Brave New Flesh

Huxley's bodies were a vehicle for consumption. Our own have been retired.

Over the weekend I re-read Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. It was a second edition with a phenomenal foreword by Huxley which astutely commented on that which he had under-estimated upon originally writing it, and deepened his perceptive analysis of society’s direction of travel. Much has been written about Brave New World, and rightly so, given its prophetic nature with regards to how human beings have been increasingly infantilised by modern society, every participation with life itself mediated by a force of consumption which bolsters industrial growth. Upon re-reading, however, what struck me was Huxley’s telling of the body as an instrument for experience itself—and not just the citizens of industrial society, but also “The Savage”.

The most obvious exploration of the body as yet just another tool with which to consume the available pleasures of modernity is the citizens’ attitude towards sex. Monogamous or long-term relationships are strictly forbidden, deemed an unorthodoxy that is conditioned out of the citizens by way of “hypnopaedia”, a sleep learning technique in which children are subject to thousands of hours of instruction while asleep. Each citizen, instead, engages in frivolous and casual relationships with one another, “having” a large number of their peers and happily sharing details with one another (women who are good in the sack are described as “pneumatic” by both themselves and the men they bed, a revealing adjective which is normally applied to mechanical technology like pumps). Their bodies are simply another thing to consume and enjoy, after spending an evening playing electromagnetic golf together. They are also the vehicle for that consumption, and treated like machines which need massaged and oiled daily in order to maintain their lifestyles. Interestingly, ageing is forbidden in this society—a physical sign of their eternal infantility—and citizens are maintained in young, fit bodies up until the age of sixty, at which point they develop a spontaneous dementia and are promptly trotted off to the death centre, where young children are given chocolate ice cream and clamber over the dying bodies in order to associate good feelings with death; in order to disassociate.

Yet, “The Savage”, John, also uses his body as an instrument for obtaining that which he values. The product of an accidental pregnancy by a Beta woman (a citizen of modern society), he is discovered as an adult and flown back to civilisation where he is treated as an object of fascination. He—a Shakespeare-quoting adult who was raised among ageing, ritualistic bodies who practice marriage and seek God—is horrified by what he sees. The superficiality of this new world is anathema to his profound desire for meaning. In just a few weeks, he negotiates a solitary retirement to an abandoned lighthouse, realising that his need for connection cannot be fulfilled even in a city heaving with other humans.

On his first night in the lighthouse, he spends all night on his knees, praying. In the days following, he makes a rope in order to self-flagellate, whipping himself and vomiting. Only then does he feel deserving of the wondrous view of the sea and the quiet of the hills. And this was the moment that struck me—John’s body, like the citizens’, is the vehicle for his arrival. Whilst he uses it very differently, surely his relationship to his flesh is on the same spectrum, merely at opposite ends. While the citizens of the new world feel entitled to every pleasure and use a hallucinogenic to calm their nerves in the rare moments that pleasure can be achieved, John does not presume entitlement, he does not consider himself deserving of the world. He punishes his flesh in order to gain the right to what he considers a deeper pleasure, a spiritual enlightenment. Whether or not this goal is more valuable, I cannot help but see parallels in how modern society rips up Earth’s resources in the new world in order to create complex industrial machines to mediate each person’s experiences. John, too, rips up his back with his whip in order to mediate his own experience to the world. One is rooted in entitlement, one in self-negation. Either way, it is flesh which pays the price.

I’ve always been slightly suspicious of religious dogmas which negate the body in order to strive for enlightenment. Whether it’s asceticism, abuse, or the rejection of sex as a base desire, these practices have always seemed like a bid to escape what is earthly in the hope of reaching planes which are fit only for mankind. In this way, they are reminiscent of our culture’s obsession with biohacking, or tech fundamentalists’ conviction that the future of mankind is uploading our consciousness to the cloud where we can live forever. While religious punishment of one’s own body does not demand Earth, too, pay a price—unlike data processing centres—they belong to the same tradition of rejecting the material in search of the eternal. Huxley’s “Savage” is not that savage at all; he is the modern man from a different time.

