Mechanics of life

SHIRIN Fazli-Pierson, a reader self-avowedly addicted to this column, writes from London to complain that too many people these days wax eloquent in newspapers about what is happening now or what took place in the past, but not very many tell us about the menace of the 'Brave New World' that lurks behind the corner. How right you are, Shirin, and thanks for the hint; it's time to return to the future. In Aldous Huxley's 1932 classic of that title, our entire planet is ruled by the World State. Anxiety, want, hunger, old age and disease are things of the past and all notions prior to the birth of Henry Ford, the American prophet of mass production, have been eradicated from human memory. We are in the year 632 AF (after Ford) which would correspond to the mid 26th century of the present calendar. This paradise is inhabited by people with wonderful names like Joanna Diesel, Tom Kawaguchi, Sarojini Engels, Bernard Marx, Lenina Crowne and Bokanovsky Jones. The most popular entertainment is provided by the 'feelies', a show of 3-dimensional images created in midair with audiences having direct access to all the sensations related to the scene, be it a kiss or a perfume. However, all this has a price; that of the renouncement of individualism. The scientifically perfected World State has banned all temptations leading to the realisation of the self. There are no fathers and no mothers, no families and no homes. In fact, these words are considered obscene. Men and women submit their sperm and ova to the state which then manipulates them in laboratories to bring forth at will, out of test-tubes and bottles, the desired numbers of male and female babies who would later be programmed to become scientists, administrators, office workers and labourers. In his essay, Brave New World Revisited published a quarter of a century later, Aldous Huxley regretted that he had not given due importance to the atomic bombs threat that had already existed when he wrote the original work. Had he lived some more, Huxley would have seen that while the nuclear birds have remained safely in their nests since after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the death of the individual is already a reality, a good five centuries ahead of his predicted inferno. In the Brave New World, citizens are discouraged from having any contact with Nature's grandeurs (a beautiful sunset, a seashore, a starry night, etc.) that induce a feeling of loneliness, hence of the self. Personal melancholies are resolved not through reflection but by taking half-gram tablets of 'soma' that the government provides in unlimited quantities, free of charge, to the citizenry which is a single, rocking-rolling mass and not a composition of so many individuals. The intoxicant that has no adverse side effects produces wonderful sensations that help people grasp the basic injunction from the authorities that the past never existed and the future is no more than an illusion. Lenina Crowne illustrates the World State wisdom, while swallowing two tablets, by repeating a verse instilled in her psyche with sleep-teaching techniques when she was a baby: "Was and will, make me ill. I take a gram, and only am." Aldous Huxley was prescient enough to cry out "capitalism is dead, long live consumerism", but he died too early (on the same day, by the way, as John F. Kennedy) to figure out that this utopia would be attained neither through babies in the bottles, nor the feelies, nor the quick-fix mysticism of soma, but with the help of round-the-clock TV, the Internet and, just imagine, the cellphone. The World State in Huxley's book is centred, as you can well imagine, in the United States of America with a firm hold on Europe under the controllership (mind you, not leadership) of Mustapha Mond. What the author could not envisage, despite his stunningly true visionary talent, was the power of the electronic message (massage?) machine … the blog, the YouTube, the Twitter, the Facebook; in short the 'dear all…' phenomenon that would tug, Ford be blessed, at the heartstrings of millions without perturbing their rational faculties. Even journalism, traditionally a stoically impartial métier that used to limit itself to informing the public about what happened where, when and how, has been unable to resist the temptation of schmaltzy collectivist moralising; today dispatches by eminent reporters from the world's various trouble spots openly proclaim their preferences and unabashedly identify their heroes in popular movements. To elucidate the point in his 'revisit' essay, Huxley cites no less an expert in mass psychology than Adolf Hitler himself: "The driving force which has brought about the most tremendous revolutions on this earth has never been a body of scientific teachings that has gained power over the masses, but always a devotion which has inspired them, and often a kind of hysteria which has urged them into action. Whoever wishes to win over the masses must have the key that will open the door to their hearts." And while we are on the subject of quotations, why not conclude these lines with the words of Miranda in William Shakespeare's The Tempest that was the original source of inspiration for Huxley: "How many goodly creatures are there, here! How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world That hath such people in't!" The writer is a journalist based in Paris. ZafMasud@gmail.com