hello and welcome to this video on oldest huxley's dystopian classic Brave New World written in 1932 Brave New World can be seen in the context of the early 20th century world the Great War which killed an estimated 17 million people the 1918 flu pandemic that killed Millions more the Russian Revolution that wiped out the ruling class and created a new Global superpower and after the probations of War disease and Revolution came the Roaring 20s with a focus on Innovation pleasure and liberality an explosion of creativity in music art and architecture and huge increases in wealth as stock market Rose and Rose until in 1929 the stock market crashed devastating the economy and heralding the Great Depression that drove Millions into unemployment and misery it is this mix of conflict and creativity that Huxley picks up on and uses to imagine what the world might look like 600 years in the future in 2540 ad so how has the world changed in Brave New World and why we are told that by 2049 the tensions between countries became so great that the world was plunged into a catastrophic 9year global war killing millions of people so around 2058 A New World Order began to take shape to guarantee stability and safety and the first step they took was unusual they decided to compel everyone to buy a certain amount of products and services every year this kept industry working and kept people employed and occupied and when some people complained because they wanted to conserve the world's natural resources they were murdered by the authorities cultural activities were also banned because you can't consume products if you're reading watching plays or going to museums some people protested they were also murdered by the authorities and to make make sure that these protests couldn't happen again the past was then systematically eliminated books published before 2058 were suppressed so no Shakespeare no rouso no Aristotle no Bible no nothing statues were torn down and monuments destroyed no pyramids No Temple no past so from 2058 the only thing that was important was the present and how you feel in the present and how you need to feel is happy in fact to avoid people ever feeling lonely or unhappy the state manufactured the perfect drug soma in fact everyone has a daily allowance of Soma tablets just in case they feel even slightly unhappy and the world state had also conquered aging they created a way of making 60-year-olds look and feel like they were 17 so people remained Lively and active until they died the important point is the world state has systematically erased the past it has removed the threat of illness and old age there is no need to worry about the future just a remorseless focus on the present and on being happy in the present so this is the background against which the story takes place and the first thing we discover is that the world's state which is now ruled successfully for 600 years has now gone even further it has adapted humans to meet the needs of society the story opens at a Scot gry building called the central London Hatchery and conditioning center now humans are not born naturally every woman has the eggs harvested from her ovaries and they're fertilized in test tubes then they are allotted a place in a strict cast system Alphas at the top then betas gamas deltas and at the very bottom epsilons the alphas and betas who will carry out skilled roles in society are left to develop in their test tubes for 9 months without further interference but the three casts below them the gamas delta and epsilons are treated very differently those eggs are manipulated in the laboratory until they have divided on average 72 times so that 9 months later there will be 72 identical babies from one egg and they are treated to inhibit their growth and to limit their intelligence the world's state has made them small and stupid so that they can't understand their lowly position in society but that's not all once they're born every human is conditioned to be happy with their place in society during the night they are played thousands of messages whilst they sleep such as this message designed for beta children Alpha children wear gray they work much harder than we do because they're so frightfully clever I'm really awfully glad I'm beater because I don't work so hard and then we're much better than the gamas and Deltas gamas are stupid they all wear green and Delta children wear khy owner I don't want to play with Delta children and epsilons are still worse they're too stupid to be able to read or write besides they wear black which is such a beastly color I'm so glad I'm a beer during the day they're then subjected to neop pavlovian and conditioning the children are shown books and flowers but as they crawl towards them they're giving electric shocks so that they associate reading and nature with pain this is to make sure that they don't want to spend time alone reading or get joy from Simply enjoying nature the world State needs people to buy and consume this is what makes the world go around and as they get slightly older they're encouraged to indulge in erotic play now this is because as adults they will be encouraged to have sex with whoever they like whenever they like and never to have long-term relationships or marry and this is the society within which the story takes place and that has shaped the characters we meet the director of hatcheries introduces this Brave New World he tells us how everything being done is for the good of society even though he's running an operation that creates an elite who are supported by an army of