I can't quite remember when I read Aldous Huxleys Brave New World, but I was probably around 19. Which was a bit late since I'd heard about it before that, and also I had been reading anything dangerous, provocative or forbidden that I could get my hands the previous years.
Actually one of my grandfathers was a real technocrat, one of the founders of the first school for civil engineers in the country, and after he died I got my hands on Brave New World Revisited that he must have bought when it was published. Curiously he did not have Brave New World itself, I guess the actual implementation of a technocracy was the real priority?
Its not that he was a bad person or anything, but still I remember the gloomy feeling when he took us on a tour around all the buildings of that school, his tiny flat was right behind it, as if he wanted to keep an eye on it 24/7.
Maybe one contributing factor for me to become a rebel and more of a creative using tech rather than working directly developing it was that he told me directly that when I got older I would study there. I guess many a technocrat has been lacking in human understanding,..
“If one’s different, one’s bound to be lonely.” - yes this was pretty clear to me already back then!
Anyway, when I finally came around to Brave New World itself it was quite some experience. And there was no doubt whatsoever about who was in the right, The Savage seemed to speak up for the messy, rebellious and freedom seeking human inside me.
And that was in the face of seemingly unopposable force, a society that was already ruled by technocrats, and where every single grown up I'd met for at least a decade was literally worshipping the state. Not even the practical application, rather the abstraction of it, an utter vacuum of freedom and a belief in self reliance.
"Community, identity, stability", these people were already living it to the best of their ability!
My other grandfather was the opposite that balanced this, always super practical, happy and constructive, never any coercion or attempt at shaping me in any way. But this type of ordinary, sane and dependable people were not in control any longer, so being with him was more like visiting an oasis now and then..."
“I’d rather be myself,” he said. “Myself and nasty. Not somebody else, however jolly.” Bernard when Lenina asks him to take soma
Yes I wanted to be myself! Even back then I never gave in when anyone tried to drag me into their echo chamber... At the time that was a real fight, but a few years later this was what made me able to connect with lots of really interesting, new friends with very individual takes on most things!
Seen in retrospect its not so hard to see why they all fell into line, although it is well hidden the systems we have been living in are brutal, and although it is not as obvious as stated in Brave New World the underlying threat is still there...
". . . upwards of five thousand kilometres of fencing at sixty thousand volts.". . ."To touch the fence is instant death," pronounced the Warden solemnly. "There is no escape from a Savage Reservation.". . .“Those, I repeat, who are born in the Reservation are destined to die there.”. . .Leaning forward, the Warden tapped the table with his forefinger. "You ask me how many people live in the Reservation. And I reply"—triumphantly—“I reply that we do not know. We can only guess.”
Maybe I didn't fully understand what I was up against at the time, although Brave New World made that pretty clear!
Writing this I realize that I totally have to read it again, and perhaps do more of these comparisons, its quite spooky since we're now on the verge of actually living it all...
How far away are we from living exactly what Aldous Huxley writes about, are we not already there?
"The world’s stable now. People are happy; they get what they want, and they never want what they can’t get. They’re well off; they’re safe; they’re never ill; they’re not afraid of death; they’re blissfully ignorant of passion and old age; they’re plagued with no mothers or fathers; they’ve got no wives, or children, or lovers to feel strongly about; they’re so conditioned that they practically can’t help behaving as they ought to behave. And if anything should go wrong, there’s soma."
At least in Canada the state has already started handing out the equivalent to a lethal dose of soma....