Brave New World: How Goodly and Beauteous We Are

All stories are about us, who we are and who we are not. In Brave New World, Aldous Huxley’s message is that if we stopped to consider our lives and our civilization, we would hang ourselves now in shame and sorrow. 

Harry Lloyd as Bernard Marx and 
Jessica Brown Findlay as Lenina Crowne
In the book, Lenina appears once in a sailor suit
with bellbottoms and a cap, in mulberry for Betas.

This is who we were 1932 and who we were becoming. Collectivism was the norm; individualism was dead. Mustapha, Benito, Trotsky, and Hoover were to be the names of the future, the creators of central control and coordination, social stability and individual happiness. Henry Ford was the most successful of the planners. Ford enterprises were vertically integrated. Ford even built communities in the wilderness of Northern Michigan to mill lumber for the floorboards of the automobiles streaming from  his factories for everyone to enjoy. Seeing sawdust piled up, Ford ordered it pressed into bricks for fuel: Kingsford Charcoal. Ours is the year 642 AF and we are Fanny Crowne and Lenina Crowne no less than we are Bernard Marx and John Savage.

World Cup Soccer and Formula 1 

and every person carrying a gaming machine — 

“Real happiness looks squalid 

compared to the overcompensations for misery.” 

(page 221 Harper Collins edition 2017.)

Compelling though Huxley’s warning be, close reading reveals a lack of rigor. Despite the deification of Henry Ford, automation has stopped. Elevators have human operators. Farms with animals produce internal and external secretion even though fetuses are grown with blood surrogate. There is no attempt at colonizing the Antarctic or the seabeds or space exploration or a Lunar colony, even though such efforts would consume resources, which is the prime mover of that society. 

At Eton, an Alpha-double-plus learns Relativity. What is the motivation to learn a theory that was only good for astrophysics? 

Within the castes, individuals are further differentiated: Beta Plus and Alpha Minus, etc.. But they all dress alike and treat each equally according to that caste system. There seems to be no social advantage or deprivation for plusness and minusness. 

Reflecting Huxley’s society and his view of it, Alphas are males and Betas are females. And contrary to one of the basic lessons of hypnopaedia, they mingle. More aligned to the premise of social organization, we never see Gammas, Deltas, and Epsilons associating outside of their castes.

Huxley asserts a basic human need for religion. Civilized people have the Solidarity Service and the Arch Community Songster of Canterbury and savages have ceremonies with Jesus and Pookong. Huxley is direct: “It reminds me of a lower-caste Community Sing,” she told Bernard. 

After 600 years of genetic and social conditioning of what use is a Ford Chief Justice? How deep is crime beyond what we saw with Bernard Marx and Helmholtz Watson, settled as Marx says like a coffee klatch? Why is there a Young Women’s Fordian Association, in a society where all women are young? 

A society created for consumption and production must have an accounting system but Huxley delivered almost nothing about economics. There is one reference to the Bank of Europe. Bernard Marx worries that the open tap of eau de cologne will “cost me a fortune.” Marx is given six packets of sex hormone chewing gum as a noticeable politeness. John Savage pays a helicopter pilot but how much and with what the author does not say.  

In the brave new world 70% of females are fertile in order that there be a steady supply of different eggs for the factories that breed humans. We never see their eggs harvested. And how many different males would actually be needed? 

Leonard Nimoy
as Mustapha Mond (1998)

That a society entirely of Alphas would be unstable is an English point of view, an excuse for a class-based society rather than a meritocracy. It could be argued that 600 years after Ford, a totally automated world would be nicely enjoyed by all one million of Alphas. And they could apply Relativity to the problem of space travel. 

I found imperfections in the writing that an editor should have caught. Explaining that the horridly aged Linda was revulsive to all, Huxley says that she “cut no ice” an anachronistic phrase even in 1932. Viewing the native village, they observe “… smoke rising perpendicularly…” How else could it? Did he mean that it was undisturbed by wind? The reservation landscape presents “table topped mesas.” They are called that because “mesa” means “table” in Spanish. 

The characterization of Bernard Marx is the deepest. Marx is actually troubled, which no one else is, except John, of course, and as the theme of the book repeats for our conditioning: automatic happiness is the sine qua non of civilization. 

“… in spite of the fact that his friend's support and sympathy were now his only comfort, Bernard continued perversely to nourish, along with his quite genuine affection, a secret grievance against the Savage, to mediate a campaign of small revenges to be wreaked upon him. …One of the principal functions of a friend is to suffer (in a milder and symbolic form) the punishments that we should like, but are unable, to inflict upon our enemies.