clones who have been stunted both physically and mentally he makes it clear that all this is done for the right reasons to maintain stability and help people accept their position in life as he says all conditioning aims at making people like their unescapable social Destiny but not Everyone likes their social Destiny for example Bernard Marx he is an alpha plus intellectual and should be one of society's winners but he has one major problem he is much smaller than the average Alpha and that's a problem because height is associated with power and attractiveness the rumor is that one of the people in the labs got distracted and treated his embryo with too much alcohol by mistake women don't find him attractive and this makes him resentful which in turn makes him even less popular he also hates casual sex and wants a long-term relationship with a woman called lenina and although she quite likes Bernard as a beater she has been programmed to like casual sex and to reject commitment another discontent is Bernard's friend Helm Holtz Watson he's the opposite of Bernard he's physically gifted mentally gifted and very popular with women in fact he has had sex with more than 600 different women in in just four years and Helm Holtz is also a successful writer but only of advertising slogans and jingles and he feels there must be more important things to write about but he doesn't know what so like Bernard he also feels like an air cider against this background the first third of the book focuses on Bernard's anger his clashes with various authority figures and his attempt to get lenina to go on holiday with him to new mexic Mexico and one third through the story things begin to change lenina's curiosity gets the better of her and she agrees to go on holiday with Bernard to what is called The Savage reservation this is a Place full of humans like us who give birth naturally get sick feel pain and get old and when he goes to get his travel permit signed by the director of hatcheries and conditioning he discovers that the director himself had visited the Savage res obervation but that his female companion on the trip got lost and was never found this information will be important later pleased that he's managed to take lenina to New Mexico he then has a huge shock when he hears from Helm Holtz Watson that the director of hatcheries and conditioning is planning to banish him to a distant Island for being subversive how will he avoid this fate the answer comes when when he goes to the Savage reservation and meets a young man named John who looks different to everyone else he's pale skinned and rejected by the rest of the tribe John's mother Linda is middle-aged and overweight and Bernard suddenly realizes that Linda must be the woman who had accompanied the director of hatcheries all those years ago and this gives him an idea Bernard contacts the world controller must foron and suggests that he should bring Jon a Linda back to London as an experiment so they can see how they might adapt to life in the Brave New World M agrees and the decision is sensationally successful for Bernard in two ways when he arrives back in London he's faced by the director of hatcheries who announces in public that Bernard is to be banished for his insolent Behavior but the director's plan falls apart when Linda walks in Embraces the director and says you made me have a baby yes a baby and I was its mother in addition Linda is described as a fat terrifying monster of middle-aged whose face is sagging and blotched no one has ever seen anything like it because of course everyone else looks 17 because of the treatment they receive from the state and then it gets even worse because in walks John who fall falls to his knees and says my father as no one has a mother or father anymore the words are seen as mildly disgusting and laughable the director is humiliated and runs from the room he later resigns and now Bernard immediately becomes an important person because everyone wants to see John who becomes known as The Savage and the only way to see him is via burner so previously unpopular Bernard is now the person everybody wants to know but burner's popularity is dependent upon John and when johon refuses to meet people because he hates being looked at like a zoo animal people blame Bernard and returned to disliking him so 2third of the way through the story the focus moves away from Bernard and on to John The Savage this section is in many ways the crucial part of the book because it eventually brings two contrasting World Views face to face John's worldview has been shaped by reading Shakespeare's plays sonnets and poems from a version that had Survived The Purge of old books and had been given to him on the Savage reservation in Shakespeare he's read about the full range of human emotions from Joy love and happiness through to sadness hatred and jealousy this world viiew will eventually come into collision with that of muster Mond who World controller needs to erase the past erase the idea of suffering and focus people on happiness but for now John is exploring the world and he doesn't like what he finds he's attracted to Lina but his world view is based on monogamy love and marriage so her promiscuity appalls him when she visits him strips naked and wants to have sex he's Furious and tries to hit her forcing her to lock herself in a room but before he can hurt lenina a call comes from the hospital to say that Linda his mother is dying and in the hospital he's further appalled by the callous way the nurse allows a crowd of identical children to GP at Linda as she dies