The Savage vs. Mond

Aldous Huxley’s 1932 novel Brave New World is so contemporary in its portrayal of a “utopia” that it feel as if it could have been written yesterday. In a world where reading Shakespeare is considered uncivilized and “everyone belongs to everyone else,” a new society has been created, using reproductive technologies so that from birth, people are destined to belong to certain castes within this society. With stunted growth and intelligence, a Gamma will always belong the Gamma caste, and with conditioning given while they sleep, a Gamma will never want to be anything other than a Gamma.

There are no families, there are no long-term relationships, and the ideas of “mother” and “father” are considered smutty and obscene. However, there is a state of constant “happiness,” produced by lack of competition, a recreational attitude towards sexuality, and the drug soma. As bizarre as this new world seems, its creation is somewhat like Carl Elliot’s description in Better than Well of how the idea of childhood came to be. Though childhood seems like a concept that is eternal, that has been around forever, Elliot reveals that this is not quite the case. Two characters in Brave New World, John the Savage, a man the most similar to our way of thinking and a portrayal of Rousseau’s philosophy, and Mustapha Mond, a World Controller and a representation of Hobbes’ philosophy, discuss issues such as this towards the end of the book. “God doesn’t change,” John objects, appalled by the lack of interest towards religion and literature. “Men do, though,” Mond replies.

What does all of this mean in the realm of bioethics? One is the issue of the right to unhappiness. John wants a world where love, passion, pain and anger are all tangible, not suppressed by soma and VPSs (or Violent Passion Surrogates, which are given as a sort of catharsis by flooding the body with adrenalin). Mond, however, makes a very persuasive case for his society, as death is not mourned but expected and there is no sickness or suffering. But John’s questioning of this life hones in on a valid concern – do people have the right to be unhappy? What exactly is being unhappy? Should we eliminate traits that make people sick, or traits that make people difficult to get along with in order to make a “happier” group of people? Where does one draw the line?

Another conflict brought up stems both from Mond’s view of Shakespeare and Huxley’s own writing. Mond argues that Shakespeare is of no use to their society because it is old. As John continues to contest this, Mond replies that people simply couldn’t understand it. His views towards science are much the same – “pure” science is considered dangerous and a public menace. “We can’t allow science to undo its own good work,” Mond states. Brave New World seems to present the ultimate black box, a society where only a select few know about the past and what is scientific processes are needed to keep this society running. Mond may call Shakespeare old, yet the Hobbesian philosophy that seems to be the model for their society is also old – and still thriving. Though the civilization of the past may be forgotten and seem not at all pertinent or even important to the future’s inhabitants, Mond’s world still run on ideas that were created centuries ago – and how easy it is to forget where the ideas came from. Through this opposition between Mond and the Savage that goes beyond nature versus nurture to happiness versus high art, truth versus comfort, Huxley simultaneously questions the path of the future while studying the power of philosophy that exists now.