Our Version of the Utopian World

Snow. Ice. Everywhere. Winter wonderland? Hardly! From about three o’clock this morning until almost noon, the world outside my windows was swarmed with a milky shade of snowflakes. Once in a while I could catch a clear glimpse of some familiar object, such as the driveway, and to my surprise, nothing was even close to being covered! “Impossible,” I thought. The weather had been so treacherous that almost every community event had been cancelled, and I hadn’t been able to see ten feet in front of my face all morning and there’s barely any more snow? What? Very confusing, you see. As it turns out the advisories set out by our local weather stations were for forty to fifty mile an hour winds. All that time I had spent imagining walking into a shimmering white paradise was wasted!

After the reality that we were in for another dreary Illinois wintery day, the inevitable question was set before me: What is one to do with oneself on a day when you’re almost snowed in?

Read a book! Duh!

Unfortunately for me, becoming engrossed in my fun nighttime thriller was not an option, as I’m slightly behind on the reading for one of my classes due to my own procrastinating ways. So instead I began again on Brave New World, written by Aldous Huxley. A few weeks ago, when I had originally started reading the piece of fantasy fiction, my reaction was made up of pure repulsion. Put simply, it is a creepy book! There is nothing about it that makes you want to curl up with a blanket and a mocha to spend a winter day in soothing relaxation.

To give you a better idea about what this book is all about, here’s the synopsis found on the back cover:

“Aldous Huxley’s tour de force, Brave New World is a darkly satiric vision of a  “utopian” future—where humans are genetically bred and pharmaceutically anesthetized to passively serve a ruling order. A powerful work of speculative fiction that has enthralled and terrified readers for generations, it remains remarkably relevant to this day as both a warning to be heeded as we head into tomorrow and as thought-provoking, satisfying entertainment.” 

As you can probably imagine, I was not particularly looking forward to catching up on what I’ve missed, but it was one of those “laundry tasks.” It must be done or else we would all end up walking around naked.

Surprisingly enough, I’m more than 75% through with the book, and I no longer agree with my preconceived idea that the story is merely “creepy.” It moved me to think as I learned more and more about the surrogates’ life style and the way they are bred to think. In their world there are no such things as mothers and fathers; in fact, they are bred to believe that giving birth is a repulsive cycle. Instead the humans are manufactured in their own test tubes and then conditioned by subconscious sleep repetitions. Each class of society is conditioned differently so that they learn to only accept a certain way of life and not to disrupt society. “Everyone belongs to everyone else,” is one of their most commonly stated phrases and so their moral code is nonexistent. Life in their world goes on in perfect harmony until a “savage” arrives.

His name is John, and although he is 100% made of surrogate blood, his mother actually gave birth to him on an Indian reservation, the last remainder of the previous life where there was disease, love, and the belief in God. His mother had been abandoned accidently after a temporary vacation to the reservation, and so he was raised within the Indian community, spending every moment he could reading from his only book, that of Shakespeare. At last, a member of the “new world” returned, also for a vacation, and took both John and his mother back to the surrogate world.

John expected to find some great land where he would finally fit in, but is sorely disappointed to find that the code of living is so drastically different from what he had learned was acceptable from his Shakespearean obsession. Everyone around him looked at his time spent absorbed in his book as insanity, for solitary thought was forbidden. Even the woman John loves cannot understand his reasons for not submitting to the immoral ways around them, and he must use every inch of self control to stick to his standards.

I would gladly tell you the end, as I am not much for keeping secrets, but now you know about as much as I do. The real reason why I am no longer repulsed by the theme itself is because it is incredibly thought provoking. The world that Huxley portrays is an appallingly realistic view of today’s world. In my generation especially the moral code is lowering itself day by day, and if you think about it, how many youths actually spend time in solitary thought, sorting out their own feelings? A world of video games and television has made entertainment so accessible and attractive that plain and simple meditation is rare.

We are conditioned, whether we admit it or not, but the people who raise us and the things that we experience in our early childhoods. Those are the things that trigger reactions in us later in life, just like the surrogates’ immediate repudiation for sick things.  We are also conditioned by the people who surround us later in life, and oddly enough, a universal acceptance of instinctively disgusting practices is prevalent everywhere… Just like the surrogates…. Ok, now I’m starting to creep myself out again…

Anyway, Brave New World is a book worth reading or rereading just for the pure social value. It’s as sparkling, as provocative, as brilliant, as impressible as the day it was published, and even more applicable. I need someone to compare notes with and see if my connections to the utopian world and ours are even remotely accurate. If you have thoughts on the matter or if I somehow inspired you to read this great piece of fiction, let me know!