Brave New World Deconstruction: Part 7 Why Savage Reservations?

[wingedbeast]

I'm sticking with the end of Chapter 6 for another post to, before we actually get to the Savage Reservation, look into the question of why such a thing exists. In my bit of shameless self-promotion in the comments of other blogs, someone asked the question of why the Savage Reservations even exist.

The Doylist reason (that is, from the perspective of the author) is so that we can meet Jon. Jon will be an important counterpoint to the Fordly way of life. Jon needs to exist, to enter Fordly society, and not be perceived as a threat by Fordly society. For those ends, a Savage Reservation makes an ideal tool. It's outside Fordly civilization but small enough that the average Fordly citizen is aware of but not bothered by it.

The Watsonian reason (that is, from the perspective within the world of the fiction) is related.

It's also related to slavery and Rent.

To remind something of the standard against which the Savage Reservation is to contrast, Lenina notes the amenities of the hotel.

They slept that night at Santa Fe. The hotel was excellent-incomparably better, for example, than that horrible Aurora Bora Palace in which Lenina had suffered so much the previous summer. Liquid air, television, vibro-vacuum massage, radio, boiling caffeine solution, hot contraceptives, and eight different kinds of scent were laid on in every bedroom. The synthetic music plant was working as they entered the hall and left nothing to be desired. A notice in the lift announced that there were sixty Escalator-Squash Racket Courts in the hotel, and that Obstacle and Electro-magnetic Golf could both be played in the park.

"But it sounds simply too lovely," cried Lenina. "I almost wish we could stay here. Sixty Escalator0Squash Courts..."

"There won't be any in the Reservation," Bernard warned her. "And no scent, no television, no hot water even. If you feel you can't stand it, stay here till I come back."

Based on this, one can say that there's an element that's like camping. It's not for everybody. But, if you do it the traditional method (that is to say, in a tent, without modern conveniences), it's a small taste of living "the simple life". It can be a vacation, a bit of relaxation.

There's another point to camping, an important one. It makes you appreciate the luxuries of, well, not-camping. Sure, you might enjoy spending a weekend in a tent, perhaps eating what you find/fish. But, most likely, you don't want to live that way your entire life. Nature is a nice place to visit, but most humans don't want to live there.

And, if you're reading this blog, there's good reason. There's no internet out there. You can't read this blog, mildly consider supporting it, then go on with your life because you're not made of money. You can't engage in the small acts of electronic engagement that help you keep an even keel. And, well, you're human, so it's also a consideration that you can't [censored for your privacy].

Take that concept and apply it in a more extreme version. In that extremity you have two versions to work from.

Lenina takes some soma so that she can calmly pretend to listen to the Warden explain things like the electrified fence and that the people within are born. The former might shock someone, because it involves noting the animals the electrified fence kills. Apparently, they never learn. The latter, for the Fordly society, would shock anybody.

It'll be made more clear later on. "Mother" is a dirty word. "Father" is one thing, the stuff of crude jokes. But, "mother" suggests... disgusting things like birth.

Here we get to the slavery association. In Antebellum slavery, it was the practice that a plantation or slave owner would give the slave a day of freedom. This would be something like a Sunday or a Christmas. It's important to note that this would only be a day of freedom.

A day in the life of being free is much different than a day of freedom. If you're free for life, you have much to consider, responsibilities, livelihood, a requirement to understand the consequences of your actions and build a better world for not just yourself but everybody. This is difficult, but accomplishable and it can be satisfying.

A day of freedom, however, is just a day to do what you want, when you regularly can't. In your "one day of freedom for the year" you're not going to sit down and casually read the Newspaper (not the least because you're not allowed to learn how to read). But, you can, say, go to a party... with lots of rum... rum charitably provided by the slave owner... rum that leads to drinking too much, doing stupid things, vomiting, and waking up with a hang-over... because it's not like there's any other element of freedom that you can engage in just a day.

Part of the purpose behind the practice is to present freedom as dangerous. It's not a real taste of freedom, because it can't be. Real freedom doesn't only last a day. But, if you make slaves think that's freedom, you can make them think they don't want it.

That's the purpose for Lenina. She's not unintelligent, but she very much fits into Fordly society. She's accepted the conditioning and doesn't even think that the fact that it is conditioning is a bad thing. To her, this is an example of why she doesn't want out of the Fordly way of life.

On the other hand, we have Bernard. Bernard who, having called Helmholtz in order to get him to turn off the faucet and, thus, save him a lot of money, received word that the Director had made the decision to transfer Bernard to Iceland. Iceland which, at the time of the book's writing according to a commenter on last week's post, is seen in a similar manner as one might imagine Siberia... not a fun place to be exiled to.

Now, the thing about Iceland is that it's not *all that* icy. Because history has a sense of irony, it's actually fairly green a land. In terms of weather, it's not all that bad. I'd have to imagine that the main reason it's considered such a bad spot within the book is because there's not much industry, entertainment, and social importance there. It could be the classic "career dead end in a small town".

