Notes:
More of an exploration of philosophy than it is a story with any semblance of a plot. Regardless, it’s an incredible idea of a dystopia which I find more compelling—in the sense of its morbid possibility—than others in the genre.
p.16 on Epsilon embryo conditioning “and that, that is the secret of happiness and virtue—liking what you’ve got to do. All conditioning aims at that: making people like their un-escapable social destiny.”
p.22 see’s babies being shocked and alarmed for conditioning to specific fear. “They’ll grow up with what the psychologists used to call an ‘instinctive’ hatred of books and flowers. Reflexes unalterably conditioned.”
p.28 (Flipping the paragraph on hypnopaedia) To bring home the finer distinctions, to inculcate the more complex courses of behavior.. There must be words, but words without reason. “Till at last the child’s mind is these suggestions, and the sum of the suggestions is the child’s mind. And not the child’s mind only. The adult’s mind too — all his life long. The mind that judges and desires and decides — made up of these suggestions. But all these suggestions are our suggestions!”
- Huxley was keen to see imbedded assumptions bypassing rationality. How whether you understand or not doesn’t matter, you’re just inclined.
- The state’s interest in programming desire
- Aside from morality, the stickiness of phrases lean towards believing them a little more. How many slogans lean on catchiness? Fake it till you make it, yolo, MAGA
---ESSAY MATERIAL---- p.69 - Helmholtz struggles with a creative outlet, despite his good work as a hypnopaedic writer. “Did you ever feel, as though you had something inside you that was only waiting for you to give it a chance to come out?.. I’m pretty good at inventing phrases—you know, the sort of words that suddenly make you jump, almost as though you’d sat on a pin, they seem so new and exciting even though they’re about something so hypnopaedically obvious. But that doesn’t seem enough. It’s not enough for the phrases to be good; what you make with them ought to be good too.”
he continues,
“I feel I could do something much more important. Yes, and more intense, more violent. But what? What is there more important to say? And how can one be violent about the sort of things one’s expected to write about?” “Words can be like X-rays, if you use them properly—they’ll go right through anything. You read and you’re pierced.” “but what on earth’s the good of being pierced by an article about a Community Sing, or the latest improvement in scent organs?” “Besides, can you make words really piercing—when you’re writing about that sort of thing? Can you say something about nothing?”
Soma is described as a “vacation” it is bliss but it is also escape. It numbs pain and anger, it handles the difficult emotions for you. The society prefers infantilization.
p.148 - The director on his plan to fire Bernard, “..all the more reason for severity. His intellectual eminence carries with it corresponding moral responsibilities. The greater a man’s talents, the greater his power to lead astray. It is better that one should suffer than that many should be corrupted. ..no offense is so heinous as unorthodoxy of behavior. Murder kills only the individual—and after all, what is an individual? ..We can make a new one with the greatest of ease.. Unorthodoxy threatens more than the life of the mere individual; it strikes at Society itself.”
p.177 - Mustapha Mond denies a scientific paper from being published,
“It was a masterly piece of work, but once you began admitting explanations in terms of purpose—well,..It was the sort of idea that might easily decondition the more unsettled minds among the higher castes—make them lose their faith in happiness as the Sovereign Good and take to believing, instead, that the goal was somewhere beyond, somewhere outside the present human sphere; that the purpose of life was not the maintenance of well-being, but some intensification and refining of consciousness, some enlargement of knowledge.”
He reflected, while likely true, it was in-admissable. He sighed “What fun it would be, if one didn’t have to think about happiness!”
On the Savage’s attempts to “free” the Deltas. “But do you like being slaves?” “Do you like being babies?” “Don’t you want to be free and men? Don’t you even understand what manhood and freedom are? “I’ll teach you; I’ll make you be free whether you want to or not.” He began to throw soma rations out of the windows.
p.220 The philosophical climax of the book, when Helmholtz and the Savage speak with Mond. They’re asking why Othello couldn’t be made
“..you can’t make tragedies without social instability. 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, theres soma.”
Still, they protest, Othello’s better than the rest of what they’ve got.
“Of course it is, but that’s the price we have to pay for stability. You’ve got to choose between happiness and what people used to call high art. We’ve sacrificed the high art. We have the feelies and the scent organ instead.” “but they don’t mean anything.” “They mean themselves; they mean a lot of agreeable sensations to the audience.”
The argument continues, “It all seems to me quite horrible.” says the Savage. “Of course it does. Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the overcompensations for misery. ..stability isn’t nearly so spectacular as instability. Being contented has none of the glamour of a good fight against misfortune, none of the picturesqueness of a struggle with temptation, or a fatal overthrow by passion or doubt. Happiness is never grand.”
p. 222 On work and the caste system: