The only novel that I managed to squeeze into my suitcase was Brave New World.
Huxley's vivid depiction of this dystopia allows the audience to comprehend the breadth of a new civilization with such a debilitating disease. How coincidental that while I am absorbed into this literature, I am also understanding the culture of Montreal.
This exploration focuses on the validity of cultural practices and beliefs. Huxley's dystopia is guided by "Our Ford", or Henry Ford, the inventor of the concept of mass manufacturing, which is prevalent and fervently existent in the core of dystopian beliefs of "everybody belonging to everybody else".
For the general audience, a society without chastity, without affections of love or hate or anger is horrid and absurdly unearthly. To be in a constant state of contentment mystifies our multi-dimensional personas.
Yet we fail to realize that in our scientific and technologically induced environment we thwart multiple practices and deem them as esoteric and untrue. In remote villages and reservations, there exists a vast variety of beliefs and practices passed down from ancestors of the land. These ideas and rituals may seem barbaric and savage, yet even a variety of them, which prove unharmful are abolished from our minds.
It is evident that our society fails to see the beauty in rituals and customs. Our galaxy is self-absorbed in its own quest for innovations that we are blind to past traditions, ideas which reveal the history of the past, a time machine that gives us a direct link to our ancestors.
In part, I believe this diminishing respect triggered Huxley to write Brave New World Revisited. I think then, we see the novel on a different plane. That his creation is partially based on our society is meant to urge for change. It is meant to broaden our concentration and make us consider the existence of tradition.
Perhaps it was also written to foster revolution. Perhaps it further elaborates on the importance of fighting for history.
