Brave New World is a dystopian novel by Aldous Huxley published in 1932. In Chapter 17, John the Savage and Mustapha Mond, a World Controller, discuss the brave new world, particularly the absence of God and Christianity. We see throughout Brave New World the citizens of the World State substitute the name of Henry Ford, the early twentieth-century industrialist and founder of the Ford Motor Company, wherever people in our own world would say "Lord”, for example, "Ford forbid that he should get the idea into his head" (l.163). This shows that religion has been replaced by reverence for technology, efficiency, and comfort. In this chapter the author explores the arguments for spiritualism versus materialism.
Firstly, Mustapha Mond shows John his collection of banned religious writings and reads aloud two passages from a nineteenth-century Catholic theologian, Cardinal Newman, and from an eighteenth-century French philosopher, Maine de Biran. These posit that religious sentiment is essentially a response to the threat of loss, old age, and death. According to Mond, this is why God no longer exists in World State. When people never reach old age, they can never get to the point where they can start turning to God. The passage also states that people also turn to God for comfort in times of misery, but in this new world, there is no misery or suffering. There is no reason to imagine a greater salvation because there is nothing from which to be saved. "'You can only be independent of God while you've got youth and prosperity; independence won't take you safely to the end.' Well, now we've got youth and prosperity right up to the end. What follows? Evidently, that we can be independent of God. 'The religious sentiment will compensate us for all our losses.' But there aren't any losses for us to compensate; religious sentiment is superfluous. And why should we go hunting for a substitute for youthful desires, when youthful desired never fail? […] What need have we for repose when our minds and bodies continue to delight in activity? […] of something immovable, when there’s the social order?" (l.67-75) To John's insistence that to believe in God is natural in certain situations, Mond explains that these situations have been removed: ""But all the same," insisted the Savage, "it is natural to believe in God when you're alone […]" "But people are never alone now," said Mustapha Mond. "We make them hate solitude; and we arrange their lives so that it's almost impossible for them to ever have it." (l.95-98)
In addition to this, John suggests that World State's society is God's punishment and that men have been degraded by the society they live in. Mond responds that man hasn't been degraded at all. He realizes that what John means is that, from the perspective of a person unconditioned by World State (like John and the reader), the current state of things is awful. By our standards, all the Deltas and Epsilons are degraded because they don't have free will, they're controlled by soma, and they're brainwashed. However, he says you cannot judge this world (the brave new world) by the rules of the old world: "Degrade him from what position? As a happy, hard-working, goods-consuming citizen he's perfect. Of course, if you choose some other standard than ours, you might say he was degraded. But you've got to stick to one set of postulates. […]"" (l.116-121). However John disagrees and believes that value is intrinsic: "But value dwells not in particular will," said the Savage. "It holds his estimate and dignity as well wherein 'tis precious of itself as in the prizer.'" (l.123) If the people of World State all believed in God, they wouldn't allow themselves to be degraded in this manner: "If you allowed yourselves to think of a God, you wouldn't allow yourselves to be degraded by pleasant vices. You'd have a reason for bearing things patiently, for doing things with courage." (l123-124). Mustapha replies that in this civilised world, people have technology and as such "There isn't any need for a civilised man to bear anything that's seriously unpleasant." (l126-127)
Finally, John opines the merits of intentionally refusing your desires or intentionally putting yourself through pain. His argument stems from a belief in self-denial and suffering as a means to the good or virtuous life. Where Mond sees comfort as the pinnacle of human experience, John sees it as a barrier to growth and spirituality. A life of constant amusement and pleasure, he argues, is "degrading." Mustapha counters that the new industrial world is only possible when people indulge their every desire. In his world, there is no such thing as self-denial. This is why they have no concept of chastity; if people had to withhold from sex, they would start to lust after things they weren't allowed to have.
Furthermore, John argues that God is the reason for everything that is noble and heroic, to which Mond answers that there is no longer any need for the noble or the heroic: "Civilisation has absolutely no need for nobility or heroism. These things are symptoms of political inefficiency. In a properly organised society like ours, nobody has any opportunity for being noble or heroic." (l.138-140) Mond continues to outline the ways in which modern society is controlled: ensuring no one really loves anyone else, removing temptations, and keeping a healthy supply of soma in case a citizen is actually confronted with something unpleasant. In his response, Mond accepts the virtues of Christianity as reasonable and even socially valuable but points out that soma can do as well as years of painful self-denial in producing virtuous behaviour: "There's always soma to calm your anger, to reconcile you to your enemies, to make you patient and long-suffering. In the past, you could only accomplish these things by making a great effort and after years of hard moral training. […] Anybody can be virtuous now. You can carry at least half your morality about in a bottle." (l149-153) Mond also memorably describes soma as "Christianity without tears."
John replies that tears are necessary (l.154). He quotes Othello, by Shakespeare to explain that we all need suffering and that it is part of what makes us human. He then quotes several lines from the "To be or not to be" speech in Hamlet which asks the question: is it better to endure and suffer through the "arrows of outrageous fortune," or to end them once and for all? This world, he says, doesn't do either: it simply abolishes the arrows. "[of the World State] Getting rid of everything unpleasant instead of learning to put up with it. […] It's too easy." (l.162-166). In his view, a worthwhile human life requires suffering and danger, from which will spring nobility and heroism.
They next discuss the benefits to living dangerously. Mustapha agrees that there is a need for it, and in fact, people have natural urges to live just this way. To compensate for this, World State gives its citizens their V.P.S. treatment (Violent Passion Surrogate) once a month to physically simulate what it's like to be full of fear and rage—full of the same kind of emotions you find in Othello, "with none of the inconveniences." Mond advocates a world without inconveniences: "We prefer to live comfortably." (l.190) John rejects this. The discomfort and the pain, John maintains, are an essential part of freedom, beauty, and religion. At the end of Chapter 17, John declares that he wants God, poetry, danger, freedom, goodness, and sin and proudly claims the right to be unhappy.
In Brave New World, religion is argued to have the same motives and effects as scientific conditioning and is used to pacify the masses. In Chapter 17 we see two characters debate their opposing philosophical values. Mustapha Mond endorses the efficiency of a materialistic society without God or religion, while John the Savage strongly believes in spirituality and morality as a part of human existence. They discuss the virtues of comfort against a fully lived life. In his novel, Huxley is criticising World State and the elimination of meaning.