A4 • Friday, December 28, 2018 | Cannon Beach Gazette | CannonBeachGazette.com
Views from the Rock
CANNON SHOTS
R.J. MARX
A
ldous Huxley’s 1932 novel
“Brave New World” is back
and more relevant than
ever. The title alone is a meme for
our genetically engineered, social
media besotted society, where indi-
viduals speak as “avatars” and con-
versations between family mem-
bers take place on a touch-screen
keypad.
Ursula K. Le Guin, who knew
her way around dystopia, writes
in the essay “Huxley’s Bad Trip,”
“Huxley was brilliant in his par-
adoxical depiction of a perfect
heaven which is a perfect hell.”
Like another futuristic fable of
the time — Herman Hesse’s “Step-
penwolf,” in which citizens strive
to stop the inexorable fl ow of tech-
nology by aiming pistols at drivers
of automobiles — Huxley brings a
mix of highbrow humor, stunning
wordplay and science-fi ction nar-
rative decades before the term sci-
ence-fi ction was even coined.
The term “Brave New World”
is probably as abused as any cliché
in modern language. Take a look at
today’s headlines — not just news,
but sports and entertainment.
These are actual headlines from
news sites around the world:
Forbes: “A brave new world of
brand alignment.”
USA Today: ”Welcome to the
brave new world of spirit-free
drinks.”
And my favorite, from the Her-
ald in Everett, Washington:
”It’s a brave new world for the
Seahawks minus Earl Thomas.”
There are pages and pages more.
To be sure, many do take over
from Huxley’s theme of genet-
ics (“China’s Brave New World of
Editing Human DNA,” as head-
lined in the Washington Post) and
gene editing (“Brave New World
of Editing Human DNA Starts in
China,” Bloomberg News). All is
geared for what Le Guin described
as the planned and organized deliv-
ery of programmed, uniformed
children living in a materialistic
paradise, where nothing is lacking
except “imagination, spontaneity
and freedom.”
In Huxley’s brave new world,
pregnancy and birth are mecha-
nized and women are designed to
provide the eggs for the next gen-
eration. Babies are “decanted”
through the “Bokanovsky pro-
cess” in bottling-rooms, assigned
to ranks from the elite Alpha-
Plus to the nearly subhuman
Gamma-Minus.
Time is measured from the
introduction of Henry Ford’s fi rst
Model-T, inspiring the supreme
being known as “Ford.” Tech-
Happy 2019
... and a Brave New World
“Brave New World,” in its original British edition, 1931.
niques to ensure uniformity of
caste are gruesome precursors of
the most selective genetic engi-
neering. Unorthodoxy “strikes at
Society itself.” (capitalization is
Huxley’s).
Techniques like infant condi-
tioning and narco-hypnosis are
used, Huxley writes, as “instru-
ments of government.” Control is
maintained by “suggesting” peo-
Writers read work at
Cannon Beach Library
Cannon Beach Gazette
The Cannon Beach
Library is offering an oppor-
tunity for residents and vis-
itors to write about life on
the North Coast. Selected
submissions will be read at
a “Writers Read” gather-
ing in the library on March
1. Writers welcome from all
locales.
The deadline to submit
a piece for consideration is
Jan. 18. Submissions can be
sent to info@cannonbeach-
library.org or mailed to the
Cannon Beach Library, PO
Box 486, Cannon Beach,
OR 97110.
What is your connection
to the North Coast? What
draws you to stay here? Is
there a place, an experience,
an emotion or an every-
day occurrence that illus-
trates your feelings about
the North Coast?
Anyone can participate
in the Writers Read project.
A group that includes library
volunteers, a bookstore
owner and local writer will
Publisher
Kari Borgen
Editor
R.J. Marx
Circulation
Manager
Jeremy Feldman
Production
Manager
John D. Bruijn
read the submissions and
select six to 10 to be read by
their authors at the gathering
at 7 p.m. Friday, March 1.
Writers must follow
these guidelines:
• Limit submissions to
600 words.
• Please write to the
theme, “Life on the North
Coast.”
• Do not put your name
or contact information on
the story. The group will
read the pieces without
knowing who wrote them.
However, please include
the writer’s name, email
address and phone number
in a cover letter.
• Any format, including
personal essay, poetry, or
story will be considered.
• The deadline for sub-
missions is Jan. 18, Writ-
ers whose works are chosen
to be read will be notifi ed
after the committee con-
siders them. Writers should
be available to attend the
March 1 gathering.
For more information,
contact the Cannon Beach
Library, 503-436-1391.
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Staff writer
Brenna Visser
Contributing
writers
Katherine Lacaze
Eve Marx
Nancy McCarthy
ple into loving their servitude, a
technique as effective as “fl og-
ging them and kicking them into
obedience.”
As an Alpha-plus, Huxley’s pro-
tagonist Bernard Marx (the name
threw me for a loop) is predestined
to a life of pleasure and privilege.
