Addictions and Artificial Intelligence in Brave New World: From the Benedict Option to the Hermit Beginning

In this chapter, we evaluate to what extent Aldous Huxley’s novel Brave New World is still fruitful and original today for rethinking the main approaches currently used to tackle the problem of addictions, as well as the treatments derived from these approaches. To this end, firstly, we will evaluate the framework theory from which most of the approaches in the treatment and research of the addictive phenomenon are governed today; secondly, we will point out fundamental issues regarding the social factors involved—one of them, the development of Artificial Intelligence; and, finally, we will link in the contemporary debate the essential solutions embodied in the novel. We analyze also their proposals of an internal experience as a way of avoiding the traumatic historical events lived by his generation, as exposed in The Doors of Perception. In our conclusions, we propose that Huxley presents, on the one hand, a diagnosis that reinforces the theory of anguish in the face of social dislocation proposed by Bruce K. Alexander and, on the other, a solution that, with nuances, perfects those formulated in the Benedict Option by Rod Dreher and in the Kenosis Approach by Charles Taylor. Finally, as a synthesis of all the above, we define what True Technological Humanism (TTH) consists of, and why and how it would be the solution to the problem of social dislocation, structural addiction, and the risks associated with the wrong use of AI.