I usually read two books at a time and have no real method to choosing them other than often one is fiction and one is non-fiction. I’m often fascinated at the synchronicities that show up when I am reading these books. See: https://dispatchestk.com/2011/07/23/yesterdays-synergy/. My latest tandem was “Brave New World and Brave New World Revisited” by Aldous Huxley and “The Wisdom of the Native Americans” edited by Kent Nerburn. They did not disappoint.

Human beings, collectively, can choose how to order and structure their societies. The idea that certain ideologies or systems are “inevitable” just doesn’t hold water. See: https://dispatchestk.com/2022/05/02/everything-dawns/ Native American tribal systems were markedly different from modern “Western” ones. But all are in a constant state of change. Even Huxley in “Brave New World” could not escape the dichotomy tribal systems posed for his imagined modern one, thus providing the Savage Reservation as the counterpoint. Indeed, it is the “savage” who coins the term “Brave New World” in an imagined positive light; only to later hang himself after living in it. Nevertheless, even the Savage Reservation was repressive. Regardless of the system, conformity was expected. What is interesting (and disturbing) about both the mythically-based Savage Reservation and the technologically-based Brave New World is that both worked. People lived and died, the society moved along and it celebrated its particular beliefs. They did so at the expense of the individual. Human beings don’t survive alone in Nature, we require cooperation to survive.

A Brave New World should frighten us. The dialogue in Chapter 17 of Huxley’s book between The Savage and Mustapha Mond is chilling because Mond knows the truth about his world and nevertheless defends and furthers it. I found this exchange particularly unsettling:

“But if you know about God, why don’t you tell them?” asked the Savage indignantly. “Why don’t you give them these books about God?”
“For the same reason we don’t give them ‘Othello’: they’re old; they’re about God hundreds of years ago. Not about God now.”
“But God doesn’t change.”
“Men do, though.”
“What difference does that make?”
“All the difference in the world,” said Mustapha Mond.

We are in a state of change. I don’t think there is any real dispute that we are moving away from Native American wisdom and toward a Brave New World. The point is, however, that no particular system is inevitable. Human beings do have the wherewithal to analyze and make choices. The key question is whether we are brave enough to do so.