But he yearns to experience
a world outside of the strictures
of his world, “where every man,
Wikimedia Commons
In “Brave New World,” Aldous
Huxley off ered a parable for not
only his generation but for those
to follow.
woman and child” is compelled
to consume so much a year in the
interests of industry.
“One of these days,” he is
warned, “you’ll get into trouble.”
To overcome his angst, friends
urge him to a take a “gramme of
soma,” a sedative that quickly sub-
merges those who take it into a
pleasant “holiday from reality, and
come back without so much as a
headache or a mythology.”
But the character’s stubborn
quest — or is it simple curiosity?
— takes him to the “reservation”
in New Mexico where he encoun-
ters a “savage” named John living
a pre-civilization lifestyle, isolated
in the desert outside the purview of
the new world and its cookie-cut-
ter genetics. John is recruited for a
debut in the Brave New World, cast
as a sideshow freak.
In that realm the savage is
something of a media idol —
shades of Andy Warhol’s “15 min-
utes” — sought after by the new
world’s elite as a relic of a time go.
Once inside the civilized world,
there is no retreat — culminat-
ing in a violent orgy of frenzied
crowd-lust as insidiously violent
as the simmering mob in Shir-
ley Jackson’s short story, “The
Lottery.”
Le Guin, the Cannon Beach
resident who died in 2017 and
left a legacy of work thematically
linked to the concept of freedom
versus societal groupthink, wrote
that Huxley was speaking of his
novel not only as a cautionary
tale, “but as describing nascent
reality.”
Huxley’s vision predates brain-
washing, operant conditioning,
subliminal seduction, verbal cues
and repetitions by decades — now
all part of our daily world as we
turn on the television or radio,
along with the use of psychotropic
drugs and narcotics from Prozac to
Zoloft. “A masterpiece in the age
of anxiety,” Le Guin concludes.
Writing his retrospective
“Brave New World Revisited,” an
extended essay published in 1958,
Huxley gives this refl ection: “At
this point we fi nd ourselves con-
fronted by a very disquieting ques-
tion. Do we really wish to act upon
our knowledge? Does a majority
of the population think it worth-
while to take a great deal of trou-
ble, in order to halt, and if possi-
ble, reverse the current drift toward
totalitarian control?”
The Columbia Journalism
Review recently warned of a
“brave new world” of the rich and
powerful who can afford to “bank-
roll their own personal Pravdas.”
Sober thoughts for a new year
as we stand at a national launchpad
of uncertainty.
Huxley’s own prescriptive
offers promise. “We can be edu-
cated for freedom. Much better
than we are educated at present.”
New Year’s resolutions for the irresolute
A
Eve Marx/For Cannon Beach Gzzette
Fill in the blanks?
‘THIS WOULD
BE A GOOD TIME
FOR ME TO SAY THAT
WHEN IT COMES
TO RESOLUTIONS,
I’M PRETTY MUCH
A FAILURE.’
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s 2018 draws to a close and
2019 begins, I feel an urge,
usually alcohol induced, to
make resolutions for the coming
year. This would be a good time for
me to say that when it comes to res-
olutions, I’m pretty much a failure.
The great majority of my best
intentions for the new year get
tossed to the wayside by April,
sometimes March.
This is not to say that the entirety
of my resolutions all go up in
smoke. In years past, and trust me
there have been decades of resolu-
tions, a few have worked out.
One year I resolved to give up
diet soda and because I actually do
not like diet soda, that stuck. A reso-
lution that same year to give up Half
‘n’ Half didn’t even make it to Feb-
ruary 1. Several years ago I resolved
to shrink my rather ridiculous herd
of pets (at the time there was a pony,
two cats and three dogs) through
attrition, which actually worked, but
then we got Lucy the min-pin. So
much for my stated goal of having
just one dog.
When I was much younger, in
my teens and twenties, I didn’t see
the point of New Year’s resolutions,
which at the time seemed all about
curbing some behavior, like alcohol
or reckless sex. Since I was healthy
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VIEW FROM
THE PORCH
EVE MARX
and hadn’t suffered any serious con-
sequences from my dating life, I felt
there wasn’t much to curb.
These days I have many vices,
starting with gluten and candy. In
a perfect world for 2019 I’d give
up both, at least through February.
A friend in California told me her
resolution this year is to eat noth-
ing that has a face, but since I can-
not give up bacon, I can’t make the
same commitment.
My New Year’s resolution this
year is to spend more time fuss-
ing with my teeth. That means I
fully intend to brush them longer,
use floss daily, and poke around
between them with those spe-
cial brushy picks. I’m also going
to renew last year’s resolution to
drink more water and cut back on
dairy. I swear as soon as I run out of
Half ‘n’ Half, I’m going to try Cal-
ifa Farms Dairy Free Better Half
Coconut Cream and Almond Milk.
I’ll look for it in the Fresh Foods in
Cannon Beach refrigerated nondairy
case.
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