"Everyone belongs to everyone else" ― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

It took a bit more time than expected to get this out. Reading once a week, though not hard, has its own challenge especially when I move around. The first week, I had to read when I was on the train just to finish the first book that I was reading. My urge to move around is certainly hindering me to have a bit more stability but as I’d like to say, I have not found the place I could call “home” where I will eventually choose not to move. I was traveling with 3 books because I planned on staying with my mom just after she’s healed and not more. At the moment, I finished my 2nd book and is now moving to my 3rd one, pride and prejudice by Jane Austen.

Brave new world was an interesting read. I have read this book about a couple of times now and there’s one quote that I find particularly intriguing ever since I first read it.

He laughed, 'Yes, "Everybody's happy nowadays." We begin giving children that at five. But wouldn't you like to be free to be happy in some other way, Lenina? In your own way, for example; not in everybody else's way.” ― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

In Brave New World, everyone was programmed at birth to fit a certain mold that they were destined to be. They were grown in a lab, carefully socialized, and programmed so that as adults, they carried their role and duties so that they wouldn't rebel. It was what these people believed to be the perfect society although at some point in the novel, we will be introduced to the savage area which was a civilization with its imperfections. When comparing both civilizations, I think Aldous wanted to show us how boring and gruesome perfection can be. Moreover, what profound to me was how it illustrates that in the quest of happiness and stability, we can lose sight of what truly makes us human.

People have talked about the fact that we’re living in the intersection between 1984, Fahrenheit 451 and Brave new world. Perhaps they are not wrong at all. Depending on which society you’re living in, we certainly were told that there is a certain happiness or things that would give us definite happiness. You’re told about those over and over so that it sticks to your mind. Perhaps, an example would be, get an education, a 9-5 job, have a mortgage, kids and die. But what if that is not your way of happiness? Just like Bernard, the character who closetedly question the status quo. What if you have your own way to be free and happy?

I can tell you as much that the first few pages would be a tad boring but to make them less boring and that perhaps you can imagine how babies would grow in pods, there’s a concept of mass produced baby through pods but that is just an illustration artificial womb facility. It’s not a real project yet. While reading Brave New World, just imagine those pods that could produce thousands of babies and each specimen would have different characteristics that could be influenced even by a drop of alcohol which would make them inferior.

Throughout the book you will learn about alpha, beta, delta, and gamma babies and adults. These days there are some niches out there that refer to people like that. Alpha males, alpha females, etc. I certainly do not know the origin or how they got the inspiration from but in certainty, Brave New World was the first book to me that I read which refer to people with alpha, beta, delta,etc. Maybe after all, this is the Brave New World. I find it odd when people refer to each other as alpha, sigma, and beta.

If you have not read Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, I certainly suggest you read. I know that it might take a bit of time finishing the book but because of some resemblance to the current society, I doubt it will be harder to finish. What I explained above are only a fraction of what the book has to offer, depending on how you see it, you can see love, power, and even morality questions that make you challenge the idea that you have.

If you want to read along with me, here’s the list to my current reads of 2023, my reading list 2023.