there's no dignity but there wouldn't be because there simply being conditioned not to fear death but John is furious and now he hits one of the children before storming at and then in the hospital Lobby when he meets swarms of identical workers queuing for their Som ration he shouts don't take that horrible stuff it's poison it's poison he throws their drugs out of the window and provokes a riot which is only quelled when the police spray everyone with Soma vapor and so now come the obligatory scenes that had to happen and are actually the core of the story first John Bernard and his friend helmholtz come face to face with the world controller muster Mond and Mond explains to them why the world is the way it is for example when asked why don't you make everyone an alpha double plus M replies that if we did we'd all get our throats cut Alphas can't do boring work they would Rebel and cause trouble that's why they engineered and conditioned epsilons to do that type of work epsilons are happy because they don't know any better and he reveals that they did experiment with the idea of Alphas running their own Society 150 years ago but it was a disaster that ended in Civil War and the remaining Alphas pleaded with the world government to Take Back Control at this point muster reveals that Bernard and Helm Holts will be banished Bernard is Led sobbing from the room but as mon says he's lucky because there he'll meet the most interesting set of men and women to be found anywhere in the world a hint that Universal happiness might bring order but it doesn't necessarily bring satisfaction with life then Helm Holtz a writer chooses to be sent to the full land Island so that he can suffer and so hopefully become a better writer lastly M talks to John alone and explains the truth about this Brave New World M reveals that he sacrificed truth and Beauty for the happiness of others he opens a safe and gets out several classic texts like Shakespeare saying they are pornographic in the sense that they provoke strong emotions and that's why they have to be banned because strong emotions are harmful to stability in society M argues that the humans only needed God when they feared getting old and being left alone now that everyone stays young until they die they no longer have to fear being alone so they had no need of God John asks whether we should be punished for immoral Behavior such as extra marital sex mon says that is why they change the rules about sex you can't become unhappy about your husband or wife having sex with someone else if there are no marriages also if people have constant distractions and drugs they don't have time to feel unhappy M then says a key thing everything we believe is a result of our conditioning and if that is the case the question we must ask is who is doing the conditioning and what are their AIMS in most societies conditioning is done randomly by parents and schools the difference in Brave New World is that it is overtly targeted at supporting the needs of a stable consumer Society but says John what about nobility and heroism aren't they valuable no says M nobility and heroism are only useful where Society is disorganized and rights need to be defended now no one needs to fight for or anything and if by chance something unpleasant does happen there's always Suma to make everyone happy again now says M all is comfort and joy but says John I don't want Comfort I want God I want poetry I want real danger I want freedom I want goodness I want sin this is of course at variance with the Brave New World approach where the idear is to immediately satisfy desires by getting what we want immediately without any regret pleasure is everything in this world but although Bernard leaves for Iceland and Helm haltz leaves for the Faulkland Islands John is not allowed to leave and has to go and live in Sur ironically just a few miles away from where aldus Huxley was born and is buried here M can continue to observe JN as an experiment but John can't even enjoy the countryside because he feels he doesn't deserve Beauty he whips himself and when this is noticed by passes by the presser told and he becomes an unwilling celebrity a movie director then films him in secret and the movie draws even more visitors to GARP at him until finally lenina arrives and this is the final straw for John he violently attacks her but far from frightening people off it arouses them and a mass orgy ensues this encapsulates the perversion of this Society violence ends up stimulating the kind of sexual desire it is meant to suppress the following evening there are even more visitors but when they go into John's home all they see are Jon's feet dangling beneath an arch he's committed suicide for John a society without the freedom to explore life via art and books to feel pain and joy to feel strong passions to take risks and to love is no life at all and of course the final irony is the title of the book The World Brave in this context should mean Splendid or magnificent however the book's title is taken from a line in Shakespeare's play The Tempest which describes the moment when a naive character thinks that the people she has just met are Splendid and Magnificent the reality is they're the exact opposite but of course we need to have read Shakespeare to know that which of course is why they've banned it so thank you for watching this video and I hope it will help you to get greater enjoyment from oldest hux's classic novel Brave New World give a thumbs up if you enoy enjoyed this video And subscribe now so that you don't miss any of my future posts