To begin my foray into
Eucatastrophes, Paul and I decided to read the book Brave New World by Aldous Huxley in order to further dedicate this
summer to dystopias. An acquaintance of mine once described the book 1984 as “Dante’s Hell as seen through
the eyes of an atheist”. Brave New World
is different in that there is no scary Big Brother watching over the actions of
the populace. No one is subject to violence by their government. People are
generally happy, and the only thing they fear is being exiled from the
benevolent World State. It is quite different from the dystopias seen in The Hunger Games and 1984. If Dante’s hell is truly seen in
the world of Big Brother, I say that Brave New World is Dante’s heaven as seen
through the eyes of a modernist. For this reason, I see it as something truly
twisted despite all the non-violence and bliss.
In the Divine Comedy,
Dante writes of heaven in the third book Paradiso.
Upon exiting Purgatory, he witnesses the great spheres (sun, moon, and various
other planets) that hold the residents of heaven. The saints are divided
amongst the spheres according to the lives they have lived. Those on the moon
are saints who failed to live up to a promise they made to God. Those on the sun
are the saints who are shining examples to the faithful (St. Francis, St.
Thomas). The spheres continue on in regards to the quality of the saint and end
where the Trinity resides. Despite the divisions, animosity is not present for
the saints on the higher spheres serve those of the lesser spheres. No one in
heaven is ignorant and thus know exactly why they remain on the sphere God’s
chooses for them. It is also through the absence of ignorance that the heavenly
host basically knows all that happens on earth. St. Aquinas and St. Francis
both proclaim their disappointment in the still living Franciscans and
Dominicans who have thrown away their vows for vices. Since the intellect and
will of every saint is directed towards fulfillment in God, no one feels a sense
of loss. Since passion requires pain (the origin of the word passio is actually grounded in the
crucifixion of Christ), the painless existence in heaven causes the loss of the
passions. God illuminates their intellect so they are never pained by
ignorance. The effects of original sin and concupiscence are gone so the pain
of falling away from God is gone. God provides meaning so none of the saints
feel that they have lost meaning. It is actually because of this that people
generally do not like the Paradiso
and prefer Inferno and Purgatorio since those books are
entirely about corrupted and purified passions. The dystopia in Brave New World takes just about
everything there and warps it into something else.
Near the end of the
book, the Controller and the Savage enter into an argument as to the quality of
the World State. Controller Mond asserts that the government seeks to remove
the passions that drive mankind. Much like in Paradiso, the residents of the World State are freed of their
passions through the policies of the government. It is just the way they go
about freeing mankind of pain that gives the supposed utopia its twisted
nature. The family structure does not exist at all in the World State. This was
done to remove the pain of families being broken, of children or parents dying,
of disappointing one’s parents, and so on. Births no longer happen due to the
use of genetic factories that produce hundreds of test tube twins. So that
further wipes away any sense of motherhood or fatherhood. Marriage no longer
exists as to remove the pain of divorce or proposals being rejected. Promiscuity
is encouraged so no one feels sexually rejected by another (the motto being "everyone belongs to each other"). Sterilization,
contraceptives, and abortion are used to prevent anyone from regretting their
sexual encounters. There are divisions in society. But no one really minds the
use of a caste system since everyone is conditioned to be totally fine with the
caste they are in. Each caste is told about how good their caste is and how
dumb the others are. As such, no one feels like they need to compare their
group to any other.
Violence is not present
in the World State. Instead, widespread use of a drug called soma is encouraged. Should anyone feel
slightly unsettled by another, the individual only needs to go use some soma and he is whisked away to a “holiday”
in which there is no hangover. In the only instance in which people do act
violently towards another (the Savage prevented a group of workers from getting
their soma rations), riot police
arrive with drug sprayers that causes the mob to start an orgy and forget any
of their violent intentions. People do not fear the World State like those in 1984 fear Big Brother. The only real
punishment that everyone dreads is being exiled and losing the ability to have
constant sex and use soma.
Everyone is ignorant
since evidently that causes bliss. Controller Mond states that knowledge causes
instability. To Mond’s sorrow, even his beloved Science is too dangerous for
the stability of the World State (Yes, the Controller is free of the ignorance
that everyone else has. He just chooses to not care for what he sacrifices
since the happiness of the majority matters most.). Shakespeare is mentioned in
particular as one of the many authors censored by the government. No one else
writes about passion more than Shakespeare. I detect a sort of anti-Foucault
logic at play since Foucault regards the acquisition of knowledge to be an act
of one asserting power over another. With everyone being ignorant, no one can
claim intellectual superiority over another. Although the government officials
staunchly defend the dogma of mandatory ignorance, the government does not kill
any rising intellectual. Intelligent individuals are merely exiled to an island
to live amongst similar minded people. Unless you do what Mond did and become a
Controller of the government of course. Again, the World State wants its people
to be happy and rebels are allowed to live happily amongst other rebels on
islands. With such treatment of rebels, no wonder none of the island
sanctuaries seem to speak out harshly against their former home. Everyone is
just so happy.
Now the reason why I
compare this to Dante’s Paradiso is
that this would seem a lot like heaven for someone who agrees with the ideas of
the World State. The government does not have this aura of pure evil that Big
Brother has. For the modernist, this most likely is what the ideal world would be like. While the modernist finds this existence to be heavenly, I
personally find it awful. I agree with the Savage who states that the entire
society is grossly superficial and devoid of any meaningful relations. In Dante’s
heaven, the saints are blissful in their truly inspired intellect. Citizens of the
World State are blissful in their infantile stupidity. Saints in heaven are
satisfied in their chastity; The World State has no concept of sexual ethics.
God and the Virgin Mary provide the saints with a father and mother that never
fail them. In the World State, no mothers and fathers exist to disappoint any
child. Heaven is one big family firmly remaining together. No families exist in
the Brave New World. I could go on but that would make this even longer than it
needs to be. All in all, the entire society in Brave New World is the complete antithesis
to the papal encyclical Humanae Vitae.
All of the people are used as means to
an end (the end being a superficial, drug-induced happiness). As just a final
observation, as I mention Humanae Vitae, I recall that the entire society has
this twisted Catholic atmosphere. Everyone worships The Ford and “cross”
themselves with a T (in honor of the great Model T). The World State has its
own form of a church hierarchy with its own archbishops and such. Controller
Mond even states that the drug soma
is basically “Christianity without the tears”. The entire book is basically
showing a society that is antithetical to anything Catholicism professes. For this
reason, this modernist heaven is basically hell for Catholics. It is a society
where the pro-life movement and Humanae
Vitae have essentially been forgotten.
No comments:
Post a Comment