Mother (*gasp!*) Nature in _Brave New World_

I've never really been the type of person that is in to futuristic, end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it-themed stuff - I wasn't into sci-fi books growing up, never got the whole zombie craze, apocalyptic blockbusters never appealed to me. I don't really know why, call me old-fashioned, but the idea of a techno-future is just not that interesting to me. So I've kind of had mixed feelings about Brave New World. I'm impressed by how convincing the utopian dystopia Huxley created is - it really does seem like a pretty feasible society, one that I probably wouldn't mind living in if I had been born into it. But it seems a little bit too false - the characters are mostly robotic, but they're pretty harmless, really, so while I think that Bernard's rebellion is noble, he doesn't strike me as some grand hero. I guess Huxley makes his point pretty well, that freedom is better than stability, that pain and agony is necessary to ever feel true happiness, but it just hasn't really moved me. Maybe it's because I'm too much of an optimist, and the society in Brave New World doesn't really seem to me like anything that could ever possibly exist, but I do understand how at the time it was published this sort of reality could have seemed fathomable. So I guess it's a good thing that it doesn't seem like we'll end up in this brave new world after all, maybe that's progress?

What had really struck me though reading this so far is the way aspects of our current life are seen in this future world - Jesus, marriage, families, love - they're usually seen as disgusting and backward, something this new civilization has triumphed over. However, there is still one thing that this world can't seem to completely rob of its power, the same force that is one of the only forces still posing a major threat to our society today, and that is nature.

At first we are led to believe that nature has been conquered, that it is some old nuisance that human advancement has gotten the better of. We first see nature in the first paragraph in the form of a "harsh thin light", "hungrily seeking some draped lay figure, some pallid shape of academic goose flesh". Nature is looking for something organic, something to feed on, to decay, but instead it only finds "the glass and nickel and bleakly shining porcelain of the laboratory" - though the light still gets in, it is easily deflected by the technology of the lab - "wintriness responded to wintriness" (Huxley 15). We see nature portrayed as distracting, peoples' enjoyment of it keeping them from fulfilling their maximum productivity, their maximum consumption - but this is easily overcome by conditioning, by shocking babies when they see roses, because "a love of nature keeps no factories busy" (Huxley 31).  We even see nature portrayed as boring, something that used to limit us, but now is pathetic in comparison to our science: while once people used to breed like animals, the pleasure of sex led to birth and babies and other unthinkable things, now they can be guaranteed sterile, and people can have as much sex as they want with none (for the most part) of the unpleasant consequences. After all, "fertility is a nuisance", and science has brought humanity, at last, "out of the realm of mere slavish imitation of nature into the much more interesting world of human invention" (Huxley 23).

Davidson, Daniel.
Brave New World Ocean Scene. 2012.

But nature is still there, no matter how tall buildings are built, no matter how many helicopters fill the sky, there is still a natural environment that can't be entirely avoided, and this starts to pop up more and more as the novel progresses.

Nature first starts to present itself as a disturbing force when Bernard takes Lenina to look at the ocean. Lenina is deeply troubled by the power of the ocean and the night, seeing is as almost monstrous, with the "rushing emptiness of the night", "the black foam-flecked water heaving beneath them", "the pale face of the moon, so haggard and distracting among the hastening clouds" (Huxley 89). Bernard came to look at the sea to feel peaceful, and indeed most of us would see the moon behind clouds over the ocean at night as calm, beautiful, almost meditative, but Lenina's response to this scene shows the great power nature has to upset the emotional flatness that is so key to this society's stability.

This, poor Lenina soon finds, is nothing compared to the powers of the natural world at work in the savage reservation. Here Nature as a vehicle for death and decay and filth is running rampant, and Lenina witnesses for the first time what the reality is of living in Nature without modern science to protect and preserve you - she sees what old age looks like, she sees the ever-indecent spectacle of mothers nursing babies, she sees disease, she sees dead dogs and women pick lice out of their children's hair. (This part reminded me a lot of the story of Buddha and the Four Sights, when Prince Siddhartha, the future Buddha, first left his hyper-protective palace and along the way saw aging, disease, and death for the first time, before seeing a man who was abstaining from indulgence as a way to escape suffering, that in turn inspired his consequent spiritual journey - just a side note, which could maybe provide some interesting comparison depending how the novel progresses from here).

This almost sickening portrayal of the effects of nature provides a pretty convincing argument for the benefit of living in the cleanliness and comfort of the new world. It seems kind of impossible how one could prefer to live in this apparent squalor over it, and for a brief period of time we see how maybe nature is holding us back after all. However, we see a similar effect of the ocean scene on Lenina with John that reveals the still-persisting threat that nature can pose. This scene involves John's experience when he spent the night alone on top of the mesa. John was banished from the rest of the men and is received by Nature, and we for the first time really face death - Nature's ultimate triumph over all, even these modern super-humans. In this scene, the landscape is portrayed very much as a valley of death: "The rock was like bleached bones in the moonlight", "this skeleton world of rocks and moonlight", "he looked down into the black shadow of the mesa, into the black shadow of death" (Huxley 127).

And this shows the threat nature poses to this new society that is perhaps greater than death - it is the power of nature to inspire self-reflection. It is a source of contemplation, which is why Bernard finds peace in watching the ocean - when you are in nature and nothing else is there to distract you, the only thing you have left to face is yourself, which is exactly what this society works so hard to prevent from happening - the individual in solitude. It is because John was completely alone and had nothing to turn to but nature that "he had discovered Time and Death and God" - arguably three of the most heretic concepts in the new world, which is the real reason that Nature is the ultimate enemy of this society. It will be interesting to see what role this enemy plays in the future of this novel, and I'm wondering if this enemy will be the ultimate defeater of their race after all.