To Be Unaware is to Relinquish Your Meta-Freedom
Brave New World, Soma, Freedom, and Meta-Freedom
I hate making decisions. Whether it's choosing between two career paths, two incredible job opportunities, or two groups of friends, I always struggle to make choices without facing internal doubts and external questioning. Comments like "That sounds interesting, but why didn't you..." pressure me to justify every daring leap I take. Sometimes I wonder if I would be happier if I didn't have any choices at all. For a while, I believed that the freedom to choose is one of the heaviest burdens to bear.
In Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, children are “decanted” perfectly, ensuring they are conditioned to embrace their predetermined destiny: from their assigned social roles to their preference for travel and flowers. They can’t help doing what they were supposed to do. Even if an Epsilon, the lowest caste tasked with repetitive physical labor, were to learn about an exciting scientific breakthrough, they would still view research as nerdy and boring. Each person is given one path and is guaranteed satisfaction while traversing it. Should anything go wrong, they have soma, a harmless mood-enhancing drug, to fix their problems instantly. As a victim of my own indecisiveness, I initially felt envious of them. I was not only envious of their perpetual happiness, but I was also jealous that they won’t ever doubt or regret that they could act differently. Their conditioning rendered it impossible for them to challenge themselves, sparing them from the internal conflicts or self-contempt that sometimes consumes me.
I believe that the people who live the most fulfilling lives are those who define meaning for themselves and strive to fulfill those meanings. However, it is difficult to find a set of values that will remain coherent within us as we age and as circumstances change. Such a set of values builds a castle that won't crumble even when our ideals are challenged by others. In this aspect, Brave New World has helped everyone achieve such internal coherence, and I felt that this is a priceless gift.
When asked what I appreciate most about America, I often reply with "freedom". We have the freedom to speak our minds, believe in any ideology, and be whoever we want to be. However, while we are free from the traditional oppressive restrictions based on race, caste, and religion, we are not automatically granted true freedom. In fact, true freedom cannot be given. Rising above freedom is necessary to truly obtain it.
What's problematic about Brave New World is not that its citizens lack freedom, but rather that they are not free to choose whether to be free. They lack meta-freedom. The Savage surrenders access to soma and advanced technologies in the pursuit of spirituality and the raw beauty of emotions — between staying a celebrity and living in isolation, he chooses the latter. The Controller voluntarily gives up his pursuit of ground-breaking scientific research in building a stable society full of content people — between seizing power and going to an island, he chooses the former. The Savage and the Controller aren’t a protagonist and antagonist pair, but rather brothers bonded by meta-freedom. They are the only two people in Brave New World who has the chance to freely choose between freedom and comfort. Although the Controller decides against freedom, he is still truly free. Other residents of Brave New World also lead lives coherent with their values, but the crucial difference is that they did not choose their set of values — they were handed them, and robbed of the ability to think otherwise.
We often sacrifice our freedom for comfort, pleasure, and convenience, but this does not necessarily make us less free. For example, when I let my parents manage my investments, I give up my right to freely spend my money in order to benefit from their financial expertise. Similarly, when I watch YouTube, I allow it to occupy my attention with ads in exchange for free streaming content. True freedom is not necessarily superior to these benefits. In some sense, I appreciate the surveillance street cameras in China because they ensure the physical safety of law-abiding citizens. True freedom is the meta-freedom to choose how to trade freedom with other benefits. In an ideal world, this choice should be continuous and reversible.
To choose, one must be aware. In Brave New World, Huxley echoes Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra: like the people in the dystopian society, the Last Man is satiated in pleasure while living in the most technologically advanced society. Huxley brilliantly represents all sources of the Last Man's pleasure to be soma. Aside from their compulsory work, they are like the Last Man who is an expert in consumption rather than creation. They fly in helicopters to exotic holiday destinations and enjoy grand parties under the influence of the mood-elevating drug.
Compared to the residents of Brave New World, the Last Man is relatively fortunate. His emptiness suggests that he at least has a vague conception of a more meaningful pursuit beyond maximizing pleasure. The source of his suffering is his inability to endure the pain necessary to achieve greatness in the nobler pursuit. The Last Man's misery serves to prove his awareness and the potential for him to comprehend the concept of meta-freedom, even though he cannot freely exercise it.
In contrast, the vast majority of people in Brave New World are completely unaware of what lies beyond the confines of what the Controllers conditioned them to believe. Even if an Epsilon were presented with the opportunity to become an Alpha or to question their aversion to books, they would not take it. Paradoxically, even Barnard, an Alpha-plus psychologist who has memorized the schedule of childhood conditioning, has never questioned the practice of childhood conditioning as if it were the only way things ought to be. Even if residents in Brave New World are granted freedom, they still cannot be truly free because they lack an awareness of possibility and choice. To be unaware is to relinquish one's meta-freedom.
In modern society, we are surrounded by various forms of stimuli like soma that can make us less aware of ourselves, our emotions, and our surroundings. If we are not careful, we may gradually lose our meta-freedom. When I feel tired and defeated, I often find myself plunging into my bed and letting the dopamine rush from cute puppy videos or random Instagram stories wash over me. It is unclear to me whether platforms like Tiktok, Pornhub, video games, or soap operas are much different from the feelies in Brave New World, which aim to provide sensory pleasure with little substance. With the rampant growth of short-form content and social media, addicting remedies are always at our fingertips, gradually eroding our ability to confront our emotions head-on. As a generation, we may already be growing less emotionally aware.
Social norms and prevailing limiting beliefs are potent forms of conditioning that narrow people's horizons and restrict what they believe is "right" and "possible." For example, Asian parents' expectations that their children become "engineers, doctors, or lawyers" can condition them from a young age to view all other careers as inadequate. Similarly, pervasive beliefs that "learning ends after college" can subtly discourage millions of people from taking time to read and think as working adults. We are often told by parents, bosses, and media that we are “too young to make decisions,” “too old to start over,” “too inexperienced to take the lead,” and “too insignificant to create a difference.” These ideas can unknowingly take root in our minds like the repeating voices that seed the children’s minds when they are asleep.
Finally, lets us not forget cigarettes, alcohol, weed, and the list goes on. Now, we can easily kill our pain with affordable substances purchased at every other street corner. While it’s one thing to choose to take a painkiller, it’s another thing to swallow it without a second thought. When most of us can’t resist drugs that are worse than soma, what would happen to humanity when deep brain stimulations can provide maximum pleasure with minimal resources and consequences?
I want to remain optimistic. Superman in Thus Spoke Zarathustra retreats into the mountain at the age of 30 to search for enlightenment, much similar to how the Savage gives up his rights to society’s guaranteed happiness and isolates himself at the lighthouse. Although Huxley did not give the Savage a chance to emerge as a hero in a hero-less world, I hope that we can continue to strive for the highest level of self-awareness. I may not choose freedom, but I want the choice to choose.
What I’m up to
I graduated from UC Berkeley with a B.S. in Electrical Engineering & Computer Science!
I’ve been working with an ML startup called Martian over the spring, and I am excited to work with them for a bit over the summer.
I am finally finding time to read & write & side project again and that makes me very, very happy :)
I am finally visiting China in 3 years! Also planning on going to the Netherlands & Paris in July, and maybe also ICML in Hawaii