Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World is about social stability, sexual promiscuity, and happiness. From cradle to grave, man receives great care from the World State; the World Controllers know better, conditioning people to “like their unescapable social destiny” (Huxley, 19).
In the INFANT NURSERIES, NEO-PAVLOVIAN CONDITIONING ROOMS, children learn “an ‘instinctive’ hatred of books” (24). In today’s universities, books are read but the selection is quite narrow. Can we expect liberal professors to offer comprehensive reading lists when they have not read broadly?
As for the “moral education” in Huxley’s world, it began with the state replacing the mother and father. Christianity, Bibles, “monogamy and romance” are no more (39). The World State taught people (including young children) to be “more promiscuous” (41). In today’s liberal sex-ed curriculum for public schools, homosexual sex is taught to be equal to heterosexual sex. Children receive information for engaging in sexual activity at an early age.
In Brave New World, all Christian crosses “had their tops cut and became T’s” (50). Life progressed beyond “the old bad days” when men took to religion and spent “their time reading, thinking – thinking!” (52). Today there is less thinking in general, less talk of sin and salvation and more attention on climate change activism and other favorite leftist causes.
Those who challenged the state and saw themselves as “individuals” were dangerous in Huxley’s World State; state solidarity was the answer: “For I am you and you are I” (74). It was blasphemy to question the state, whether it was the Abortion Centre or any state policy. The message of today’s liberals is to appreciate the morality of abortion. In Canada, the Liberal Health Minister pushes for more abortion access.
In Brave New World, John the Savage is the tragic story of one who rejected the civilized State. He opposed the state’s stand on sexuality (easy sex and multiple partners) and its pornographic films: the “horrible” film was “base” and “ignoble” (145). For him, the induced happiness of the state was a “lying happiness” (153). But this was subversive thinking.
God was of “great interest” for the State Controller, but he wisely hid “The Holy Bible, containing the Old and New Testaments” (196). He knew that “God doesn’t change” (197); he understood that the people must not learn about God.
A literal reading of the Bible is not compatible with liberal ideas of culture and liberals today have achieved much in hiding God.
In Brave New World state control came at a price: “It hasn’t been very good for truth, of course. But it’s been very good for happiness” (194). And, thus, thanks to liberals, life at the end of 2015 is supposed to be happier.
Source: Aldous Huxley, Brave New World (London: Arcturus Publishing Limited, 2014).
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