Brave New 

by Aldous Huxley

World

HISTORICAL TIMELINEo 1879: The first psychological laboratory opens in Germanyo 1886: Freud opens his psychology practice in Austria, experimenting with techniques such

as hypnosis, free association, and dream analysis. From 1900-1905, he publishes his major works on psychoanalysis, also known as the "talking cure." Freud argued that awareness of the unconscious mind is essential to understanding conscious thought and behavior. The unconscious mind might be defined as that part of the mind which gives rise to a collection of mental phenomena that manifest in a person's mind but which the person is not aware of at the time of their occurrence. These phenomena include unconscious feelings, unconscious or automatic skills, unnoticed perceptions, unconscious thoughts, unconscious habits and automatic reactions, complexes, hidden phobias and concealed desires.

o 1900: Gregor Mendel’s scientific work on genetic inheritance is rediscovered: The biological techniques used to control the populace in Brave New World do not include genetic engineering; Huxley wrote the book before the structure of DNA was known. However, Gregor Mendel's work with inheritance patterns in peas had been re-discovered in 1900 and the eugenics movement, based on artificial selection, was well established. Huxley's family included a number of prominent biologists including Thomas Huxley, half-brother and Nobel Laureate Andrew Huxley, and brother Julian Huxley who was a biologist and involved in the eugenics movement. Nonetheless, Huxley emphasizes conditioning; as science writer Matt Ridley put it, Brave New World describes an “environmental not a genetic hell.” Human embryos and fetuses are conditioned via a carefully designed regimen of chemical (such as exposure to hormones and toxins), thermal (exposure to intense heat or cold, as one's future career would dictate), and other environmental stimuli…

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HISTORICAL TIMELINE CONTINUED...

1900’s-20's: Introduction of chewing gum, radio, movies, and advertising: The Industrial Revolution transformed the world. Mass production made cars, telephones, and radios relatively cheap and widely available throughout the developed world. The political, cultural, economic and sociological upheavals of the then-recent Russian Revolution of 1917 and the First World War (1914–1918) resonated throughout the world as a whole and the individual lives of most people. Accordingly, many of the novel's characters named after widely-recognized influential people of the time, for example, Polly Trotsky, Benito Hoover, Lenina and Fanny Crowne, Mustapha Mond, Helmholtz Watson, and Bernard Marx.

 1930's-40's: Rise of Fascism and Communism: the dictatorships of Hitler (German head of state from 1934-1945), Stalin (in power in the Soviet Union from 1924-1953), and Mussolini (Italian head of state from 1943-45). Stalin launched a command economy, replacing the New Economic Policy of the 1920s with Five-Year Plans and launching a period of rapid industrialization and economic collectivization. The upheaval in the agricultural sector disrupted food production, resulting in widespread famine, including the catastrophic Soviet famine of 1932–1933.

1931--Brave New World written: Huxley is inspired by travels to America and a visit to the newly opened and technologically advanced Brunner and Mond plant, part of Imperial Chemical Industries, or ICI, Billingham, and gives a fine and detailed account of the processes he saw. 1932--Brave New World published: Brave New World was inspired by the H. G. Wells's utopian novel Men Like Gods. Wells' optimistic vision of the future gave Huxley the idea to begin writing a parody of the novel, which became Brave New World. Contrary to the most popular optimist utopian novels of the time, Huxley sought to provide a frightening vision of the future. Huxley referred to Brave New World as a “negative utopia.”

 

Henry Ford & THE FORD

MOTOR COMPANY

Henry Ford (1863 - 1947) was from Detroit, Michigan, USA and made his first car in his back yard in 1896.  After several false starts, the Ford Motor Company was formed in 1903. The first product was the Model A, introduced in the same year. Their most successful product ever, the Model T, came out in September 1908.

The Model T was the world's most successful car of the pre-WWII era. Between 1908 and 1927, sales outstripped any other with over 15 million cars and commercial vehicles produced world-wide...  approximately 100,000 Model-Ts survive... they were available in a variety of body styles, however the basic mechanical specification was the same in each. 

THE MODEL-T AND THE ASSEMBLY LINE

http://vodpod.com/watch/4188011-ford-harvest-of-the-years-1930s

THE MODEL-T AND THE ASSEMBLY LINE

Without the invention of the mass-produced automobile, later developments such as the drive-in movie theater and fast food would not have been possible. These pictures, which show a late 1950s model Ford in front of a McDonald's, are from the Henry Ford Museum in Michigan.

