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wingedbeast) wrote2017-09-04 01:23 am
wingedbeast) wrote2017-09-04 01:23 am
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Brave New World Deconstruction: Part 1 Community Identity Stability
Here we start with Chapter 1 and already I realize that I'm going to have to cut Brave New World a tiny bit of slack that I did not cut for 1984. I did not forgive 1984 its sexism and I will endeavor not to do so for Brave New World. But, I just can't read Brave New World unless I forgive its science.
The first chapter takes us to the Central London Hatching And Conditioning Centre. That is, it's the place, in London, where humans are made. It's the place, in London, where humans are mass-manufactured.
Males and females donate their respective gametes.
The various fertilized ova are then filed. Alphas and Betas are kept separate and the rest, the Deltas, Gammas, and Epsilons, are taken for the Bokanovsky's Process.
Here's where we forgive the science in the service of story and message. Bokanovsky's Process is the arrested development of a fetus, paradoxically causing it to "bud", that is to fision off a second fetus of the same genetic material. The upper limit seems to be around 96 on average. Though, in some extreme cases, other hatcheries have achieved as much as seventeen thousand individuals from a single starting ovary.
Of course, we know a lot more about human development. (For instance, later on in the chapter, the Director of Hatcheries, giving a tour for group of new workers, will claim that humans have gills early in development.) One of the things we know about, now, that Huxley didn't, is stem-cells.
Early on in development, a zygote divides and divides, creating stem-cells. Early on, they're only composed of these undiffirentiated cells. This is when division can happen. No need for a Bokanovsky's Process of arrested development or even an upper limit. So long as you keep on pulling the cells apart and then feeding them, you can have, technically, infinite humans stemming from a single zygote.
But, I'm sure 96 identicals is more than enough... or not really. What, with that effort being made all the time.
The reason for getting 96, or as many as you can of the Deltas, Gammas, and Epsilons, is for standardization. Not only is the machinery standardized and the material standardized. In the interest of stability, so is the person.
I know, that's supposed to scare me on a philosophical level. I know that's supposed to set the stage for a world of disposable human commodities. I know that's supposed to make me shiver in existential dread of a world where people are infinitely replaceable, as though the entirety of humanity is Rick minus the attachment to Morty.
Instead, I think... no. Infinite copies of the same genetic code means infinite vulnerability to the same disease. Any single virus gets any single mutation and all Epsilons are dead. One Alpha goes on a trip to another country and comes back with a new bacteria in the lungs and all the Gammas of a town are dead.
Fun fact about banana flavored candy: It really does taste like bananas. It just tastes like a strain of bananas that aren't around anymore. There may be one tree remaining on an estate somewhere, but the rest are no more. The reason that those aren't the bananas in your grocery store, anymore, is a blight that readily swept through a mono-culture of banana trees, all grown from cuttings of other banana trees.
No, our current method of producing humans works well for our given conditions. Some theories have it that dealing with disease was one of the major evolutionary pushes for sexual reproduction. The constant reshuffling of the genetic deck allows one's offspring to be less vulnerable to the same old diseases. The common cold may repeatedly knock you down, but it won't kill you because it, too, has to constantly evolve in order to both overcome the human immune system and the fact that all humans are just that tiny bit different.
That said, the functional benefits of a standardized human can't be denied. In terms of doing a job, a standardized human means standardized testing, standardized training, standardized machinery, and standardized feeding. If every single human employed at the factory has exactly the same taste, then you can cut way down on the cost of even vending machine lunch in the break-room.
So, I get the point. And, I get how, in such a world with such technology, a balance may need to be struck between uniformity of individual for a task and diversity for adaptation to new condition... or at least for the stability of not having an entire generation of phone-cleaners die out.
Maybe you can extend the batches so that there's more... but not too much more. Maybe, there's a theoretical balance point at the end of some mathematical formula that averages out to, say, 96.
Anyway, back to the point of the Bokanovsky's Process. The point is that, for the stability of a society, some jobs gotta get done. You gotta do what you gotta do. In the first episode of Futurama, that was practically the slogan of Earth, the reason for the career chips. And, it's not entirely wrong.
Society needs people to do stuff and that lends to the nature of this global civilization. Society needs specific people. People need to be happy. So, they condition people, starting when they're still feti.
People going to tropical places are conditioned to find the cold uncomfortable and the heat more. People going into mechanical repair and engineering on rockets are engineered to prefer to be upside-down. The method is the use of feeding into their pods at various rates. Half-rate right-side up. Double-rate up-side down. It evens out to the same nourishment, but the fetus starts to associate upside down with comfort.
It might be too soon for that, technically. But, the idea is there and the idea is enticing.
Heck, we've got training videos and church sermons and entire sections of YouTube set to just that task. And, the main problem is how much they all fail to produce happiness with your conditions. If your conditions suck, they still suck no matter how often people tell you not to dislike them. But, if that worked?
