Against Brave New World: The Strength of Family

Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World is often seen as a discourse on empty pleasure, but beneath its carefully engineered comforts lies something far more sinister: control. The destruction of the family doesn’t just make people shallow and immature—it makes them easy to govern. The people of Brave New World are conditioned to avoid responsibility, to chase fleeting gratification, and to remain in a permanent state of childishness. Infantile individuals can’t govern themselves. They can’t defend truth. They can’t fight for love or justice. They simply obey.

This is exactly the world I lived in before coming to Jesus Christ. Everything around me was designed to keep people distracted, pacified, and disconnected from anything that requires real commitment. But the Catholic Church taught me something entirely different—that the family is the foundation of a flourishing, free society. It is within the family that I have learned to govern myself, to live with virtue, and to stand firm in my convictions. A culture built on strong families produces individuals who are resilient, who resist manipulation, and who refuse to be pacified by distractions.

This is why societies that seek control target the family first. A civilization without strong families is a civilization of dependents—people who can be manipulated, pacified, and governed without resistance. Brave New World understood this well. By eliminating the family, it ensured that no one would stand up, because no one had been taught how to stand.

But when family is honored, when marriage is upheld, when children are raised with strength and purpose, the result is unbreakable individuals—people who cannot be easily coerced or distracted into complacency. They become builders, defenders, leaders. They do not retreat into shallow gratification but instead invest in meaningful, lasting creation.

Marriage has challenged me to grow beyond selfishness, to rise to the challenge that only my wife can provide, to sacrifice for the good of my family, and to transcend the endless pursuit of comfort in favor of building something that lasts. Parenthood has taught me to live for others, to shape the future, to cultivate virtue in myself and in my children.

True happiness isn’t found in cheap distractions. It’s found in living for something real. And if I want to reclaim a world worth living in, I must start where civilization has always begun—at home, in the heart of my family.

It is what teaches me to grow up, to embrace responsibility, and to build a world worth living in.