The long wondrous life of Aldous Huxley...

• 1914-1918 (WWI): Spends most of the war as a farm laborer in the English countryside, where he meets several leading philosophers of his day

•  • 1921: Publishes first book, Crome Yellow; becomes known

as a humanist and a pacifist writer interested in parapsychology (the supernatural) and mysticism--though all of his books (particularly Brave New World) receive mixed critical reviews.

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• July 26, 1894: born in Surrey, England, to a teacher and the founder of a school

•  • 1904: Huxley's mother dies•  • 1908: Huxley suffers temporary

blindness as the result of a childhood illness

• 1929-late 1930's/early 40's: the Great Depression; travels to the United States for the first time in 1931; writes BNW

• 1937: Huxley and his wife and son move to Hollywood, California.• 1939-1945 (WWII): Reads Orwell's 1984; writes to Orwell: "Within

the next generation I believe that the world's leaders will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience."

•  • Spends the later part of his life in the United States, living in Los

Angeles from 1937 until his death in 1963. Writes a novel about utopia (The Island); gives a lecture on "human potentiality."

• November 22, 1963: dies in Los Angeles. By the time of his death, he was considered a leading figure in modern thought.

•  • 2000: The Modern Library rates the book as number 18 on

its list of the "100 Best Novels" of all time.

“After the Age of Utopias came what we may call the American Age, lasting as long as the Boom. Men like Ford or Mond seemed to many to have solved the social riddle and made capitalism the common good...Brave New World is more of a revolt against Utopia than against [traditional values].” -British Press, 1935

"It is not easy to become interested in the scientifically imagined details of life in this mechanical Utopia.  Nor is there compensation in the amount of attention that he gives to the abundant sex life of these denatured human beings." -Times Literary Supplement, 1932

"Brave New World  is inert as a work of art: nothing can bring it alive." - New Statesman and Nation, 1932

"[He] has money, social position, talent, friends, prestige and he is effectively insulated from the misery of the masses.  Of course he wants something to worry about--even if he has to go to a long, long way to find it...Mr. Huxley must have his chance to suffer and be brave." -The New Republic, 1932

Critical Reception: At the time of Publication

Critical Reception: Contemporary

"Mr. Huxley is eloquent in his declaration of an artist's faith in man, and it is his eloquence, bitter in attack, noble in defense, that, when one has closed the book, one remembers." -Saturday Review of Literature

"A fantastic racy narrative, full of much excellent satire and literary horseplay." -Forum

"It is as sparkling, as provocative, as brilliant, in the appropriate sense, as impressive as the day it was published.  This is in part because its prophetic voice has remained surprisingly contemporary, both in its particular forecasts and in its general tone of semiserious alarm.  But it is much more because the book succeeds as a work of art...This is surely Huxley's best book." -Martin Green

Huxley on advertising, the media, and propaganda

"This is rather alarming that you're being persuaded below the level of choice and reason... Advertisement plays a necessary role but the danger of it to a democracy is this: a democracy depends on the individual voter making a rational choice for enlightened self-interest. What these people are doing [advertisers] when their purpose is selling goods, what the dictatorial propagandists are doing, is to try to bypass the rational side of humanity and to appeal directly to these unconscious forces below the surface--so that you are in a way making nonsense of the democratic procedure which is based on conscious choice on rational grounds... Today's children walk around singing beer commercials and toothpaste commercials."  

BRAND ALPHABET

DAILY BRAND TIMELINE  "I stumbled across a really interesting idea... for anyone interested in marketing and the power of brand; documenting your daily interaction with brands via a timeline.I was so intrigued I decided to give it a go. You can see the results [to the left]. I stuck with the brands that were bubbling at the fore-front of my consciousness so it’s not a completely inclusive list and my online life has been kept stripped down. An interesting exercise!"

Some Additional Resources...    

This is a multi-media resource on Aldous Huxley and his works, focusing primarily on Brave New World.http://somaweb.org/

Here is a reading group guide that emphasizes the main themes in the novel:http://www.readinggroupguides.com/guides_B/brave_new_world1.asp

This is an article, written by Margaret Atwood, that emphasizes the classic nature of Brave New World and connects the novel to contemporary life.http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2007/nov/17/classics.margaretatwood

This is the article we referenced yesterday from The New Yorker regarding the current boom in dystopian fiction for young adults.  It is a critical essay worth reading!http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2010/06/14/100614crat_atlarge_miller