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Brave New World 1: Utopia or dystopia?
Is Brave New World a utopia or a dystopia?
On the one hand, everyone his happy. People have all their material needs met, and the society is set up so that people are fufilled in their roles. People can fulfil their potential and gain satisfaction from doing so, even if that potential is limited by eugenic breeding. For instance, Linda took her book on conditioning techniques implies that workers need to study to be successful at their jobs. From a Utilitarianistic perspective it's nearly a perfect society: happiness is maximised, as everyone is happy all the the time.
On the other hand, people are conditioned from fertilization to puberty to be happy with their assigned role. They have little choice about what they do, and most people are mentally and psychologically crippled to want no more from life than that their assigned role. Is slavery any less wrong if the Epsilon-class slave is happy in their role and unwilling and unable to do anything else?
What makes a setting utopian or dystopian? How could the Brave New World move from one to the other?
Comments
It's interesting that the book portrays something that's *both* a utopia and dystopia. My take is that it's mechanical, and in reaching it people have lost their humanity. They're adapted to fit society's needs completely thoroughly. Society can't and won't adapt to their needs. They shouldn't even have any needs.
And those who deviate from society's needs are removed from it. There's no compassion, no real variety, no art, no culture, no intellectual accomplishment or progress. It's uniform, static, and cold. That's dystopia. People are only happy because they're designed to fit into their niche.
This is one place where the lack of technology development shows very starkly. The Epsilons are not, so far as I can see, essentially different from machines that we might use in a factory or whatever, and although there's less detail about them, I suspect the Deltas are about the same as a present-day intelligent machine. They are "better" than slaves in that they have no capacity to rebel, and "better" than machines because they are more quickly and easily replaced (and presumably have some limited capacity to switch jobs).
@dr_mitch said "...no intellectual accomplishment or progress" - I think that one of the most overtly dystopian facets of the book is that there is still intellectual accomplishment (presumably by Alphas only) but it is rigidly policed and, usually, buried. One of Mustapha's main tasks seems to be to identify which accomplishments are to be suppressed, and which tiny minority are to be allowed to the surface.
Brave New World is both a utopia and a dystopia, and what I was trying to get across in the introduction when I posted about the John Joseph Adams anthology is that this dual nature is a hallmark of the genre. There's a lesson in this idea that humans should not strive, or perhaps can never approach, perfection - a bit like the idea of the Tower of Babel. When the perfect society is conceived, and humanity moves toward it through labour and struggle, and then finally achieves it - only then does it become apparent (and maybe only to the reader, who has an outsider perspective) that what has been achieved is not a utopia, but a dystopia. I find that quite fascinating.
Even the original Utopia, the one by Thomas More, was a satire. Has there ever been a truly utopian Utopia in fiction? Is it even possible, or does the need for conflict in fiction always ultimately drive things the other way?
I think that societies are often presented as utopian in contrast to some specific starting point. Take for example Avatar (maybe not the best case but it's fun) - the woodland world of Pandora seems utopian to Jake in contrast to the marine life, but when he's actually there in person, all kinds of rivalries and social problems start to become apparent.
This is currently a big question in my IRC game. Is sapient slavery any less objectionable when the slaves are conditioned to want the slavery? We are playing in Jeshen Space, and the Jeshen despise slavery, although voluntary servitude is thought of as noble. Humans condition their sapient robots, uplifts, and bioroids to desire slavery, and this gives the Jeshen pause. Any slaves that land on a Jeshen world are freed and deconditioned, but they currently do not interfere on Human worlds.
What happens to them afterward? Does the state give them lodging and food, find a job for them, or ship them abroad? Are they free, but without a support network?
The Jeshen find them a place to live and a job, but they are free to leave that once the deconditioning is complete.
Deconditioned, or brainwashed to be unhappy and rebellious? Are the Jeshen doing anyone a favour by their re-education, or is the stronger moral choice to prevent the slaves from being created in the first place?
And from the game point of view, are the PCs human or Jeshen? And what do the players think of the issue?
The Jeshen are not meant to be all-wise and all-good, just different. They have a visceral disgust for slavery in their culture is all, not a head issue but a gut issue. Humans are their allies and friends, though weaker and less united, and interfering in Human cultures would entail conflict, perhaps bloody conflict, in the face of external enemies. The PCs are both Human and Jeshen, and hold varying views, mostly against any kind of sapient slavery, which is to be expected of avatars of early 21st Century Humans.
It was a somewhat provocative question. But the ethical choices brought up by the issue do seem to be good fodder for a game!
It is an excellent question, @NeilNjae! And wonderful game fodder!