If you knew, for a fact, that you were going to derive personal satisfaction and comfort from how well you fit your job... that kind of conditioning could start to seem worth it.
Of course, I took this out of order a bit, because there is something that even gets past my technical geekery and does strike my existential horror.
You see, those embryos that are destined to be Epsilons are given artificial oxygen shortages. The Director even says it's to keep them below par. This gives one of the tour-goers the natural question of why you'd want such a thing.
That line will be important later on, for a personal fan-theory of mine about one of the main characters that we'll meet later on. Here, the important thing is this.
The Epsilon caste, the lowest ranked cast in this world, are, as a matter of course, wounded in the artificial womb. They are done injury and brain damage via this oxygen deprivation, specifically for the purpose of making them okay with their lot.
In this fiction, you can't have robots or other AI to do things like operate an elevator or do a specific job on a moving assembly line. So, they make people for that. They brain damage people for that. And, Epsilon's get the worst of it, but the other castes get a bit of that treatment, too. Lower the caste, lower the oxygen rate, more the brain damage.
There's even a good long bit on discussing the possibility of speeding up Epsilon aging so that they reach adulthood at ten, rather than eighteen. This would save on wasted time...
Taking away the opportunity to have a mind that can take in the pleasures of the mind... so you can have a more manageable work-force.
Welcome to the world. It is the year A.F. 632. And, there's so much available to you... so long as your an Alpha or a Beta. But, otherwise, we'll make sure you're happy with so much less. In fact, we'll make everybody happy with so much less.
Community Identity Stability
The first chapter takes us to the Central London Hatching And Conditioning Centre. That is, it's the place, in London, where humans are made. It's the place, in London, where humans are mass-manufactured.
Males and females donate their respective gametes.
the operation undergone voluntarily for the good of Society, not to mention the fact that it carries a bonus amounting to six months salary.
The various fertilized ova are then filed. Alphas and Betas are kept separate and the rest, the Deltas, Gammas, and Epsilons, are taken for the Bokanovsky's Process.
Here's where we forgive the science in the service of story and message. Bokanovsky's Process is the arrested development of a fetus, paradoxically causing it to "bud", that is to fision off a second fetus of the same genetic material. The upper limit seems to be around 96 on average. Though, in some extreme cases, other hatcheries have achieved as much as seventeen thousand individuals from a single starting ovary.
Of course, we know a lot more about human development. (For instance, later on in the chapter, the Director of Hatcheries, giving a tour for group of new workers, will claim that humans have gills early in development.) One of the things we know about, now, that Huxley didn't, is stem-cells.
Early on in development, a zygote divides and divides, creating stem-cells. Early on, they're only composed of these undiffirentiated cells. This is when division can happen. No need for a Bokanovsky's Process of arrested development or even an upper limit. So long as you keep on pulling the cells apart and then feeding them, you can have, technically, infinite humans stemming from a single zygote.
But, I'm sure 96 identicals is more than enough... or not really. What, with that effort being made all the time.
The reason for getting 96, or as many as you can of the Deltas, Gammas, and Epsilons, is for standardization. Not only is the machinery standardized and the material standardized. In the interest of stability, so is the person.
"Ninety-six identical twins working ninety-six identical machines!" The voice was almost tremulous with enthusiasm. "You really know where you are. For the first time in history." He quoted the planetary motto. "Community Identity Stability." Grand words. "If we could bokanovsky indefinitely, the whole problem would be solved."
Solved by standard Gammas, unvarying Deltas, uniform Epsilons. Millions of identical twins. The principle of mass production at last applied to biology.
I know, that's supposed to scare me on a philosophical level. I know that's supposed to set the stage for a world of disposable human commodities. I know that's supposed to make me shiver in existential dread of a world where people are infinitely replaceable, as though the entirety of humanity is Rick minus the attachment to Morty.
Instead, I think... no. Infinite copies of the same genetic code means infinite vulnerability to the same disease. Any single virus gets any single mutation and all Epsilons are dead. One Alpha goes on a trip to another country and comes back with a new bacteria in the lungs and all the Gammas of a town are dead.
Fun fact about banana flavored candy: It really does taste like bananas. It just tastes like a strain of bananas that aren't around anymore. There may be one tree remaining on an estate somewhere, but the rest are no more. The reason that those aren't the bananas in your grocery store, anymore, is a blight that readily swept through a mono-culture of banana trees, all grown from cuttings of other banana trees.
No, our current method of producing humans works well for our given conditions. Some theories have it that dealing with disease was one of the major evolutionary pushes for sexual reproduction. The constant reshuffling of the genetic deck allows one's offspring to be less vulnerable to the same old diseases. The common cold may repeatedly knock you down, but it won't kill you because it, too, has to constantly evolve in order to both overcome the human immune system and the fact that all humans are just that tiny bit different.
