#12 Issue: Soma and Classical Conditioning

Hello and welcome to the twelfth issue of A Story for the Week!

The story of the week is Brave New World, a novel by the English writer Aldous Huxley.

Brave New World is a dystopian novel published in 1932 that zooms in on the lives of the handful of denizens of the World State and the inner workings of its rather unique systems. It’s often compared to George Orwell’s dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, as both novels envision a horrible destiny of humankind where humans lose almost all control over their lives and serve as part of the great machine.

Prior to the release of Zamyatin’s We, Huxley’s Brave New World, and Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, literature was overflowing with utopian texts by H. G. Wells and George Bernard Shaw which were quite optimistic about the future of humanity, believing we’re capable of solving all our economic and societal issues. However, if literature teaches us anything, it’s that after one movement, there always has to be a countermovement. So, precisely because of this, it’s believed that Huxley was revolting against all those utopias. Nonetheless, Brave New World is regarded as one of the best works of English and dystopian literature.

From the very beginning of Brave New World, you can see that it’s a meticulously planned dystopian novel, as it simultaneously worldbuilds and builds the plot around the main characters. Initially, the book puts Lenina Crowne, a woman working in the hatchery where human beings are being conceived, born, and then trained to fit the predetermined castes. Love and relationships as we know it don’t really exist in Brave New World, and Lenina and all others typically have relationships revolving around sex only and lasting a couple of days.

Because of this, Lenina goes on a holiday with Bernard Marx at Savage Reservation, where people still live the same old lives as we do—live and die by nature. During the visit, they meet Linda, a woman originally from the World State who got pregnant and stayed in the wilds to give birth to her son, John. John and Linda return to the World State with Bernard and Lenina. While Linda simply plunges herself back into the brave new world, the world of hedonism and soma (a special pill designed to make you feel all happy and satisfied), John challenges and eventually refuses this civilization.

The plot of Brave New World is rather straightforward and easy to follow. However, I’d say that the plot had never been Huxley’s focus, as he uses it as a device to present this brave new world to us and explore complex philosophical ideas such as classical conditioning, the human need to relieve themselves of pain, and the thin line between utopia and dystopia. There’s no denying that Huxley’s World State is a neatly organized and well-oiled machine that very much works. The World State is also prosperous and it’s securing the future of humankind. So, in a way, you can say it’s a utopia. However, it comes at the cost of freedom. Individuals have no control over their own life and they have been conditioned from the moment they were born.

This introduces yet another question, how conditioned are we in this modern world? We have all these notions and ideas of how one life should look like, from birth until death, and it’s really frowned upon if you deviate in any manner. If you decide not to have children, if you don’t sleep and eat at the same time as everybody else does, or if you have unique rituals that don’t conform to your culture’s standards. We’re taught to keep these things private, and even if you decide to share, the best-case scenario is you’ll be deemed a weirdo. So, it wouldn’t be incorrect to say that we as a society have conditioned ourselves to what’s natural and what’s unnatural, and it’s just wrong to deviate. Why? We don’t really know.

Another subject I want to touch upon is our unceasing desire to rid ourselves of pain. Pain and mistakes are such an essential part of human life, and they are the best teachers. We all rarely learn from someone else’s advice or words of caution. Getting rid of pain is like removing a crucial part of a mathematical equation—it will never yield the correct result. In Brave New World, there’s soma, and in our world, there are different medications that work in a very similar manner—making you complacent and satisfied. Make no mistake, there are people who very much need it to become and stay functioning members of society, but there are also people who rely on medications because they can’t be bothered with actually dealing with their issues.

I recommend you don’t look at Brave New World as a cautionary tale in the strict sense of the world that our society will inevitably look the same. But I rather think it’s a cautionary tale in the sense that we should reevaluate ourselves and our behavior in this world of technology, instant dopamine hits, and pain relievers. I’m not saying you should all of sudden become a Buddhist Monk, but bear in mind that all things are best in moderation.

All in all, Brave New World is a heavy read, but not because of the writing, but because it deals with very important themes. Even though it was written almost 100 years ago, the novel is relevant now more than ever and it’s a great starting point if you want to question yourself and the society we live in.

This time around, I’ll wrap up with one of my favorite passages from Brave New World:

“‘You remind me of another of those old fellows called Bradley. He defined philosophy as the finding of bad reason for what one believes by instinct. As if one believed anything by instinct! One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them. Finding bad reasons for what one believes for other bad reasons-that’s philosophy. People believe in God because they’ve been conditioned to.’”

Once again, thank you for subscribing to my newsletter and helping me achieve my dream of becoming a stay-at-home writer. Your support means the world to me and, honestly, it gives me a reason to continue doing this.

If you enjoyed the read, consider subscribing, reading more articles on Medium, and supporting me on LinkedIn and X.