I have long pondered whether Brave New World or 1984 was more plausible as the fate of the West. But just the other day it finally dawned on me that the right answer to this question is not one or the other: it is both! We are headed to Brave New World by way of 1984. They are not alternatives but sequential steps in the fall of the West. In Brave New World war has been abolished but there are scattered hints of a series of vicious, violent wars in the period between our era and the time of the novel. One of the central questions that often occurs to readers is what could ever induce the entire population to give up human freedom to the Controllers? The savage, John, clearly sees that to do that is to surrender one’s essential humanity. Why didn’t everybody see that and refuse to go along with the re-organization of society? The answer is the wars.

Ihave been thinking about the two great dystopian novels of the first half of the 20th century for many years now. Aldous Huxley wrote his Brave New World in 1932 and it must have seemed completely fanciful to its first readers. Free sex, the abolition of the family, no more war, and religion completely eliminated except for a blasphemous orgy ritual designed to be cathartic. It sounds like that horrible, shallow, anti-human song by John Lennon: Imagine.

Then, after World War II, in 1949, George Orwell wrote his 1984. The two novels both portray a dystopian future in which the human spirit does not survive. The freedom and self-possession necessary for the human spirit to grow and flourish are crushed by state tyranny using brute force, lies, and police state tactics in 1984. But in Brave New World, the human spirit is not crushed; it is, rather, smothered to death with paternalism and drugs.

In 1984 families are divided by state-controlled education that turns children into informers on their parents. In Brave New World the family has been abolished altogether and children are conceived in laboratories and raised by the all-powerful state. Upon first reading, 1984 seems more violent and frightening. The State is permanently at war and it relies on crude force, including torture, to keep the population in line. But upon reflection, Brave New World seems far worse in that people no longer even want to rebel or be free. They want “safe spaces” and someone to make all the important decisions for them. The Controllers exercise a degree of control of which the bureaucratic tyrants of 1984 could only dream.

Where Are We Headed?

For a long while, it looked like 1984 was the future of the world. It was the reality in the Stalinist USSR and the world Communist movement sought to export the revolution around the globe. But in 1989 the Berlin Fall fell and many sentimental and gullible people fell for the whole “end of history” line that was popular in the 1990s. According to Francis Fukuyama, history had come to an end with ubiquitous and permanent liberal democracy everywhere. Then 911 reminded everyone that groups with certain, shall we say, different, visions of politics still had a few cards to play.

As the West realized that history was still ongoing, that there are real dangers out there, and that real evil really exists, the response was not to return to our Christian roots but rather to hide our collective heads in the sand. Substitute smartphones for soma and you can see how far we have moved toward Brave New World. Sometime around 2010, we passed the point where the majority of teenagers in North America had smartphones. At that point, we took a quantum leap forward toward a dystopian future.

In his great dialogue, The Republic, Plato taught us that the human person and the State are microcosm and macrocosm. The State is the image of the human being and the human being is a miniature society. So the fundamental issue in politics is anthropology. This is why a book written in 1943 by C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man, is so important to read alongside Brave New World and 1984.

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