That said, the functional benefits of a standardized human can't be denied. In terms of doing a job, a standardized human means standardized testing, standardized training, standardized machinery, and standardized feeding. If every single human employed at the factory has exactly the same taste, then you can cut way down on the cost of even vending machine lunch in the break-room.
So, I get the point. And, I get how, in such a world with such technology, a balance may need to be struck between uniformity of individual for a task and diversity for adaptation to new condition... or at least for the stability of not having an entire generation of phone-cleaners die out.
Maybe you can extend the batches so that there's more... but not too much more. Maybe, there's a theoretical balance point at the end of some mathematical formula that averages out to, say, 96.
Anyway, back to the point of the Bokanovsky's Process. The point is that, for the stability of a society, some jobs gotta get done. You gotta do what you gotta do. In the first episode of Futurama, that was practically the slogan of Earth, the reason for the career chips. And, it's not entirely wrong.
Society needs people to do stuff and that lends to the nature of this global civilization. Society needs specific people. People need to be happy. So, they condition people, starting when they're still feti.
People going to tropical places are conditioned to find the cold uncomfortable and the heat more. People going into mechanical repair and engineering on rockets are engineered to prefer to be upside-down. The method is the use of feeding into their pods at various rates. Half-rate right-side up. Double-rate up-side down. It evens out to the same nourishment, but the fetus starts to associate upside down with comfort.
It might be too soon for that, technically. But, the idea is there and the idea is enticing.
"And that," put in the Director sententiously, "that is the secret of happiness and virtue-liking what you've got to do. All conditioning aims at that: making people like their inescapable social destiny."
Heck, we've got training videos and church sermons and entire sections of YouTube set to just that task. And, the main problem is how much they all fail to produce happiness with your conditions. If your conditions suck, they still suck no matter how often people tell you not to dislike them. But, if that worked?
If you knew, for a fact, that you were going to derive personal satisfaction and comfort from how well you fit your job... that kind of conditioning could start to seem worth it.
Of course, I took this out of order a bit, because there is something that even gets past my technical geekery and does strike my existential horror.
You see, those embryos that are destined to be Epsilons are given artificial oxygen shortages. The Director even says it's to keep them below par. This gives one of the tour-goers the natural question of why you'd want such a thing.
"Ass!" said the Director, breaking a long silence. "Hasn't it occurred to you that an Epsilon embryo must have an Epsilon environment as well as an Epsilon heredity?"
That line will be important later on, for a personal fan-theory of mine about one of the main characters that we'll meet later on. Here, the important thing is this.
The Epsilon caste, the lowest ranked cast in this world, are, as a matter of course, wounded in the artificial womb. They are done injury and brain damage via this oxygen deprivation, specifically for the purpose of making them okay with their lot.
In this fiction, you can't have robots or other AI to do things like operate an elevator or do a specific job on a moving assembly line. So, they make people for that. They brain damage people for that. And, Epsilon's get the worst of it, but the other castes get a bit of that treatment, too. Lower the caste, lower the oxygen rate, more the brain damage.
There's even a good long bit on discussing the possibility of speeding up Epsilon aging so that they reach adulthood at ten, rather than eighteen. This would save on wasted time...
Taking away the opportunity to have a mind that can take in the pleasures of the mind... so you can have a more manageable work-force.
Welcome to the world. It is the year A.F. 632. And, there's so much available to you... so long as your an Alpha or a Beta. But, otherwise, we'll make sure you're happy with so much less. In fact, we'll make everybody happy with so much less.
Community Identity Stability
Tons of questions
(Anonymous) 2017-09-04 07:04 pm (UTC)(link)Aside: I googled Mond's first name and just found out that there was a TV movie version in 1998.
Re: Tons of questions
I think that Huxley, like Orwell, was seeing this as something new, or something getting worse. I don't think so. I think that this is common to all settings and all cultures/subcultures.
As to the TV movie. It was either a TV Movie or a miniseries on the Sci-Fi channel, back when it was the Sci-Fi channel and would take risks. I caught bits of it, enough to know that it made some changes that just don't work.
I might try to see if I can watch it for free at some point in this deconstruction.
Re: Tons of questions
(Anonymous) 2017-09-10 10:33 pm (UTC)(link)Clive D.W. Feather
Re: Tons of questions
Maybe after I'm done with all three I'll look into how adaptations handled things.
Re: Tons of questions
(Anonymous) 2017-09-11 06:40 pm (UTC)(link)no subject
Welcome to the Red Queen's Race. Here's an example of how it works from real life.
Of course, later on, we'll get to their over optimistic vaccination practices, and I say this as a fervent pro-vaxxer.
BTW, do you have an edition with Huxley's retrospective on the story and how he'd do it differently if he were to write it at the age he was writing the retrospective from?
no subject
That's not to say that they can't have really advanced vaccination capacities, producing vaccines within moments of access to the virus... but even that would require something that doesn't really apply.
Yes, I do have that edition. I gave a glance at it, but haven't read it yet.
no subject
no subject