A happy world: the prophetic work of Aldous Huxley

Dystopian stories often project unwanted scenarios, although they also make us rethink our present. For example, the media El País highlighted that, when the coronavirus pandemic began, we seemed like a “literary sensation of living in a dystopia”.

So, if we have to talk about a dystopian present, nothing better than referring to one of the most important works of the genre. This is A Happy World, by Aldous Huxley, which, despite being released in 1932, still has a very large place today. So much so that the medium Hobby consoles highlights that the trailer for Brave New World, a series that is formulated as an adaptation of the novel, was recently released.

Therefore, we are talking about a story in which the development of reproductive technology is anticipated, where certain human cultures and a management of emotions occur to modify the structure of society. Can this dystopia be related to some of the things that are happening today? Let's see what happens.

A happy world, a valid and transcendental novel

To understand the success of this work, we must begin by talking about its author. According to the newspaper La Vanguardia, Aldous Huxley was an "encyclopedic man of knowledge", this work being a visionary foretaste of the Western consumer society. That is, unlike George Orwell who focused on the totalitarianism of nations and the use of suffering, the focus here was on the problems of pleasure.

Thus, we can understand how this story works. The Cadena Ser website highlights that the fact that a society appears where humans are manufactured, through the manipulation of embryos, generates conditioning from childhood, something that can be seen through brainwashing in minors .

In other words, we consider that the advances in science are spectacular and always positive, something that can be demonstrated in improving the quality and life expectancy of the population. However, it is also possible that these scientific discoveries can be used against popular interests… until someone discovers them, as is the case with the protagonists of this book, known as Bernard Max and Lenina Crowne.

The organization of the society of this novel is armed and determined from the very birth. The emergence of a world state that manipulates reproduction implies certain guarantees that human beings will be born with a favorable conditioning to the system through hypnopedia, that is, teaching through sleep.

Also Read: 1984: George Orwell's masterpiece that is always relevant

If we put it in terms of topicality, science may be on a similar path to what happened in the novel. For example, the newspaper El Diario had highlighted that the modification of human embryos "is already with us", being possible to generate designer babies, which is why the discussion arises about what the limits of science are.

This is why the BBC media, for example, highlights that the author "managed to imagine how we would live", given that human beings can already cultivate, generating castes through science. In other words, the fact of being able to generate boys and girls artificially or the fact of creating medicines to alter people's mood can be signs of this reality.

Knowing their prophetic capacities, it may be essential to stop to analyze these masterpieces, they not only project us into a dystopian world, demonstrating to us the dangers of totalitarianism and unregulated science, but also of the incredible capacity to project into the present.