Consciousness is, at best, a mixed blessing. Sure, it’s what defines humanity—what allows us to make choices, feel emotions, form societies, create art, understand the world around us. But it also opens us up to authoritarianism, inequality, war, genocide, systematic destruction of the environment. It’s what makes us dream of utopia and—because any perfect society would still require drudge work no self-actualized individual would be satisfied doing—what keeps that idyll out of reach. The futuristic World State of Aldous Huxley’s classic novel Brave New World, which is coming to TV via NBC Universal’s new streaming service Peacock after years in development limbo, believes it has solved that paradox.