I maintain my stance, from my own comments on last week's post, that Bernard would actually be happier in Iceland. My fan-theory is that's where people like Bernard get put out of sight and out of mind. They don't fit in, they insist upon having disturbing thoughts and enjoying quiet moments to themselves. Not all of them like this about themselves and a lot of the people there don't fit in with Fordly society for different reasons. But, if there's anywhere in Fordly society where Bernard's eccentricities would be given the respect he needs in order to feel safe, it's there.

In fact, there's an entire Brave New World sitcom to be had there.

That's not to say that Bernard knows this.

Often in the past he had wondered what it would be like to be subjected (soma-less and with nothing but his own inward resources to rely on) to some great trial, some pain, some persecution; he had even longed for affliction. As recently as a week ago, in the Director's office, he had imagined himself courageously resisting, stoically accepting suffering without a word. The Director's threats had actually elated him, made him feel larger than life. But that, as he now realized, was because he had not taken the threats quite seriously; he had not believed that, when it came to the point, the D.H.C. would ever do anything. Now that it looked as though the threats were really to be fulfilled, Bernard was appalled. Of that imagined stoicism, that theoretical courage, not a trace was left.

Bernard is afraid. Perhaps he'd overestimated himself before, but now I think he may be underestimating himself. And, Bernard, to be clear, doesn't fit in with this society. He has dreams of changing things.

That brings us to Rent.

Again, due credit goes to Lindsey Ellis and her video essay on rent. Others have taken on the point that Rent presents artists who are offended that their artistry and artist lifestyle should be hampered by anything like practical realities. Lindsey takes issue with the presentation of rebellion and counter-culture.

As Rent would have it, there is one alternative to taking part in the capitalist and socially oppressive forces in our society... opt out of society. Be wild, kooky, avante guard, and freak out the norms.

The problem with opting out of society is that, unlike the characters of Rent, you're still in reality and an entirely different kind of bill comes due. And, those injustices remain unchallenged. By opting out of society, you might have had some fun, felt brave, but you didn't really accomplish anything.

For Bernard, the purpose of having the Savage Reservation is to give him that as his only alternative to fitting in. It's a message to anybody like Bernard. By Henry's explanation that Bernard is a rhinoserous, ther are others like Bernard, all getting this message.

"You might not like our society the way things are," says the message. "You might have some instinct or need for privacy that our conditioning could not destroy. You might not like the fact that our stability is built upon taking the entire human species full of potential and choking it all to death, one human at a time. But, this is your only alternative."

Brave New World and 1984 might be counterpoints to each other, but they contain elements of each other.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Your theory hadn’t occurred to me, because I had assumed conditioning would have eliminated all rebellious impulses except the mildest ones such as Bernard’s, making the negative example of the Reservation largely unnecessary. Interesting that Bernard seems to find appeal in some aspects of Reservation life but finds the prospect of Iceland terrifying.

The amenities at the tourist destinations seem no different than what Bernard and Lenina could get back home, since the point of travel in the Fordian word is to consume. Huxley wrote decades before the American interstate highways led to homogeneity in the landscape.

Why was Huxley trying to compare Christianity with alcohol and soma? Through Mond, he implies that being Christian led people to drink and use drugs. Maybe I’m an oddity since I’ve never found anything comforting about either religion or mind-altering substances. The latter can be frightening because they reduce one’s sense of perception and self-control. I didn’t even like the Valium I was given for a minor surgical procedure.

[wingedbeast]

By the fact that Henry came up with the idea of calling certain people rhinoceroses, we know that neither Bernard nor Helmholtz are unique. They're not all that common in the Fordly society, but they've got common precedent. (That helps to make them a good analogy for similar cases in today's world or one contemporary to Huxley.)

This suggests that there are limits to what the conditioning can accomplish. Sure, with enough repetition, you can get somebody to react to your words as though their own thoughts. But, the fact of Bernard means that conditions in the world can counter the conditioning.

I would hasten to add that it's likely impossible for the Fordly Society to provide anybody with a life free of such counter-conditioning conditions.

So, there would be some necessity.

Also, it's worthy of note that this wouldn't necessarily be a conscious choice. People naturally draw up uncharitable images of their ideological opposition and treat that as the alternative to their own way of thinking.

That's how "feminism" becomes "man-hating". That's how a focus on consent becomes "anything goes so long as there's consent". So, in one part, Fordly society might be using the Savage Reservations just to make themselves feel better about where they are.

[(Anonymous)]

With “man-hating” and “anything goes,” there may be something more at work besides a natural tendency to caricature their ideological opposition. Their privilege is being threatened so they assume that their opponents simply want to seize the privilege instead of doing away with it.

[wingedbeast]

That goes into a bit of a chicken/egg question of which comes first, the fear or the specificity of what they fear. Personally, I think a large part of the issue is that people respond to new social movements with some amount of fear. When, then, asked what they fear, they come up with an image to match that fear.

In the same sense, Fordly society fears a different way of doing things than what they're doing now. The lack of history education gives them little way of accurately modeling what different ways of society are actually like. The World Controllers might be the exception to that rule, but even they would lack for the resources of a world that can allow for an entire history-studying profession.

When given the opportunity to give an image to their fear, well, there are the Savage Reservations. They're denied access to technology as well as anything like a Fordly education. Their religious practices are... we'll see. It's all so much worse, and all so validating of their fears.