Brave New World: A Mirror for Our Age

I have read many books, but I don’t think any as profound in nature as Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. He paints a picture of a people ruled by pleasure — a society stripped of human rights in exchange for comfort. No more suffering. No more pain. No more meaning.

This book changed my life: the way I look at the world, how I account for my days, and how I chase art, beauty, philosophy, purpose, and meaning. I saw parallels to our own world, yet it was published in 1932. Huxley not only called us out, but he still warns us today about living passively and seeking comfort over purpose and experience. He showed me the power of suffering — and the beauty of the change and growth that stems from it. My perspective has shifted so profoundly that I now find myself seeking intentional hardship, and I am better for it.

If I could meet someone from history, I can think of no greater mind to sit with for a cup of coffee.

⚠️ I’ll be using references from the book and spoiling scenarios. So PLEASE read it first! ⚠️

Brief Overview

Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World is a dystopian novel first published in 1932. It imagines a future society where people are engineered, conditioned, and controlled not by force but by pleasure. Suffering and struggle have been eliminated, replaced with instant gratification, endless entertainment, and a drug called “soma” that keeps the population docile.

In this world, individuality, family, and faith have been erased in the name of stability and comfort. What humanity once cherished is now labeled obscene, wasteful, subversive, even pornographic (not in the modern sense). The result is a civilization that looks prosperous on the surface — but is hollow at its core.

Parallels: Huxley’s World and Ours

Utilitarian Obsession

In Brave New World, what wasn’t “useful” was eliminated — family, beauty, even faith. Our world isn’t far off. We worship efficiency, utility, and above all, pleasure. What can’t be monetized gets dismissed. The danger is obvious: when utility becomes the highest virtue, humanity itself becomes expendable.

And utility gets sold to us as noble: reduce suffering, maximize pleasure, protect the “greater good.” But there is always a cost.

Free healthcare sounds great — until someone shoulders massive tax hikes. A pandemic strikes, and suddenly “stay home” means shutter your business, lose your livelihood, and isolate from family — all “for the greater good.” Even gun control gets spun in utilitarian rhetoric: fewer guns means a safer society. But what about single mothers, the elderly, or rural families who rely on one for protection or even to hunt for food?

And then there’s speech. The LGBTQ movement, for example, has pushed for bans on “hate speech.” On the surface, it sounds like a safer, more inclusive society. But hate speech, while cruel, is still speech — and speech is a human right by definition. True tolerance means letting even what we dislike be spoken.

Every utilitarian solution demands a sacrifice. Huxley’s genius was showing us what happens when no one questions the tradeoff.

The Cult of Pleasure

Huxley’s people took soma to escape pain. We have endless streaming, social feeds, games, apps — dopamine on demand. And it’s not harmless. Quick hits of pleasure rewire the brain, reduce the overall capacity for stress, and make us weaker in the face of discomfort. Life and suffering go hand in hand, there is no escaping pain. Life happens, and when life is engineered to be painless, we lose resilience. A person who cannot endure stress cannot endure growth.

In Brave New World, sex wasn’t worth anything. It was pushed on children, demanded by adults, and stripped of all intimacy. Casual sex wasn’t just normal, it was mandatory. To desire commitment or exclusivity was subversive, even dangerous. It was twisted — and if I’m honest, it was satanic. A parody of love that turned covenant into consumption.

And yet, we’re not far off. Today, casual sex is glorified as empowerment. But it behaves more like a cult: if you question it, you’re mocked. Women who choose commitment or family over hookups and careers are insulted as “trad wives” or “dinosaurs,” as if desiring intimacy and stability were regressive. To value children over career is called slavery. To embrace the biologically natural dynamic of a providing husband and nurturing wife — when it works for the family — is treated like blasphemy.

And it’s not just women. Men are no different. I remember being ridiculed in high school for being a virgin — as if restraint was shameful and conquest was the only path to manhood. Even now, I’ve had people tell me they feel sorry for me because I married my high school sweetheart, as though faithfulness is a curse and loyalty a sin.

