My takeaway from BNW was a warning against blindly embracing a society built only on good feelings and numbing anything that forces us to confront pain. The oppression was more or less a side effect of it.

Everyone in the upper classes were okay that lower classes were being oppressed because they all were just as happy thanks to Soma. The pain of the outsiders didn't mean anything because they "chose" to live like that.

Genetic engineering was just a plot device to explain how the classes were chosen.

[–] sab@kbin.social 14 points 1 year ago

The brilliant thing in Brave New World was that it didn't at any point make it obvious that people were miserable slaves - they could leave any time they wanted, and lived a life of bliss. Still, as a reader, you end up feeling like you'd rather take the place of the savage than any of the characters living in the hypercommercial utopia. At least that's how I felt.