Brave new world?

The dangers of a world run by very rich men

“The yachts and the have nots” is a phrase coined by the Canadian conservative politician, Pierre Poilievre and subsequently taken up by populists around the world. Despite its genesis, it has stuck in my head like an earworm pop song ever since Jeff Bezos rented the city of Venice to host his grotesque wedding. This at a time when the richest man in the world was shutting down USAID, the United States’ primary distributor of aid to the world’s poorest and most vulnerable.

Whatever your politics, the way the world is dividing into centibillionaires (worth more than 100,000,000,000) and the rest of us is deeply disturbing. In fact, I find it fundamentally wrong.

Such schisms are the basis of much popular literature. For example, In the Harry Potter novels and movies the world was divided into people with special magical gifts who were wizards, and the mere Muggles who came from non-magical families. The Muggles are unaware of the wizarding world unless they happen to cross paths with it.

In 1932 Aldous Huxley published his darkly satirical and prescient book, Brave New World. In it, humans are genetically divided into five castes: Alphas - the intellectual elites and leaders; Betas – holders administrative and technical roles but still enjoying relative privilege; Gamas - workers performing routine tasks; Deltas - mass-produced labourers conditioned for repetitive work; and Epsilons - genetically stunted and conditioned for menial labour, with little or no individuality. Sleep training and a government issued drug, called Soma, that, much like cannabis, keeps everyone docile and happy.

During World War II, George Orwell worked at the BBC in the Eastern Service, under the Ministry of Information. His job was to produce radio programs for India and Southeast Asia. He saw how publishers and writers often avoided saying what they believed. On topics like the Soviet Union, disagreement was not banned—it was ignored. Opinions that didn’t fit the narrative disappeared. The name “Room 101” in 1984 came from a BBC conference room where he sat through endless meetings.

The dystopian futures these writers predicted do not seem as distant as it once did. Huxley said that technology can make people lose their humanity, that fate lies within, and change requires courage. We should all read more of both Huxley and Orwell – not just the books we were force fed as students.

As a physician and a humanist, I think we are at an inflection point. For our children we do not have the luxury of disengagement. To do so condemns their future to be far worse than it is now. I don’t care how we do it, be it through political action or philanthropy but we must look beyond our daily sphere. 29 Prime Ministers have been doctors. Five of the signatories of the Declaration of Independence were physicians. With that document 56 very different people put aside their personal needs and thought of a dream bigger than themselves. To state categorically that “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

We need to urgently re-engage with that dream.