But here’s the truth: men by nature are biologically more sexual, more driven toward pursuing gratification. That’s not an excuse — it’s a reality that demands self-control. Without it, masculinity collapses into indulgence, and indulgence leaves only brokenness in its wake. Strength isn’t found in endless conquest. Strength is found in discipline, in directing desire toward covenant, creation, and legacy.

And in this sense, women do themselves no favors when men can get free, easy, meaningless sex from as many partners as they want. It cheapens intimacy for everyone. It doesn’t end with men or women alone — it corrodes the whole culture. We should hold ourselves to a higher standard, because if we don’t, Huxley isn’t just a novelist. He’s a prophet, and the World State wins.

And here lies the contradiction: the same culture that screams “no one can tell me how to live my life” will ridicule women who freely choose marriage, motherhood, and home. True freedom should honor both choices. But when intimacy, family, and covenant are mocked while pleasure is worshiped, we’ve recreated exactly what Huxley warned about: a society where meaning is subversive and consumption is the creed.

The Inversion of Cost

Once upon a time, necessity was cheap and luxury was costly. Now it’s flipped. Food, rent, utilities — the basics — are sky-high. But luxuries like phones, gaming PCs, and endless entertainment have become accessible to nearly everyone. Consumerism has inverted values: pleasure is cheap, survival is expensive.

In Huxley’s world, it worked a little differently. His society was a utilitarian technocracy with socialist economics and caste-based engineering. Everything needed was provided, and luxuries were handed out freely. Entertainment, drugs, and distractions flowed to keep the masses in line. The cost was freedom.

I’ve had conversations with someone close to me about this very thing — and no matter how I lay it out, they refuse to see it. The irony is, that conversation itself plays out like the conditioning Huxley warned about. Because here, the cost isn’t just freedom. It’s time. We trade our days for the basics, and then trade what little we have left for escape. We work to pay the bills, come home exhausted, and call it living. But what purpose does that serve besides fueling a company’s agenda or covering another round of utilities?

What happens when you retire, when the work that consumed your life is handed to your replacement? Is that when it sets in — that you were always expendable to the corporate giant? And by then, your kids are grown, raised in the same cycle, conditioned to accept the same empty exchange. What happens to family, to love, to meaning, when survival devours your life and escape devours what’s left?

Virtues vs. Vices Today

Marriage has been replaced by hookup culture. What was once covenant has been reduced to convenience, and in the process we’ve traded depth for dopamine.

Raising children is devalued while abortion is celebrated as a “right.” The call to nurture life is mocked, while the power to end it is paraded as freedom.

Suffering for change and growth is avoided; ease and comfort are idolized. We want strength without sacrifice, character without cost, resilience without hardship. But it doesn’t work that way.

Stoicism and resilience have been traded for emotional overwhelm and victimhood. Where once the challenge was to master the self, now the virtue is in broadcasting every wound, real or imagined, to demand sympathy without change.

Huxley imagined conditioning from birth to embrace these values. We don’t need hatcheries or hypnopaedia — we’ve done it to ourselves. The culture, the media, the endless consumption: all of it trains us to despise the very virtues that once gave life meaning.

The Questions It Forces

This is where I want to dig in. This is the point of reading great works, because they are great for a reason, and they echo through out time.

But Why?

It is due to the questions pondered, posited, and wrestled with in these stories. The very purpose a good author should have in writing. Expression. Search for truth. Exposition through experience. This very concept is why Huxley's "Brave New World," is my favorite book. It has taken me places no one else has before. not in discourse, debate, or lecture. it is a type of understanding that we gain through experience, even if vicariously through the characters, like john and Helmholtz, and also from observation, as through Lanina, and Marx.

It is due to the questions pondered, posited, and wrestled with in these stories. The very purpose a good author should have in writing. Expression. Search for truth. Exposition through experience. This very concept is why Huxley’s Brave New World is my favorite book. It has taken me places no one else has before. Not in discourse, debate, or lecture. It is a type of understanding that we gain through experience, even if vicariously through the characters, like John and Helmholtz, and also from observation, as through Lenina and Marx.

