than ever before, seems to be at the intellectual level of medieval feudalism. Perhaps feudalism is the best way to describe it, because each individual is assigned a "caste" at birth (or rather creation inside a test tube) that determines the course of their entire life. "Alphas" are set to perform high-end jobs such as engineering and marketing while "Epsilons," at the bottom, are doomed for janitorial work and other menial tasks. After unnatural birth, this is followed by intense conditioning by repeated voice broadcasting during children's sleep that not only brainwashes them but also makes them content with brainwashing. But all of this is, for the most part, science fiction. Brave New World has much more in store for hitting home in the 21st century.

Huxley's predictions for the modern age seem to echo most closely in the areas of culture and daily life. The world of Brave New World is one where vices are plentiful and actively encouraged. The world is one where religion has been dropped in favor of somewhat of an institutionalized party and one where solitude is seen as a danger to society. Bernard Marx and I share the trait of enjoying being alone, but in this dystopian future Bernard is actively monitored for his society-endangering behavior. Bernard's criticisms of society in Brave New World are very close to mine, some 85 years later. Society in Huxley's world depends on people having social ties with other people. These ties are not necessarily strong ones, but as a conditioning mantra echoed in the book says, "every one belongs to every one else" (Huxley). This mirrors modern social media, where followers are important but true friends are not. Drugs in Brave New World, or rather the drug, soma, is an integral part of daily life and actively encouraged. Soma is essentially a nearly perfect hallucinogen with the only adverse effect being a reduced lifespan. But as death is universally accepted in the novel's society, people don't see this as a bad thing. Today, drugs seem to be gaining some societal acceptance, with four states legalizing recreational marijuana and illegal drugs as plentiful as ever. Soma is seen in Brave New World as an escape from any harshness of reality, and in this ever-stressful world many people want an escape too. Soma can also be seen as a parallel to smartphones. In Brave New World, people carry soma everywhere and are always ready to take it if they get bored or need to escape a socially awkward situation. This seems to be a common reason people rely on smartphones today. And last but not least, sexuality in Brave New World is overt and rampant. Society discourages marriage and encourages short, more-physically-than-emotionally intimate relationships. Going again with the "every one belongs to every one else" concept, marriage is seen as selfish by the world. Having a significant other for more than a week is shunned upon. Today, marriage is on the decline. Sex is less of a taboo than ever and people are not afraid to dress the part. "True love" seems to be falling in favor of "making love."

In conclusion, this novel's 85 year-old ideas of societal degeneration seem to me to be more relevant than ever. And although the novel doesn't propose a solution to this issue—one of Huxley's self-criticisms with his novel—its alignment of concerns of society with mine and resulted in it having a profound influence over my thought. I find myself thinking about it and drawing connections to it from news, modern culture, and daily life as I descend into the 21st century's "brave new world."