73. Brave New World

Note: This post is the seventy-third in a series about government and commercial ethics. Click here for the full listing of the series. The first post in the series has more detail on the book 'Systems of Survival' by Jane Jacobs which inspired this series.


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"The world is turning Disney and there's nothing you can do
You're trying to walk like giants, but you're wearing Pluto's shoes
And the answers fall easier from the barrel of a gun
Than it does from the lips of the beautiful and the dumb
The world won't end in darkness, it will end in family fun
With Coca-Cola clouds behind a Big Mac Sun"¹


This week's post is about the book, Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley. Brave New World is a dystopian novel about a future world where scientific advances have led to a society where people are programmed to seek out happiness and are thus controlled, in order to maintain a stable society.

I was reminded of this book when I came across this cartoon illustration of some of the differences between George Orwell's 1984 and Brave New World.

1984, to some extent, imagines a world with the Guardian syndrome run amok, taking a far larger role and intruding in areas it was never meant to.

My first thought was that Brave New World, on the other hand, was an attempt to portray a world in which the Commercial syndrome had run amok in similar fashion.

But as I read through it again, I realized that a more accurate description would be that it describes a world in which neither syndrome exists, the Guardian syndrome because it is unnecessary and the commercial syndrome because it is destabilizing.

A while back we saw that David Gauthier argued, in his book Morals by Agreement, that morality consisted of a constraint on behaviour and that the perfectly competitive market would remove the need for morality by perfectly aligning people's natural instincts with what was socially optimal.

Huxley takes this logic further, imagining a society in which everything runs on this principle. The best expression of this thought comes in a section of the end of the book when the protagonist(s) meet up with the Resident World Controller for Western Europe, Mustapha Mond².

Mond explains that,

"Civilization has no need of nobility or heroism. These things are symptoms of political inefficiency. ... Where there are wars, where there are divided allegiances, where there are temptations to be resisted, objects of love to be fought for and defended - there, obviously, nobility and heroism have some sense."

The wording, that morality is a symptom of inefficiency, is almost a word for word match with Gauthier, but Mond's topic is politics whereas Gauthier was only talking about markets.

There are other elements of this scene that show the lack of a need for morality (in particular guardian morality). The meeting shows a complete lack of ostentation on the part of the Controller, who simply walks ('briskly') into the room and shakes their hands and has a face to face conversation with them in his study. There is no need for Mustapha to intimidate or overawe the people he is visiting, because they are firmly enough under control that they wouldn't do anything rash like use force on him.

The conversation starts with the Savage asking the Controller why something is banned and the controller replies, "Because it's old; that's the chief reason. We haven't any use for old things here." This cuts out the Guardian belief in respecting tradition.³

Mond claims that the ultimate guiding objective in the Brave New World is happiness - the same as the commercial syndrome. But in fact, the Brave New World subordinates happiness to stability. Ongoing scientific research could lead to much more comfort for man (heated leather seats in SUV's!) but the Brave New World has cut-off further scientific inquiry in many areas due to its potentially destabilizing nature.

"Our Ford himself did a great deal to shift the emphasis from truth and beauty to comfort and happiness. Mass production demanded the shift. Universal happiness keeps the wheels steadily turning; truth and beauty can't. ...

[but] People still went on talking about truth and beauty as though they were the sovereign goods. Right up to the time of the Nine Years' War. That made them change their tune all right. What's the point of truth or beauty or knowledge when anthrax bombs are popping all around you? ... People were ready to have their appetites controlled then, Anything for a quiet life. We've gone on controlling ever since. It hasn't been very good for truth, of course. But it's been very good for happiness."

I think that, in some ways, Huxley was overly optimistic about human nature. He seemed to believe that only through genetic breeding to make people dumber and forced drug consumption could people be induced to work at mindless drudgery without rebelling. He didn't seem to appreciate that people could be made cooperative in the all-consuming pursuit of happiness using far less coercive methods.

He believed that the pursuit of status would inevitably lead to civil war if left unchecked, but didn't consider that people would be happy to chase status in the form of simply greater comfort than others, achieved via promotion of comfort and convenience for others (think Steve Jobs).

He also fell into the trap of thinking that automation would remove the need for work. Ironically, even Huxley, who imagined an entire world build around the principle of the pursuit of happiness and comfort, didn't comprehend the truly insatiable nature of the human desire for greater comfort and convenience. He thought that if the government didn't maintain a large percentage of the population in agriculture, people would have no work to do, when instead the gains from no longer needing everyone to work the fields were easily absorbed by building ourselves 4,000 square foot houses and flying on planes all over the world and building cars with air conditioning, and airbags, and anti-lock brakes, and seatbelts, and warning lights, and so on.

What stands out most for me from Brave New World was the ambitious attempt to imagine a world where people's commercial syndrome desire for happiness has supplanted the need for any guardian style virtues. In the end the Savage (who has grown up outside of the Brave New World) cries out some inefficiency in the Brave New World that will allow him to demonstrate his prowess, to show his honour.

"But I don't want comfort. I want God. I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin."

