Exceptional! 10!

Been too long since I read this. Adding to re-read list for a refresher.

Helmholtz is an unfulfilled genius who has been relegated to writing banal hypnopaedic programs. He is too big for his collective role and feels that he’s missing something in life, but he doesn’t know what it is because society has not furnished him with the language and conceptual framework needed to comprehend his discontent. Bernard, on the other hand, is too small for his collective role: he is constantly picked on by members of his caste and there are even rumors that he may have been poisoned like members of the lower genetic castes during his artificial production – perhaps the Predestinators made a mistake in his caste assignment?

Bernard would be happy if he enjoyed the same popularity as Helmholtz. His discontent is a mere product of his shortcomings, but he finds ways of blaming others for his defects. Helmholtz has everything Bernard wants, but he isn’t fulfilled by it. Bernard is like a starving man looking at Helmholtz sighing with ennui atop a mountain of food. The collective is depriving Bernard of things he wants from the collective, but the collective has given all it can to Helmholtz. There is nothing left for Helmholtz in the collective, he knows that he is missing something from within himself, but he does not know how to navigate himself to find what he lacks.

P.s. If there are any Tommy Orange fans reading this I have read that his sequel to There, There is scheduled for 2022. Re- reading T,T prior, as well.

Huxley sought to show us that happiness is not equivalent to freedom and that the pursuit of pleasure and happiness when carried to its logical conclusion is a nihilistic mode of existence that eliminates all the finer strivings of mortal beings who bear the desire to create because they are motivated by pain and death to produce something beyond themselves.