One of the first questions this book forces on us is simple but devastating: what happens when truth is sacrificed for comfort? In Huxley’s world, history is rewritten, art is banned, religion is suppressed, and even science is bent to serve stability. Truth itself becomes dangerous because it unsettles people, and comfort is considered more valuable than reality. It’s a chilling thought — not just because it happened in his novel, but because it happens in ours. What happens to a society when the pursuit of truth is replaced by the pursuit of ease?

That leads to the deeper question: what does it mean to be human? If you strip away suffering, struggle, love, and individuality, what remains? Huxley’s answer is clear — a body that consumes but never creates, a person who feels nothing because they are conditioned to never reach beyond themselves. And this is where the question of the soul comes in. Is the soul even real? And if so, how do we tend to it? I believe it is tied to conscience, to our individuality, to the part of us that longs for something higher. And if we don’t nourish it with deep thought, deep feeling, and deep expression, it withers. Without the soul, we aren’t human anymore. We’re machines.

That’s why Huxley’s rejection of art and beauty is so striking. Shakespeare is banned because his plays stir people to love, grief, and longing — dangerous emotions in a world built on comfort. True art wakes the soul, and a society without it starves. And so we’re left with the question: what happens when beauty is replaced with propaganda, when art is stripped of meaning, when creativity is reduced to formula? The cost isn’t just cultural, it’s human. Without art, without beauty, without truth, the soul itself begins to die.

My biggest epiphany came from a question explored through the character John the savage. A question posed in action and not through one single line. he embodied this to the very end of the story, never giving up this value. he showed me that in life to suffer is to be human, and it leads to the understanding of that with which we cannot know otherwise. what is beauty without suffering, and struggle. The depths of beauty, joy and peace can only be truly understood when given a contrast of suffering, pain, and chaos. through that you will know when you see beauty, feel joy and experience peace. and it rings more true than ever before in my life. He asked what is the purpose of suffering. I would argue something already stated above, that without suffering one cannot grow. You cant know purpose. you cant truly feel.

Another of my favored questions, posed by the world of huxley, was "what happens when god is erased from humanity." now I am not talking about Christ, or vishnu. I am talking about god. creation, meaning, the divine. the search that leads us into the unknown. it forces us to reach beyond ourself into something we cannot even comprehend. When Nietzsche wrote "God is dead. God remains dead, And we killed him." this is not an argument for atheism and not some victorious triumph as some anti-theists take out of concept. No. He wanted us to think.

We as a society have pushed secular values to the point of godhood. we have lost the very thing that once led us to knowledge, morals, and growth. we live in an age where morals are debated, knowledge is subjective, and meaning is created for the reason of comfort. truth is even harder to find now than when Pontius Pilate first pondered "What is truth," as he put the very truth to death.

What does a world without God look like? It’s the same question Hamlet wrestled with, Plato hinted at, and Pilate voiced in the face of truth Himself. These questions don’t stay on the page — they bleed into our own lives. And that’s where I have to turn next: to what this book has forced me to wrestle with personally.

4. Personal Reflection

I didn't just chew on this book I choked on it. At first it was even a bit much and almost turned me off. I mean, the section on conditioning babies through torture and pleasure was hard to swallow. Man am I glad I did though. once I broke through the surface level, there was nothing but a deep end. And its not the easiest book to read, the way it switches perspectives mid chapter with no indication, though this is not an uncommon style, I just was not expecting such chaotic shifts. I feel as though this only accentuated the chaotic nature of the fragmented lives of Huxley's characters.

Early in Brave New World, the illusion of a “perfect” society cracks when Lenina and Fanny discuss their relationships. They speak of men as disposable, using phrases like “the man I’m having at the moment.” It's made quite evident that the men of this world view it in the same way. In Huxley’s world, intimacy has been erased, replaced with shallow pleasure and conditioning that makes fidelity dangerous and subversive. And yet, the more I’ve looked around our own world, the more I see the same pattern creeping in. Hookup culture treats people like consumables. Modern slang even reduces attraction to appetite — calling someone a “snack.” It’s not intimacy, it’s consumption.

I never lived in that culture myself — I married my high school sweetheart and never looked back. But I’ve watched friends and family go through it. I’ve seen the wreckage it leaves behind. One friend in particular has sworn off love altogether, as if it’s lost all meaning. That’s the tragedy Huxley warned us of: when relationships are emptied of meaning, people stop believing in love itself. We call it empowerment, freedom, exploration — but what it produces is isolation, disappointment, and emptiness.

