Last week, I completed my third dystopian novel, Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley. Although it’s set a little over five hundred years from now, the ideas were drawn from the imagination of one surrounded by early twentieth-century science, philosophy, and the ugly rise of fascism in Europe. And yet…much like Orwell and Bradbury…he captures such a depth of core human poison and potential, that it feels as though he’s writing for us, today, and that the future he envisions isn’t all that far off…maybe already here, at least in some form.
I read this book in high school and remember thinking it was interesting. However, I was too young to really understand it. I turned each page to pass the test. Reading it again…well, I’m clearly older now, with a (bit) better understanding of what’s at stake…it will haunt me for some time.
What’s eats at my brain, and my heart, is the deception of kindness. Dystopian stories are, at least on some level, about control…who’s in power, why do they have it, what happens to those who don’t have it, and what do those in power do to “manage” them…and is there one – just one – person who will rise above the control, see it for what it is and take at least one step to spark curiosity in others, maybe even win a victory, or even a hope for fully dismantling it.
But…dystopian literature tells us, perhaps, something more balanced. There will always be a battle for power, and there will always be those who abuse the power they obtain. There will always be a network of under-the-table agreements between bodies of power that keep the people in line. Power. And, yet…there will also always be hope. It’s a big word: hope. Within that simple monosyllabic word that is both an action and a thing, there is another kind of power to offset the other power.
Power.
There was one excerpt where power took an interesting turn. I wasn’t expecting to be moved by this – but I can’t get this scene out of my mind. Of course (spoiler alert), it ultimately ends badly for John, the Savage (as named by those who claim to be “civilized”), who is speaking with the Controller, one of those who manages medicating (via a few means) society for the cause of “peace.” John is trying to make sense of it all…the “civilized” goal of removing pain and suffering, consequences of bad decisions, and just feeling lousy. He tells of a story of men who had to go through pain and trials, including being set upon by flies and mosquitoes, to get to the woman they loved, and how the pain was worth it and made the prize even greater. The Controller, Mustapha Mond, responds by saying that, in the “civilized countries,” the prize can be won without the hard work and the pests – they got rid of them.
The Savage nodded, frowning. “You got rid of them. Yes, that’s just like you. Getting ride of everything unpleasant instead of learning to put up with it. Whether ’tis better in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them… But you don’t do either. Neither suffer nor oppose. You just abolish the slings and arrows. It’s too easy.”
[content cut; John continues]
“But I like inconveniences.”
“We don’t,” said the Controller. “We prefer to do things comfortably.”
“But I don’t want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.”
“In fact,” said Mustapha Mond, “you’re claiming the right to be unhappy.”
“All right then,” said the Savage defiantly, “I’m claiming the right to be unhappy.”
“Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and impotent; the right to have syphilis and cancer; the right to have too little to eat; the right to be lousy; the right to live in constant apprehension of what may happen tomorrow; the right to catch typhoid; the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind.” There was a long silence.
“I claim them all,” said the Savage at last.
“Brave New World”, Aldous Huxley, pp 238-240, ed. Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2006.
I wonder…and I know I’m grossly generalizing…when we have a world where happiness, kindness, and peace seem to be the goal…what are the unintended consequences? Do we know what we’re asking for? Do we understand that under those noble goals, there is a world of difference in how individuals define them? And then what? Have we gotten to the point where we can’t tolerate being offended…where the perception of unkindness is defined as being unkind?
I wonder where our individual soul in this. Happiness is not, truly, all. There is something profound in embracing unhappiness…the good with the bad…to learn how to live with things not working out…even fatally. May God give me the heart of such internal peace, that I can grow from the lack of external peace – and when I see opposing viewpoints and actions to not immediately categorize them as “hate” or “unkind” or “violent”…but simply, at its core, different…and uncomfortable…and a source of learning.
“I claim them all.” I don’t have an answer…I don’t know how this fits fully into my faith in Christ…but I think John was on to something.
a tilting of air 