Universal Television NBC 1980
Alphas wear gray, Betas mulberry, Gammas green
Deltas khaki, and Epsilons black, and styles are
fashionable not stark. Also, to the point here: 
no Alpha females, apparently.

“… Bernard's other victim-friend was Helmholtz. When, discomfited, he came and asked once more for the friendship which, in his prosperity, he had not thought it worth his while to preserve. Helmholtz gave it; and gave it without a reproach, without a comment, as though he had forgotten that there had ever been a quarrel. Touched, Bernard felt himself at the same time humiliated by this magnanimity–a magnanimity the more extraordinary and therefore the more humiliating in that it owed nothing to soma and everything to Helmholtz's character. It was the Helmholtz of daily life who forgot and forgave, not the Helmholtz of a half-gramme holiday.”

Huxley admits to individual differences of character among a population that has been carefully conditioned by heredity and environment to be homogenous. That, like religion, may be a fundamental fact of humanity which Huxley announces but does not explore.

"In his apologia for chemistry, The Same and Not the Same, (Columbia University Press, 1995) Nobel laureate Roald Hoffmann asserts that no two hemoglobin molecules are identical. So-called “identical twins” are not. Individualism is objectively real: both empirically knowable and rationally explainable.” Biohackers on NecessaryFacts https://necessaryfacts.blogspot.com/2012/10/biohackers.html

The book has been adapted to screen with. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_New_World_(1980_film)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_New_World_(1998_film)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_New_World_(American_TV_series)

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

When Worlds Collide 

This Island Earth 

Recent Science Fiction Reads (14 July 2024) 

Recent Science Fiction Reads (24 July 2024) 

Frankenstein, Rayguns, and Bicycles 

Beware: Honda Cares

From the IntentionalPrivacy blog of Laurel Marotta: "In the meantime, my husband had taken our 2005 Honda into the same Austin, Texas, dealership to get it inspected because the power steering was making a noise. They resealed the power steering pump, and replaced the valve cover gasket and the cam plug. When he picked the car up and drove away, the engine light came on. He took it back and they charged him another $65 to tell him that an additional $670 was needed to replace the spark plugs and the induction coils. He went to an auto parts store and picked up four spark plugs for $52. When he pulled out the spark plugs, he found two springs under one of the spark plugs and none under one of the others."

She was referring to the induction coils over the spark plugs. Obviously, the mechanic just jammed everything back together.  The car ran rough, to say the least. It did not take much to remove the induction coil covers and see, and fix, the problem.

We used to own Toyotas, two Camrys and a Celica. Our friends with Hondas kept bragging about the customer service of their dealerships.  So, when it came time to get a new car, Laurel bought the Civic. We got along with one car for about five years. After we got resettled here, Laurel bought a new Accord. Her problems with that car are on her blog. It is not so much the car - 10,000 or 15,000 parts are what they are - but that the dealership cannot fix a cybernetic problem. Under Texas law, she can declare the car a lemon. She will probably just do what she did with her Ford Escort: put a big yellow lemon decal on it.

Over the years, I have worked for several multinational corporations. All that matters is the local office. And all that matters in the local office is your supervisor. Honda service might be the finest in the world, but here it seems lacking.

For myself, when we first got married, I kept our Ford Pintos running. One of them we bought used with 25,000 miles on it; and put another 50,000 on.  But I gave up being a shade tree mechanic when everything went electronic. No more setting rotors, or gapping the spark plugs. (She rebuilt the carburetor.)  As it turns out, cars are still just 19th century technology, so I will not hesitate to do what I can under the hood.

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS
Securing Your Viper Against Cylons
Not Invented Here
Welcome to the Future
Open Secrets

When Did "the Great Depression" Begin?

No mythology faces as many problems as the folktale of The Great Depression. The Austrian economist, Ludwig von Mises, pointed out in Human Action that capitalists and socialists usually agree on the raw data, but then disagree on what the facts mean. In 1929, the New York Stock Exchange recorded dramatic price collapses on October 24 ("Black Thursday") and October 29 ("Black Tuesday"). What is missing is a connection between the NYSE of October 1929 and the banks of Detroit in February 1933. It was there, in Detroit, on February 14, 1933, 40 months later, and 600 miles away, that the bank failures of the Great Depression began.

To be sure, bank failures were common in the years before 1929-1933 – and so were bank openings. From 1884 to 1921, the number of banks had sextupled from 5000 to 30,000. Not only were these generally small banks – some capitalized near the minimum $25,000 – but after 1921, the new operations were often branches. The federal Comptroller of the Currency had opened the door to allow city banks to compete in towns and villages. From that point, bank failures increased, as is to be expected from increased competition. In January 1933, it seemed that the summer of 1931 had been the lowest point possible and that a recovery was unfolding. 