The weakness, for me, was that Huxley did not go far enough in imagining how far a commercial mindset could go on its own in reducing the need for guardian ethics, without needing to be supported by coercive methods, selective breeding or restraints on scientific inquiry and artistic endeavour.

At some point in the next few weeks, I'll explore the notion that the threat for the commercial syndrome is not just that it might succeed so well that it needs to be restrained, but rather that its continued prominence in our society depends on an ever-increasing, rather than stable level of comfort, and I'll look at the challenges we face generating an always-rising level of comfort and convenience for all.

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¹From the Beautiful South song 'One God'

²Even the choice of the name Mustapha for the leader of Europe demonstrates a rejection of the exclusivity that is part of the Guardian syndrome, showing that this society has no need for such tribalism.

³I put this in a footnote because it's not relevant to my post, but the next passage in the book is a complaint from the Savage about the 'modern' films that strikes so close to home, I wanted to mention it, "But the new ones are so stupid and horrible. Those plays, where there's nothing but helicopters flying and you feel the people kissing."

Spare the Rod, Spoil the Blog - Undisciplined Thoughts on Just About Everything

Sometimes I feel as though my head is a giant tub filled with various thoughts about politics, the economy, society etc. and by starting this blog I have created an opening in the tub which allows some of those thoughts out. The problem is that the opening is tiny since, due to the effort required by choosing topics, finding links, organizing thoughts, constructing paragraphs, editing and so on, the amount of stuff which can actually be posted on is pretty small. And of course it doesn't help when your internet provider (Telus) leaves you disconnected for a week.

Besides this, spending a few days away from the internet made me want to have more variety in my posts. So I decided to do a little experiment and just type for a while on whatever topics have been on my mind lately with no discipline or real organization whatsoever.

Important! This last sentence was a warning that, even if you've made it this far into this self-indulgent post, you probably shouldn't really continue on. Proceed at your own risk of wasted time, keeping in mind that you're only young once.

So anyway, I've been thinking about the upcoming battle to (maybe) bring down the federal government. Is it just me or is it ridiculous that the health of some MP's could be a factor, since they may be too ill to get to the House of Commons? What century is this? I'm not keen on seeing the government fall since I'd like to at least see the legislation on Same Sex Marriage pass first, but I don't want to see it continue on because someone was too sick to vote.

Meanwhile, if this is true it's really sad - not to mention likely counter-productive. Bad enough when parties bribe their own members to keep them in line (did I mention we should shut down the Senate) - now they're bribing the opposition as well? Of course if it's not true, it's even more sad. I guess we'll see.

It seems like a bunch of people are re-considering voting Liberal under the sponsorship scandal circumstances but can't bring themselves to vote for the gays-are-separate-but-equal, made-in-Canada-solutions-to-Global-environmental-problems, cut-taxes-increase-spending-but-don't-worry-about-the-budget, ask-how-high-when-Americans-say-jump-and-tie-ourselves-ever-more-closely-to-their-dangerously-unstable-economy Conservatives or the surplusses-are-bad, fifty-point-government-plans-will-solve-every-problem, electoral-reform-is-was-will-be-our-#1-priority NDP party.

I'll probably explore my thoughts on the NDP in greater depth and more fairness in a later post (it's half written in draft already). For the Conservatives it seems like there is a disconnect between what voters want (a clone of the Liberals) and what the Conservatives want (a clone of the U.S.?). The time honoured approach would seem to be for the Conservatives to just pretend to be a clone of the Liberals for the purposes of getting elected and then do whatever they feel like once they are in charge. For now, while I welcome their move to the centre, I'll probably treat any Conservative promises on Child Care or Kyoto with a grain of salt or two.

Anyway, I invite people looking for alternatives to join me in voting Green in the next election. In moving to the Centre the Green party has positioned itself as being similar to the Liberal party but more innovative on the revenue/environmental side and more libertarian/easy-going/less-uptight/not-so-puritanical/call-it-what- you-will on social issues (such as marijuana legalization).

Moving on to provincial politics, B.C. votes in two weeks. The most important thing is for people to get out and vote 'Yes' to the referendum on switching the electoral system to the Single Transferable Vote. As a voter, I can't see why someone would favour a system which gives them very little choice over one which gives them a lot of choice. As a democrat I can't see why people would favour a system where there is a huge disconnect between the votes cast and the representatives elected over one where the distribution of seats in the legislature bears some resemblance to the votes cast.

Aside from the referendum, the 3 main parties contesting the election are the Liberals, NDP and the Greens. I've read all the platforms but need a couple of days to digest it all before posting in detail. A quick thought for now is that I wish (like always) that I could go for the 'make your own pasta' option where I get the Greenolini noodles with a creamy NDPfredo sauce and chunks of roasted Liberal on top.

On issues like RAV and the Olympics I favour the Liberal approach of supporting big projects that will make B.C. a better province long into the future. But then stuff like the ill-fated Coquihalla privatization plan shows how the Liberals get carried away with their ideology in the face of common sense.

