“You ought to spice up your life with tears. And then everything is too cheap here … ", - advises the Savage, one of the heroes of the dystopian novel" Brave New World. " It was written by the English writer Aldous Huxley in 1932 and was only published 26 years later.
About people subject to progress
Many years have passed since the release of the novel, but only now, in the 21st century, it becomes clear how far and precisely ahead Aldous Huxley looked. This book is about a society based on the principles of technocracy. It would seem that this is not bad, technology, technologies are developing, manual labor is being replaced by a variety of machines. But what does humanity give in return, what does it pay for a prosperous, relatively well-fed and calm life? Huxley just shows in the novel Brave New World that a person paid for it, perhaps, with the most dear: what, in fact, made a person out of him - his humanity.
In his novel, society has a clear hierarchy: from the intellectual elite to the lower caste, from alpha to epsilon. Half-humans, half-robots, some signs, soulless substances, live from day to day according to a once and for all painted scenario. There is no way to move from a lower caste to a higher one - the place is once and for all assigned to everyone. The heroes of the novel rush to work in the morning, work as expected, then in the evening rush home, again in a crowd. And their whole life is socialized, everything is in common: women, pleasure. This is a world of people who do not know love in all its manifestations, friendship and even death does not frighten them, because children are specially taken to the wards of the dying for this and treated with sweets. They say that death is not very bad and even very funny. The novel is thoroughly saturated with cynicism and indifference.
New people, "cubs", appear in the society, drawn by Huxley, not in a natural way, but out of a test tube, because in the society of Ford, which is God for new people, a man and a woman must unite for a certain period only for a fleeting carnal mutual satisfaction. The institution of marriage has been abolished because it is unnecessary, it is wrong to have one sexual partner and is condemned by society.
Another type of entertainment and pleasant pastime is the consumption of soma, a synthetic drug. Soma was invented so that this magic "pill" could help a person to forget. It is distributed at work. Emotions from the beginning are already dulled among the inhabitants of the "brave new world", but having tried soma, they forget about everything, only lightness and joy remain. And it is easier for the authorities to manage, because it is easier to direct a crowd of thoughtless rams in the right direction than thinking and thinking people.
The more acutely in such an environment is felt the position of the Savage, who is a man of another world. Feelings and emotions are not alien to him, he quotes Shakespeare, and the most important thing that distinguishes him from Ford society is he thinks. However, Huxley does not leave him a chance - the Savage hanged himself in the finale of the novel.
Is there a way out
Huxley's novel turns out to be prophetic to the modern "wondrous" world of comfort and even luxury. Outside the window is a consumer society, growing in chains and programmed to get money and other various benefits. A person as a person has depreciated, there is no person, anyone can be easily replaced with an individual from a test tube. In the "brave new world" the problem of physical illness and old age is solved: everyone looks no older than 30 and dies young.
