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Brave New World Aftermath: Does Everybody Really Want to Rule the World?

Dusty Leave a comment

It struck me as I was reading Brave New World, both in the beginning when Huxley takes us on a tour of his nightmare baby factory, and at the end when the World Controller, Mustapha Mond, explains that the people of the Brave New World have chosen stability and happiness over independence and change and growth: why would anyone want to create this?

Why would anyone want to rule this?

I admit freely that I don’t really understand the thirst for power. Myself, I’d really rather just be left alone. Sure, I can see the draw of commanding everyone to obey me, both for selfish pleasures (Like ordering people I don’t like to go get me a donut. No! TWO donuts. And then I won’t share the donuts with them. Ha! How you like that, Doug from third grade?!) and because I think that my vision of the world is the correct one and I would like to solve every problem that exists through my genius becoming law according to my whim.

Because surely that could never go wrong.

I have a certain amount of power, because I’m a public school teacher. And while I have no control over the larger context of my profession or the specifics of my particular job — I don’t get to pick my clients or my work hours or my work space — I do have quite a bit of control over my classroom and the other humans in it. I can boss them around. I can generally make them obey me, at least in small things. I have, no joke, gotten them to get me a donut. And you know what I think every single time I am required to take control over them? I think, “Jesus, do I have to do this shit again? Why me? Why can’t they just, I dunno, control themselves?”

Nothing makes you a libertarian anarchist like trying to control a room full of teenagers.

I genuinely don’t understand why people want power. The obvious reason is personal enrichment and glory, and I understand both of  those things; they’re not worth it to me, but I understand them. I want to be rich enough to have all the donuts I want, and I would love to have a donut named after me so I could be remembered after my death. But if it means I have to be in control of the donut shop, and get up at 2am to make the donuts, then the attractions of power become a whole lot less, for me.

(By the way: remember this guy? I do. Fred the Baker. Icon.)

I still don’t fully understand why Donald Trump became president. He was already rich and famous. I suppose a narcissist like our First Stooge can never have enough money and glory, and I guarantee his little troll-ego gets a big happy jolt out of bossing people around — since that was his whole shtick on his TV show — but unless one gets to be a third-world dictator, then being in charge is, believe me, a whole hell of a lot of work. Even being a third-world dictator is a lot of work: because dictators don’t just get power, they have to keep power. And the way you do that is by keeping the other wielders of power happy with you in charge. If your power base is the bankers and corporations, then they have to be given a free hand with the business world to make all the money they want; if the people get upset about the bankers and you want to squeeze those bankers to please the people, you can’t, because then you lose power. If your power base is the military, then you pretty much have to treat the generals as even more important than you, and make sure they get all the wealth and prestige they want. The person in charge has to work, continuously, to remain in charge. Even in my tiny world of one classroom with a couple of dozen students, being in charge is a constant pain in the ass. I can’t imagine what a pain it is to be President.

He must have known that, having been a dictator in the past, with his company. So why did he do it? I maintain that he enjoyed the race: he liked the debates (Which people still talk about him winning through his oratorical skills. No: you act like a shitpitcher, you’re going to score more points than someone trying to be polite. But in any real debate you’d be stopped by the moderators; that didn’t happen because the TV moderators were not really in charge, because they work for TV stations who love shitpitchers, so Trump was allowed to continue being an ass, and then pundits pretend it was a clever strategy.), he loved giving his rallies, he loved being on the nightly news; he’s been powerful and wealthy all his life, but he’s never had crowds cheering for him, and that must have been a hoot. I think he didn’t ever expect to win, and as surprised as we all were that Wednesday morning, he was the most surprised at all. I think he’s only running now because he can’t back down and maintain his ego.

But that doesn’t explain why he does all the stuff he does. I mean, if I’m right and he never wanted the job, then he’d spend all of his time on social media or the golf course — oh wait. My theory gains ground. But still: he also does stuff. He gives speeches that are not about himself. He holds a couple of press conferences. He works to pass laws and whatnot. He’s doing a terrible job, but he’s still doing the job; and now he’s fighting very hard to keep that job. So maybe it’s not as simple as I am arguing; maybe there is another reason for him to want power.

This is where  his supporters get the idea that he is beneficent and patriotic. We all know being president is a shit job, and only someone who really wanted to help Americans would take on that pile of shit. (Though here’s another theory: shitpitchers would be attracted to piles of shit, right? Maybe the biggest pile of shit job drew in the biggest shitpitcher in the country. It’s the law of fecal gravitation.) I don’t believe that because he’s not really helping anyone very much. Other rich assholes, sure, but I don’t think his loyalty to them is strong.