From my perspective, true meaning in a relationship can only come through depth — and satisfaction through intimacy, not transaction. Fulfillment requires sacrifice, preferably selfless sacrifice, because nothing of worth comes without cost. That’s the very truth Huxley explored through his extremes: without struggle, without faithfulness, without covenant, we lose the beauty of love itself. Yes, long-term love is hard. But without suffering and sacrifice, what else in life has meaning?

On another note I cant help but list the many questions this book had me asking. What is the true value of happiness, can a society built on a lie, actually thrive and so many other "deep thinkers." The question I pondered most, was something I have actually wrestled with before but never had the concept of why it scared me. "The dangers of freedom."

“I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life.” — Deuteronomy 30:19

Huxley’s Brave New World doesn’t just strip people of freedom — it shows us what happens when individuals still dare to choose. John chose suffering. Even when stripped of control, he found ways to resist, to feel, to live by conviction. His choices broke him, but they were his. Helmholtz Watson chose exile. He knew the hardships waiting on that island, yet he welcomed them, because hardship meant meaning, creativity, depth. Both men remind us: freedom is dangerous, but the danger is what makes it real.

I live in a nation that calls itself the “home of the free.” And yes, technically, you can do almost anything. You can waste away in your parents’ basement. You can chase pleasure with endless hookups. You can bury your life in gaming, or grind out a business until it consumes you. On paper, all of it is freedom. But what good is freedom if it leaves you empty? The reality is harsher: the systems of money, media, and culture funnel us toward comfort and consumption. Costs rise, wages stagnate, and the “American dream” of a home, family, and security feels like a leash just out of reach. Freedom exists, but it’s baited and bartered.

I’ve seen it up close. Clients who want change but are terrified to suffer for it. Friends who’ve lost faith in love because casual sex left them hollow. Families broken because freedom was mistaken for indulgence. And in my own life, I’ve worked until exhaustion, taken on too many clients and side jobs, hustled hard — yet still come up short, watching bills rise faster than paychecks. I know the taste of frustration, of staring down the choice between chasing success on society’s terms or daring to risk a different road but its worth the risk. And I know how heavy the expectations are — from family, from culture, from yourself — to keep running in the same worn track.

That’s what makes freedom so dangerous. It’s not just the possibility of failure; it’s the weight of responsibility. Freedom demands wisdom, discipline, sacrifice. Without those, it collapses into consumption and addiction. With them, it can create resilience, beauty, and legacy. But no one can make the choice for you. That’s why most avoid it. It’s easier to drift, to numb yourself with comfort, to let life happen to you instead of shouldering the risk of meaning. This concept reignited my spark for adventure, creativity, and a search for depth. I write constantly, sometimes blogs for my business, but I have also started 3 different books. All built for a purpose and they serve as a place for my creativity and expression to flow. I want to learn constantly, and do more. I labor with my free time, as I find the pushing of my body frees the thought of the mind. this book has changed me on a fundamental level. I see purpose in voluntary hardships, growth in challenges, and meaning in suffering. not just in great cases like Christ on the cross but in our life.

And so the question stares us in the face: what will we do with our freedom? Huxley’s warning was clear — slavery can be disguised as comfort, and comfort can be chosen just as easily as it can be imposed. John chose suffering. Watson chose exile. Huxley chose to write extraordinary works, putting his imagination on full display. All of them embraced the danger, because without it, there is no life worth living. That’s the cliff I leave you standing on: you can chase comfort until it numbs you, or risk suffering for the sake of meaning. The freedom is yours.

Don’t just consume this book — wrestle with it. Let it bother you. Let it expose you. That’s what great works are meant to do.

Don’t settle for easy comfort. It will rob you of the very thing you were made for.

Seek beauty. Seek meaning. Seek God in the questions.

Because if Huxley warned us about a world without truth, without love, without God — then our task is simple: refuse to live in one. Refuse to numb yourself. Refuse to be a machine. Choose meaning over comfort. Choose freedom, even if it breaks you.