Brave New Dilemmas: A response to Brave New World
Revisited
Aldus Huxley’s 1958 work, Brave New Word Revisited, is
an attempt to readdress, in a non-fiction form, the issues he wrote
about several decades earlier in his now classic science fiction
novel Brave New World. In Brave New World Revisited
Huxley returns to this original work, in light of the time passed and
the fulfillment of many of the proposed, then outlandish, suggestions
for a possible future, and elaborates on the specific circumstances
which can bring, and are bringing, his fictionalized society to life.
While Brave New World can be read and understood without this
supplemental work, Brave New World Revisited is essentially a
non-fiction addendum to the novel, heavy with Huxley’s own
biased philosophical viewpoints, which necessitates being read in
conjunction with the novel. The first two chapters of Brave New
World Revisited primarily address the issues of overpopulation
and the ethical dilemmas it proposes.
Huxley begins the chapter on overcrowding by reminding the reader of
a few of the abstract ideas in Brave New World that have become
reality; included in the discussion are: general apathy for freedom,
an increase in government control, a shift in law enforcement from
punishment to conditioning away the desire to rebel, and a public
that is increasingly content with fewer liberties. In other words,
Huxley expounds upon the idea that today, most people do not
recognize the difference between perceived freedom and actual
liberty- and if they do, they don’t care strongly enough to
effect change. In reading Huxley’s words, one could easily
illustrate his point with the image of a person in a glass house- or
any sort of physical confinement: as long as the resident of that
house never had the desire to leave, they would never be aware they
were unable to. Further, even if that person knew their movements
were confined, is they believed they were happy and fulfilled within
their confinement, they would have no reason to break free. Such is
the case when citizens allow the government to take away freedoms
they take advantage of or do not exercise. For if the percentage of
the public who vote sunk to near non-existent numbers, would the
masses then have any right to be upset when the right to vote was
taken away?
In this essay, Huxley is chiefly concerned with over-population and
cites it as the chief contributor to the development “Brave New
World-ian” values in modern day life. Huxley draws a unique
comparison between birth control and “death control,”
citing these two factors as the major cause of over-population. He
points out that that birth control is difficult to use, expensive,
and futile to introduce into many underdeveloped areas of the world.
Thus, it is next to impossible to slow the birth rate in these
countries. However, “death control,” as Huxley defines
preventative and crisis medical treatment such as common vaccinations
and medications, is relatively inexpensive, becoming exceptionally
widespread, and is increasingly effective in preventing or delaying
deaths that would otherwise be very common and natural. Huxley
correctly cites these methods, and the corresponding consistency in
birth rate, and the decrease in death rate as a major factor in
overpopulation. Huxley surely recognized abortion as a means of birth
control even in the period in which he was writing; however, even in
Brave New World, Huxley probably never imagined a government in which
women who were born healthy and able to reproduce would, legally, be
deprived of the right or ability to have children through court
mandated birth control.
It is against this “grim biological background” that
Huxley begins to lay out the ethical problem that over-population
poses. Indeed, Huxley transposes several images, such as space
travel, again this grim background and finds them futile as a means
to save our race. The question may be posed, however, how Huxley
would regard the countless “life changing” inventions and
ideas that have sculpted the past fifty years if he disregards as
useless such significant things as space travel. Certainly Huxley
would find the idea of cloning an absolutely preposterous goal for
the scientific community- particularly after he has characterizes our
world (as it was in 1958!) as a throng of people unable to feed and
care for even ourselves. When seen through Huxley’s worldview,
it does seem that science could be developing much more worthwhile
advances in science that could aide mankind- instead twenty-first
century science steadily marches on, through cloning, towards a
Bokanofiskied populous.
Huxley says that there “are many roads to Brave New World”
and asserts that our present course is one of them, but while his
statement certainly has truth, his prophecy in Brave New World
Revisited that the years between 1958 and 1978 would bring all
third world countries to dictatorships has obviously proved him
fallible. Huxley makes a strong case that, however long it takes, the
gradual (or not so gradual) increase of population will, undeniably,
lead to a Brave New World society. In a particularly strong comment
near the end of chapter two, Huxley states “Liberty cannot
flourish in a country that is permanently on a war footing, or even a
near war footing.” This comment should be taken seriously and
considered especially applicable to the world as it exists post
September 11, 2001. The events following the national declaration of
the war on terrorism have proved to us that people would rather be
safe (even at the hands of an at-times- oppressing government) than
free. It is against this backdrop, and against the backdrop of an
inescapable rise of population, that we are faced with the choice
between fighting for rights most people do not want or are too
apathetic to want, or succumbing to the safe, controlled distopia of
Brave New World.
