Humanities Crash Course Week 51: Brave New World
A classic science fiction novel has me reconsidering how I’m using LLMs for learning and thinking.
Only one week left in the course! The second-to-last week had me read a modern science fiction classic: Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932). I also revisited a classic neo-noir nightmarescape from the 1980s. Let’s dive in.
Readings
Brave New World describes a scenario where a progressive industrialized world state covers large swaths of the Earth. It’s primary goal: happiness and stability through social control. Ideal, right? No, it’s a nightmare.
This new “better” world has very different mores than our own. The word “mother” is taboo: human reproduction by natural means has been replaced with a scientifically controlled process. Embryos are manipulated to generate different castes: Alphas, Betas, Deltas, Gammas, and Epsilons. Some are reared for leadership, others for menial labor. The latter are intentionally stunted both physically and intellectually.
All are conditioned through subliminal messaging. The goal: accepting their lot in life and not striving for the alternatives, which would cause strife. Biological needs are provided for. Entertainment is exclusively superficial: titillating and devoid of meaning. There are synthetic — new! improved! — versions of everything, from music to flour. All remaining unpleasantness is sanded off by casual (and frequent!) use of a powerful drug called soma.
Mindless consumption is pushed as a positive, since it drives industrial productivity: people are encouraged to dispose of goods rather than repair them. Religion has been replaced with a worship of progress through efficiency, centered on Henry Ford. The “civilized” world’s calendar now starts with Ford’s birth: the novel takes place in AF (After Ford) 632. All references to “Our Lord” have been replaced with “Our Ford.”
Gender and sexual norms are also very different from those of 1932. Women and men enjoy greater equality and promiscuity is encouraged. There are no lifelong pairings: “everyone belongs to everyone.” But individuality is also discouraged: people are conditioned to loathe loneliness. Religious rituals have been replaced with communal gatherings that encourage ego dissolution.
I’m already deep into this description without mentioning a plot. That’s not an accident. While the novel does have one, it’s mostly in service to sketching the scenario. John, the novel’s ostensible protagonist, is an outcast: born (the old-fashioned way) to Linda, a citizen of the World State who’s accidentally left behind in a native American reservation.
As a result, he’s been raised with many of the foibles of the old world: a melange of religious superstitions, suboptimal diet and hygiene, and — critically, Shakespeare. (The book’s title — a phrase often repeated in the novel — comes from The Tempest.) Two progressive characters — Bernard Marx and Lenina Crowne — bring John to London. Through the ensuing culture clash, we recoil at the obvious failings of this dehumanized society.
Audiovisual
Music: electronic music. I didn’t need nudging here: much of my listening outside the course consists of both classic and modern electronica. Here’s one of my favorites, Jean-Michel Jarre’s Equinoxe 5 (1978):
Arts: American neo-expressionist Jean-Michel Basquiat — an influential artist whose life was cut sadly short by drug use.
Cinema: David Lynch’s nightmarish neo-noir BLUE VELVET (1986). I’d seen it in college, not long after it came out. Not the most appropriate film for this stage in the course (or the holidays!), but my daughter showed interest. One shouldn’t waste such opportunities.
The film uncovers dysfunctional horrors lying just beneath the surface of an idyllic small-town. At one point, its protagonist Jeffrey Beaumont says, “I’m seeing something that was always hidden” — and so are we, including obscene violence and misogyny. This film likely couldn’t be made today.
Reflection
Nineteen Eighty-Four is the go-to dystopian novel: people often refer to attempts to subvert language or rewrite history as “Orwellian.” And appropriately so: Orwell’s novel captures the horrors of sacrificing individuality to top-down social control through the coercive manipulation of culture. But Brave New World offers perhaps a more accurate picture of where we find ourselves.
While both are horrifying dystopias, the two novels’ visions are very different. 1984’s world is extraordinarily bleak and depressing. (“If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—for ever.”) Members of the Inner Party know they’re causing suffering, but that’s the price of control and stability – and an end in itself; cruelty is the point.
Brave New World’s vision is more distressing: stability and control not through coercion but through infantilizing consumerism and progressive/humanist values. The former at least gives you a clear antagonist. But who can complain about the latter? Like Chaplin, the overt target here is industrialization. But unlike Chaplin, one detects in Huxley suspicion of socialism. (Is it an accident that two of the main characters are named Lenina and Marx?)
Ultimately, both novels criticize high-modernist top-down planning of the sort analyzed by James C. Scott in Seeing Like a State. The difference is one of means: coercion vs. conditioning. But the shared ends are insane: “perfecting” humanity is not just a fool’s errand, but also a path to dehumanization — which makes Brave New World an ideal work to read at the end of this course.
Notes on Note-taking
This week, I followed a similar process to the one I’ve used throughout the course: I read the work, reflected on it by taking notes (usually in Obsidian), and then used an LLM to reflect on and refine those works. But after re-reading Brave New World, I can’t help but wonder about the LLM’s neutrality. To what degree do its responses reflect its controllers’ social preferences?
I’ve gotten much value from LLMs throughout this course. But I’m also wary of the implications of using them to mediate my learning and thinking. In some ways, our societies aspire to the kind of conditioning depicted in the novel. LLMs can be a powerful tool in these efforts. This may be another reason to prefer “offline thinking”: my paper notebook isn’t likely to nudge me toward groupthink anytime soon.
Up Next
Final week! Gioia recommends assorted short readings from Octavia Butler, Joan Didion, David Foster Wallance, Tim O’Brien, and Alcoholics Anonymous. At this point, I trust his recommendations will wrap up this course nicely.
Again, there’s a YouTube playlist for the videos I’m sharing here. See you next week!
This post originally appeared on my blog.