In the Brave New World, the people in charge have an even shittier job, honestly. Because they get prestige, but they don’t really get to be in charge: their job is simply to maintain the machinery of the society, which is exactly what I think makes being President so shitty: there’s an unending mound of duties just to keep things going. In Huxley’s book, the people they control are under perfect and total control, which, I would argue, would take all the fun out of being in control: there aren’t any rebellions to be crushed (And if you want to know how much fun crushing rebellions is, watch Star Wars and think about the fact that Darth Vader controls a GALACTIC EMPIRE and yet spends all his time chasing down a ragtag band of rebel scum.) and even the sucking up you get from your underlings is only because you programmed them to obey. I can see the ego boost from bending another will to your own; but when the will is already broken, what’s the point? In the book the controllers don’t get to put their ideas in place, don”t get to be glorified; the society has erased (and continues to erase) the past, and their social structure was set centuries before the book.

So why would they want the job?

Are they selfless lovers of humanity? Like Trump?

But then why would they crush the humanity out of the people they “serve?”

Like Trump?

I don’t have an answer here. I realized, when I went to get that video clip at the beginning of this, that the song might be satirical; that Tears for Fears meant the song to make the same point I’m making, that ruling the world would be hellish.

But I guess Satan chose to rule in Hell, didn’t he? Maybe that’s enough.

All I know is, it’s time to go make some donuts. Play us out, Fred.

This Week

Dusty Leave a comment

So it’s been a solid three weeks since I last did this, but I don’t intend to just give it up after two habit-testing attempts, so here it comes back again. The intervening three weeks have really been more about survival: I had to finish the school year, I had to grade, I had to sleep, I had to keep my spirits up. So that’s the habit I’ve been trying to maintain every week for the last three weeks: sleep, work, live.

I’d like to report that I stuck with all three things every day for the last three weeks. I suck at sleeping — which is not news —  but it’s not a question of habit, it’s a question of stress; when I wake up at 2 or 3am, when I’m stressed, I start thinking about the thing that is worrying me. Believe me, if I could break that habit, I would; now that it is summer, the habit will be broken for me, which is nice, but kind of not the point of these posts, these attempts. I am good at the habitual grading of papers every single day; but that’s not a habit I want to maintain — and it too has been ended for me this past week. Living and keeping my spirits up? Sure, that’s a thing I want to keep doing. I’m sure it will be quite a bit easier now.

So I’m moving on to new ideas.

If you recall, three weeks ago I decided to give up snacking, particularly gum, per my wife’s suggestion. I did it for the week, and it wasn’t terrible: though I admit I cheated a time or two, once because I honestly forgot that I was doing it for the week, and I grabbed some chips at Costco and snacked on them; once at school because I wanted the snack and I said, “Screw it.” I also ate donuts at school because donuts were available — it was Teacher Appreciation week, when we don’t get a raise and people don’t treat us any better, but they do bring us food and shit — along with cake and a few other gift-snacks. So it wasn’t  a perfect abstention from snacking.

I never chewed gum, though. Not once. So, success.

Really, the main point was not to munch on my salty snacks once I got home. They’re my main food vice, and there are times when I get out the bag of Cheez-its and forget that I’m eating them until I’ve downed way more than I should have; that’s the habit I was looking to break, really. And that I did not do.

But like the video game stoppage the week before, it didn’t really amount to much. I didn’t feel healthier, I didn’t feel better, I didn’t lose weight — but I also wasn’t miserable, and I didn’t fall asleep at 8pm, which is one reason I do snack sometimes, because it keeps me awake. Basically I proved to myself that I don’t need to snack, but that I am a bit happier when I do.

The last week or two has actually been something of a better test: because I really haven’t snacked unless I’ve been hungry or craving something; and more than once, I decided to avoid snacks because I didn’t want to ruin my dinner. And that has been — just fine. So maybe because of the week without evening snacking, and maybe just because I’m steadily growing more aware of what I eat and how I eat it, I think I’ve actually got a pretty good handle on my snacking.  So again, success.

This week I think I’m going to go with exercise. I go to the gym, and I ride my bike; but in both cases I’m very on-again, off-again. A little bit because my wife likes going to the gym with me, and she hurt her wrist pretty seriously back in January and has been recovering ever since (It’s her drawing wrist, so we’ve been taking it very seriously), so she hasn’t been able to do much gym time, which often means I don’t go, as well. But I’ve also come to understand that I can go without her and it doesn’t actually bother either of us too much, so I have to give up that excuse. Again, it’s been rough trying to survive for the last month, so I haven’t really gone, and now that the school year’s over I want to get back into the habit. I also want to spend some of this summer getting into better biking shape because I’d like to get myself to work like that as much as I can next year.

So that will be this week: every day I will either go to the gym, or I will ride my bike. I will probably give myself an exception this coming Saturday, as we are going to move starting that day, so my “exercise” will be cleaning and/or lifting heavy things. But we’ll see. Between now and then, it’s every day workouts for me. (Yes, I already did one today. It hurt a lot. Part of the reason I want to get back into the habit more.)

I will report back next Sunday. Hopefully.