Depression-Era scrip issued by the City of Detroit
against property taxes due



            Speaking to a United Press reporter in Dearborn, on February 1, 1933, Henry Ford called the period 1923-1929 “the real depression.” At that time, two holding companies dominated finance in Detroit. One was the Detroit Bankers Company Group. The other was the Union Guardian Group, colloquially called “The Ford Group.” When the Union Guardian Group experienced pressure from withdrawals, it turned to the federal government for a loan. However, the Reconstruction Finance Corporation required that the Fords subordinate $7 million that the banks owed to them, which Henry Ford refused to do. President Herbert Hoover set up a meeting with Ford, Arthur Ballantine (Under Secretary of Treasury) and Roy D. Chapin (Secretary of Commerce). Chapin was a former Olds executive and co-founder of the Hudson Motor Car Company. He appealed to Ford as a fellow manufacturer. Ford replied that Hudson stock was traded on the NYSE, which Ford’s was not, and that a washout of the banking industry seemed inevitable. Chapin replied that if people do not have money to buy cars, Ford was in for hard times himself. Ford said that he felt young enough to start over from scratch. Ford said that everyone else ought to be prepared to get up a little earlier and work a little harder. He also said that he would withdraw his $25 million from the banks in the morning. He did not get to do that.

The next morning, February 14, 1933, Michigan’s governor, William Comstock, declared a banking holiday. The proclamation had been signed at 1:00 AM, published, and delivered to bankers when they arrived for the start of the business day. Two weeks later, outgoing President Hoover hesitated to declare a national bank holiday, so the newly-inaugurated President Roosevelt did just that. On March 21, 1933, the Michigan Legislature passed the McNitt-Green bill, granting the governor “dictatorial powers” over banks. Unlike Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin – to whom he was favorably compared by newspapers in those troubled times – Gov. Comstock had modest goals and eventually declined further powers to control the insurance industry as well.

Contemporary Reports: Panic or Puffery?

It is possible that the “Panic of 1857” is another anti-capitalist delusion?

 

Historians are trained in school to give precedence to first-hand accounts from newspapers, journals, and diaries.  However, even these must be evaluated against an objective standard.  Narratives depend on perspectives.

The anti-capitalists believe that fluctuations in prices, supplies, and demands are examples of the failure of society based on personal enterprise. The socialists claim that their government planned centralized economies would eliminate ups and downs, booms and busts, gluts and famines. History proved them half right.

We know about the "Panic of 1857" from history books that looked to sensational news stories about frenzied mobs of otherwise honest and intelligent folk hopelessly demanding the return of their hard-earned money from inept bankers forced to close their doors. The truth may be different – certainly more complicated – than this. The 1907 History of the United States by James Ford Rhodes gives the Panic of 1857 one line, never calling it by name. To Rhodes, the importance of the financial event was only that it temporarily drove “bleeding Kansas” from public attention. John Fiske’s History of the United States published in several editions by Houghton Mifflin from 1894 to 1907 says nothing about the Panic of 1857, mentioning instead the Dredd Scott Decision. However, Fiske does cover the Panics of 1837 and 1873. William Graham Sumner’s History of American Currency, published in 1874, does tell the story – including the loss of the S. S. Central America – but Sumner puts the word “panic” in quotes. Perhaps that is where it belongs.

Certainly, the Chemical Bank of New York, in its self-published history of 1913 is rightfully proud of its directors for having carefully managed the assets of depositors and thereby surviving whatever actually happened in the autumn in 1857.

We expect news to be objective, distinct from editorial comment. That was possible only after the estate of Joseph Pulitzer endowed an award fund to the Columbia School of Journalism in 1912. In the spirit of Pulitzer’s better side, the Pulitzer Prize Committee itself admits: “He crusaded against public and private corruption, filled the news columns with a spate of sensationalized features, made the first extensive use of illustrations, and staged news stunts. … Pulitzer was drawn into a bitter circulation battle with William Randolph Hearst's Journal in which there were no apparent restraints on sensationalism or fabrication of news.”


While it may well be true that "panic" was in the streets of New York City in the autum of 1857, the fact may be that this was a temporary, local event.  Bank failures - such as they were - were caused as much by the law as by economic reality.  State law demanded that banks make good on withdrawals by the end of the business day.  No other business was so constrained.  If a druggist or livery owed you money, you would wait, like any other creditor until cash came in and you got yours.  Not so with banks.  So, fear of default may well have been real for a few days.  How long that lasted and how far it spread is not well recorded.