Plus their attitude to the environment, the provincial park system, First Nations and Unions is way too extreme for me.

On Health Care everybody wants to spend more so there's not much to choose there. I do like the Green plan of shaping the tax system to lower taxes on stuff good for your health (i.e. sports equipment) and raise taxes on stuff bad for your health (like junk food). This will be a far more efficient approach to preventitive medicine than ad campaigns urging B.C. residents to eat their vegetables or whatever it is the NDP and Liberals seem to be planning on this front. The Green platform has a number of ideas I think are terrible (such as reducing university tuition to 0 eventually) but is also filled with a number of really good ideas (campaign finance reform being a standout).

Overall it's going to be a tough decision for me and may require some thought on various vote deciding methodologies (strategic voting, vote my conscience, marginal voting, flip a coin etc.). That's probably a topic for a post in itself as well.

Let's see, what else. This is kind of sad. The corporate battle to fence off information and charge people access to the info-petting zoo is continuing on all fronts. I'm guessing that public libraries will be the final victims of this trend. Rented a movie the other day (A Series of Unfortunate Events - great artwork on the credits but otherwise disappointing - Jim Carrey was especially irritating) and there was a big message at the beginning about how you wouldn't steal a TV so why would you download a pirated copy of a movie. Of course if my neighbour had a 60 inch TV and I could make a free copy for myself leaving his TV perfectly intact, I *would* do that. Any my neighbour wouldn't stop me. Talk about a lame analogy. Still, the whole copying=theft meme is the big media corporations' biggest weapon in trying to make people feel guilty about something they really shouldn't.

The NY Times had a long article last week about how TV makes you smarter (it's in the pay archive now). Basically the article took about 3,000 words to say that because years of intensive practice has made people better at watching TV (so now we like shows which are more complicated, have more storylines and explain things less than in the past) it must be making us smarter. No mention was made of how smart we could be if all those hours spent watching TV were spent reading. Or how much less fat people would be if they spent some of that time exercising. Or the implications of TV watching for consumerism, erasing the line between childhood and adulthood, levels of social capital, etc. etc. etc. If only Neil Postman was still alive he could have given that waste of space the smackdown it deserved.

Here's a question, does it seem logical that the person appointed by the U.S. to be ambassador to Canada should be someone who actually has some interest in the country? Is it better to have someone who knows nothing and thus comes in with no preconceptions? I think if I was appointing ambassadors I'd try to pick people with some knowledge of where they're going, especially for my country's closest neighbours. Maybe ambassadors are just irrelevant patronage appointments like Senators and I should just ignore them. Of course if I'm going to take this approach, I'd like our mainstream media to go along as well and not treat every pronouncement by the U.S. ambassador as front page news.

And finally, on a lighter note, some advice for all you blogging kids out there: don't walk between parked blogs, don't blog with your mouth full, wait at least an hour after eating before blogging, and never, never cover more than one topic in a single post.

Train of Thought

So Randy Moss was fined $10,000 for pretending to moon the crowd in Green Bay over the weekend. I can't be the only one wondering how much he would have been fined if he had actually done it.

Which makes me wonder about the proper proportion between punishment for doing something and punishment for pretending to do it. What if someone decided to do the (now banned, I believe) throat-slash celebration - what would the fine for that be?

Does the fine for pretending to do something depend on how likely it is that you would actually do it? Or on how disturbing a mental image it creates? Or just the current political climate? Or on the reputation of the person who committed the act in question?

Questions like this always bring me back to the same place - how absurdly complex even the simplest, most trivial things become when they involve human behavior and decision making. It makes me think we may never understand very much about why we act the way we do and we may never develop anything beyond the crudest analytical (as opposed to experience based) ability to predict how people will act in a given situation.

Every person is so unique and every situation so different, that any kind of repeatable experiment, or sample size large enough to analyze seems pretty hard to come by (especially with Terrell Owens injured).

Isaac Asimov postulated, (in his Foundation series) the development of 'psychologists' who, in his meaning of the term, were scientists who had developed an analytical framework for predicting what people would do and how society would evolve (their rules could only predict the actions of a sufficiently large group of people- they couldn't predict individual behavior).

On the other hand, Neil Postman argued in his essay 'Social Science as Moral Theology' (contained within his 'Conscientious Objections') that we are making a serious mistake by confusing science (along with ideas such as the scientific method and mathematical rules) with sociology, or any kind of human behavior. As he says in the intro,

"there is a measure of cultural self-delusion in the prevalent belief that psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists, and other moral theologians and doing something different from storytelling".

Postman's conclusion that all we can really do to try and figure out human behavior is to tell stories (his definition of storytelling includes 'studies' such as Milgram's experiment on obedience) makes sense because stories are really just a recounting of our experience and - in the absence of a rule-based analytical framework - a carefully distilled look at our experience is our only option for trying to understand who we are.

At any rate, I think I lean more towards the Neil Postman view of the world than the Isaac Asimov one. So what's my point, what's the moral of this meandering post? Nothing, it was just a train of thought, that's all.