How is this population kept under control? Not shockingly at all, through sex, drugs and rock and roll. There is knowledge of these concepts, but its regarded as archaic history from a past era and is met with revulsion. Most notably, because reproduction is now the responsibility of the state, there is no longer a concept of a family, of a father or mother. They dont begrudge those from the upper castes because their genetic engineering has largely removed their propensity toward jealousy and violence.
The lower castes are turgid, obedient and physically weak. The higher castes are strong, intelligent and charismatic. Anticipating The Handmaids Tale, only a select few women and men are capable of providing fertile eggs and sperm for this careful social engineering. Sometime in the near future, society has been regimented into a caste system where people are genetically engineered by the state in large state-run reproductive farms. The basic premise of the novel sounds eerily prescient. Steeped in scientific as well as social discourse, possessing a deep knowledge of medical and other scientific research, Aldous was in an ideal position to write a far-reaching novel.
His brother was Julian Huxley, a famous biologist who among other accomplishments wrote a marvelous tome on everything that was then known about biology with H. His grandfather was Thomas Henry Huxley, Darwins close friend, publicist and bulldog, whose famous smackdown of Bishop Samuel Wilberforce has been relished by rationalists fighting against religious faith ever since. Huxley came from an illustrious scientific family with social connections. But whats striking about the novel is how it so astutely anticipates a society taken over by benevolent technocrats rather than politicians, a scenario that appears increasingly likely in the age of AI and genetic engineering. The social elements from the story are similar to those in Orwell and Kafka and others, namely a society of obedient sheep run by the state and benevolent dictators through brainwashing and groupthink.
It is astonishing that Aldous Huxley wrote this tale of technological dystopia in 1932. Before there was The Matrix and Bladerunner, before there was even 1984, there was \’Brave New World\’.
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