Submitted by Iffygenia

Bio: Call me Iffygenia. Some years ago – never mind how long precisely – having few books left on my pile, and nothing particular to interest me at work, I thought I would surf about a little and dip my toe into the deep waters of the blogs.” – Moby-Dick

Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World: A feminist-intellectualist-romanticist-historicist-deconstructivist-takingthepiss reading

After the brainwashing, we knew our purpose; we were docile, compliant, content in our sphere.  No messy choosing of mates, no fumbling to learn an occupation. We alone had been plucked from the darkness, perfected, molded in a form of the Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning’s choosing.

We took our soma, a pacifier, a crutch in our pursuit of cheerful perfection.  Our fertility was strictly regulated; we were hatched from bottles, bokanovskified, each ovum replicated with meat-cleaver precision into 96 small monuments to progress.  We were decanted in perfect proportion to society’s needs: one-ninth Alphas, eight-ninths a mixture of Betas, Gammas, and Deltas conditioned to despise books and nature, and enough khaki-garbed Epsilon Semi-Morons for factory work.

One day we became aware of Outsiders and Savages.  Something stirred in us.  We, a few of us, came to question whether brainwashing was the only way.  We demanded choices, not knowing what we would choose.

Some returned to primitive ways, seeking answers in nature.  (A few even, it was rumored, investigated arcane practices of sexuality and viviparous childbirth).  Some rejected nature, seeking to reform the system from within.  We hoped to retrain the Hatcheries and modernize conditioning; we tried to embarrass the Director with proof of his old-fashioned ways.  We rejected the old, forgetting that Civilization loves stability.  We tried to convince others through persuasion, then through example, then through spectacle.

Some of our small number began to question.  Had we triumphed over brainwashing, only to succumb to a subtler but still forcible conditioning?  Was it Civilization that accepted this conditioning on our behalf, or were we complicit in our own homogenization?  Was so-called natural Savagery the answer? Or did the solution lie in the flight from nature, the grooming of our kind to emulate the plastic intelligences of the future?

More choices brought more conflict.  Predestination had been easier.  Some of us found the Savagery of the new naturalism terrifying.  Some demanded to be returned to the Hatcheries, reconditioned, slotted back into their familiar roles and castes.  Some reclaimed forcible conditioning as a choice, even a pleasure.

The dissonances of these demands strained our determination.  We knew by now that we must all choose one path, that we must conform; for more choices had not led to more happiness.  We persuaded, we led by example, we created spectacles.  We worked on each other as we had worked against conditioning.  We returned to the doctors we had discarded; we asked the state to subsidize our soma prescriptions.

We, the larger Civilization, set limits on art, science, religion, and philosophy.  We sought stability and mindlessness as a remedy for choice.  We exiled our greatest intellects to islands.  Some went willingly; some, threatened with isolation, chose conformity.  A few of our small group gave up on Civilization and chose the isolated life of the contemplative.  Some of these contemplatives became items of curiosity, like animals at the zoo.  We hope some of the few thrived; we know that one despaired.