tchitt said:
It's a common theme in modern liberal thinking that the state has some sort of obligation to provide happiness to the masses.
The society in BNW is an unequal society with a forced implementation of social darwinism whose goal it is to maintain stability for consumerism and new products. This can also be seen to maintain "industry." The science that appears in the book, while worshipped by the society, is mostly focused on discovering new engineering contraptions, rather than discovering truths about the natural world as science was originally designed to do, etc. Humans are created to be like robots to keep the machines flowing without interuption to provide goods and services for themselves and especially the higher castes of society.
Contrast this with liberalism where it is advocated that people (of all classes, colors, creeds, what have you) participate equally in a fair and just government, and are given certain rights to privacy etc. as guaranteed by the civil libertarianism that liberalism necessitates, and you can see that they are polar opposites.
BNW is about as much of a critique of "liberalism" as it is a critique of equality or the USSR; in fact, the phrase, "community, identity, stability" appears very seldom in the book and does not serve as a critique of liberalism in the first place. The community that is ultimately formed is one that supposedly is the "best" for the individual, anyway.
Furthermore, it should be pointed out that the pharmaceutical industry works in a collusion with a government and the
soma is distributed by the work places.
tchitt said:
We'll educate your children...
In the book it is made clear that only certain children of the "upper classes," like the Alpha Double Pluses, are given access to a good education. Furthermore, there is an allegiance to the state and state enforced cirriculum. This reminds me more of "conservative" education, such as an emphasis on the pledge of allegiance, etc., or private education, where only the upper classes can get an education.
Furthermore, the liberal sciences and the humanities ("History is bunk") are not emphasized and are only utilized to mock ancient cultures - much the way conservatives view history and like to mock other cultures. All criticisms of totalitarian and the work of social sciences is banned, and democracy is nonexistent. This, the part about liberalism having ended, is brought to the attention early on in the book "Sleep teaching was actually prohibited in England. There was something called liberalism. Parliament, if you know what that was, passed a lw against it. The records survive. Speeches about liberty of the subject. Liberty to be inefficient and miserable. Freedom to be a round peg in a square hole."
tchitt said:
pay for your healthcare, manage your finances.
Are you certain you've read the book? There is actually an emphasis on consumerism, so it would be assumed that the workers manage their finances and purchase what they want to purchase.
It is made clear in the book that inequality and the division of labor is necessary for the conditions of stability and most people perform uninteresting tasks. Near the end, this is kind of contrasted with the world we live in, or the world of 1932 at least, which was more capitalistic in nature. There is probably just as much inequality and menial slave labor in today's world as there is in the hypothetical scenario of BNW, the "controllers" are just more upfront about it.
tchitt said:
Unfortunately the state wouldn't exist without me and my paycheck and I don't care about your children, your healthcare, or your finances. I found a way to create my own happiness without taking anyone elses (I am, however, paying a weekly welfare check to some deadbeat out there somewhere), and I'm not any more special than you are.
"...democracy and can hardly be expected to flourish in societies where political and economic power is being progressively concentrated and centralized. But the progress of technology has led and is still leading to just such a concentration and centralization of power. As the machinery of mass production is made more efficient it tends to become more complex and more expensive -- and so less available to the enterpriser of limited means. Moreover, mass production cannot work without mass distribution; but mass distribution raises problems which only the largest producers can satisfactorily solve. In a world of mass production and mass distribution the Little Man, with his inadequate stock of working capital, is at a grave disadvantage. In competition with the Big Man, he loses his money and finally his very existence as an independent producer; the Big Man has gobbled him up. As the Little Men disappear, more and more economic power comes to be wielded by fewer and fewer people. Under a dictatorship the Big Business, made possibly by advancing technology and the consequent ruin of Little Business, is controlled by the State -- that is to say, by a small group of party leaders and the soldiers, policemen and civil servants who carry out their orders. In a capitalist democracy, such as the United States, it is controlled by what Professor C. Wright Mills has called the Power Elite. This Power Elite directly employs several millions of the country's working force in factories, offices and stores, controls many millions more by lending them the mony to buy its products, and, through its ownership of the media of mass communication, influences the thoughts, the feelings and the actions of virtually everybody. To parody the words of Winston Churchill, never has so many been manipulated so much by so few." --BNW: Revisted.
I know what you advocate, you advocate a Jennifer Government.
Your version of totalitarianism, where the government exists for the protection of big business alone, would be a nightmare, and as George Orwell said worse than even fascism -- which I agree with. However, Huxley's novel was something of an inbetween of capitalist dictatorship and this 'power elite.' The version of totalitarianism you advocate is better exemplifed in novels like Jennifer Government or Player Piano (the latter being by Vonnegut, who was also scientific minded, like Huxley, where corporations have essentially become the government, run by managers and engineers, and the state is too inefficient to do anything about it; needless to say it is also a nightmare).
Thankfully, modern economic theory and political science, and the historical record of failure laissez-faire capitalism has caused, has relegated this "libertarian" society to the archives of history where it belongs.
However, a scientific dictatorship and fascist societies (a mix of social conservatism and corporate/captialist economics) are still very viable threats, the former in the first world and the latter in the third world where countries are at presdent capitalist "democracies."
Way to engage me in a philosophical debate and take the intellectually lazy way out, while at the same time noting your disagreement without giving any reason.