In fact, it is this very treatment of the body in Brave New World which dates it. While his characters use theirs as vehicles for consumption, the rise of the digital world has created a culture in which most people are trying to escape their bodies for fear of feeling the discomfort of living so closely bound by objectives which do nothing to ameliorate their lives or the lives of those they love. Our bodies hum in neutral all day, violently severed from our work and even our relationships. Teenagers now video chat instead of meeting outside; lovers are categorised by algorithms; food is delivered to front doors. And our bodies are paying the price. Where the citizens of new world are engineered to maintain their youth, the richest countries in the world are riddled with preventable diseases triggered by over-consumption and stationary lifestyles. In yet another symptom of the profound violence of atomising our existences down to their smallest parts, we now only need our thumbs and eyeballs to perform our duty as consumers.

Where will we go from here? The body was first of all one with our sense of self and community, performing all the requisite work to maintain existence. Then it became seen as the evidence of our mortality and sin and was thusly punished. Escape was felt at the very edge of pain and lack; the body was removed, became vehicle, used or abused appropriately. Now, escape is hinted at in the very depths of gluttony, the body severed from any mediation with existence to the extent that people are having online sex with AI bots rather than turn to face what is real. No wonder we have forgotten Earth; no wonder we are afraid of returning. We cannot even come home to ourselves.

Where could this end up? Techno-lords like Zuckerberg are banking on our continued physical enclosure, hoping we will eventually mediate our every moment of existence through their platforms. Yet, his Metaverse did not take off. For now, most people don’t want to live there. But enough young people are spending time there to warrant continued investment in the product. Will we eventually become the characters of Wall-E, seeing only the digital at the expense of the physical? Will we eventually be uploaded into great data centres built in deep sea? Will we, in our desperate bid to escape ourselves, truly lose ourselves?

Much as respecting Earth’s body is a key policy for creating sustainable systems which support life, including civilisation’s, respecting our own is paramount. It seems unlikely our modernised cultures will build anything resembling something sustainable until we learn to live in our own bodies and understand their own pain and fear and joy and fulfilment. It seems unlikely we will learn what it is to be satiated until we inhabit our beautiful bodies, made wondrous by their very limits. It seems unlikely we will learn that every piece of flesh is our own until we feel what is it to belong in our own.

I swam in the sea at 6am this morning. I have never been one for cold water or early mornings but jet lag had me up so early there was nothing else to do. My first plunge was excruciating and I started to hyperventilate, admittedly rather performatively. Had there been an easy escape route I would have no doubt thrashed to the shore immediately. But I stayed, and breathed deeper, and began to wade, shivering. Within a few minutes my legs had adjusted to the cold, another few and my belly was comfortable, another few and even my shoulders were happy underwater. Then I was swimming, utterly delighted with the weightlessness and the feeling of feeling at ease in the cold. What was meant to have been a quick plunge became a 15 minute swim, easing through the salt water, laughing. I realised, while I was swimming, it wasn’t that I wasn’t cold—it was that the cold was perfectly fine. Our bodies are brilliantly resilient, far stronger than most of our minds. They were made to adapt, to brave discomfort, to enjoy what is strenuous. That our anxieties and pains and fears live in our bodies is a telling sign—we were made to react decisively and with determination, not to hum in neutral all day long.

I got out of the sea and leisurely dried myself in the cold wind, giggling at what had seemed an impossible feat twenty minutes prior. Walking along the front after, I felt agile and languid, amazed at my perfect posture which had walked out of the sea with me. My mind, too, seemed different: at ease but poised, ready, quite different to its normal spinning. None of this is ground-breaking, I know. I’m a millennial, meaning I’m abreast, if you will, of the benefits of cold water. But there is a chasm of interference between knowing a thing and doing a thing in a world in which our bodies have been disconnected from even the basest acts of pleasure-seeking. Simply, how can we expect to get to grips with the reality of Earth’s body if young people can’t even be bothered to leave the house to get to grips with each other’s bodies? How can we care for Earth’s if we forsake our own?

Taking care of ourselves is hard. There’s a marvellous statistic which suggests Brits rarely finish their prescriptions for antibiotics but always ensure their pets complete the course. Maybe it is asking too much of ourselves to figure out how to inhabit our own flesh. But also, maybe thinking about it like that is a symptom of the problem. Maybe inhabiting our flesh is easy when we inhabit each other’s, the forest’s, the Earth’s. Maybe the way back to ourselves isn’t singular and individual, but collective and communal. Maybe the way forward isn’t retracing our steps and treating our bodies as a vehicle, this time for healing. Maybe the way forward is getting all tangled up with the roots and the stars. Maybe home is simply where we reach out, trembling. Maybe it’s where the cold meets the warmth in our veins, turning discomfort into joy.

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