Olivia: Alright Jackson, pop quiz. The year is 1918. The government has just created a new department: the "Ministry of Brains." What's its first order of business? Jackson: Oh, easy. It’s 1918? They’d probably ban jazz music, claiming it lowers national productivity. Then they’d launch a public campaign to convince everyone that thinking really hard about potatoes will make the harvest better. And there would definitely be a tax on smiling too much in public. Frivolity is the enemy of intellect, you know. Olivia: That is frighteningly close. You’ve perfectly captured the spirit of What Not: A Prophetic Comedy by Rose Macaulay. Jackson: Wait, that's a real book? I was joking! A "Ministry of Brains"? That sounds like something out of a Monty Python sketch. Olivia: It absolutely does, and that's the genius of it. Macaulay wrote this satirical gem right after World War I, in 1918. It’s this incredibly sharp, witty look at government overreach that was so ahead of its time, it’s considered a major influence on Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Jackson: Hold on, 1918? So this came out more than a decade before Brave New World? Olivia: Exactly. Macaulay, who was part of that brilliant Bloomsbury-adjacent literary scene, was already exploring eugenics, state propaganda, and social engineering while everyone else was just recovering from the war. The book was actually so provocative for its time that it was quickly withdrawn from publication. Jackson: Wow. Okay, so she hit a nerve. I’m picturing a world run by the most insufferable people from your university debate club. Olivia: You are not wrong. And Macaulay builds this world with such hilarious detail. It all starts with the Ministry's grand plan to eliminate stupidity, which they see as the root cause of war and all of society's problems.

Jackson: A war on stupidity. That sounds both noble and doomed from the start. How on earth do you even begin to legislate against being dumb? Olivia: With paperwork, of course! The Ministry rolls out something called the "Mental Progress Act." Every single citizen is tested and given a mental category, from 'A' for brilliant down to 'C' for, well, not so brilliant. And there's an 'uncertificated' category for those deemed truly hopeless. Jackson: It’s a national GPA for life. I can already feel the anxiety. What do these grades even do? Olivia: They control who you can marry and have children with. The government literally creates a "Directorate of Matrimony." If you're an 'A' and you marry a 'C', you get hit with a hefty "baby tax" for producing an "unregulated infant." But if you’re two 'A's, or an approved combination, you get a bonus. It’s a state-sponsored eugenics program disguised as a financial incentive plan. Jackson: That is a government-run dating app from hell. It’s like if Hinge gave you a compatibility score based on your SATs and then fined you for swiping right on a fun person. Olivia: Precisely. And the propaganda is amazing. They run "Brains Week" and put up posters with testimonials for their Mind Training Course. One from a financier proudly says he "doubled my income and halved those of 750 others." Another from a journalist boasts he "libelled nine prominent persons and successfully defended six libel actions." Jackson: So the goal of being 'smarter' is just to become a more efficient sociopath? That’s incredible. The honesty is almost refreshing. Olivia: It's pure satire. But the system's absurdity really shines when it meets the public. There's this one perfect story where the Ministry sends a team to a small village to explain the benefits of the Mental Progress Act. One of the explainers is a very earnest, very tactless woman named Dr. Cross. Jackson: Oh, I have a bad feeling about this. Olivia: As you should. To demonstrate the difference between good and bad breeding, Dr. Cross gets two local mothers to lend her their babies for a live demonstration. She holds up one baby and says, "Look at this fine, intelligent little head! The bright, noticing air! This is a certificated child, born to a clever family." Jackson: No. She did not. Olivia: She did. Then she holds up the other baby, who is sucking on a pacifier, and says it looks lethargic and is clearly an "uncertificated" child who will be a drain on the state. The problem is, the mother of the so-called "lethargic" baby stands up, absolutely furious, and yells that Dr. Cross has mixed them up. Her baby is the certificated one; it just happens to have a cold. The other villagers all start shouting in agreement. Jackson: Oh, the glorious, beautiful chaos! You can't put human life on a PowerPoint slide. The universe will always find a way to humiliate you. What happened to Dr. Cross? Olivia: She practically faints from embarrassment. The whole PR event collapses into laughter and confusion. It’s the perfect example of the system's failure: it’s a rigid, intellectual idea that completely falls apart upon contact with messy, unpredictable, real-life people and their babies. Jackson: That’s brilliant. So the whole project is just a bureaucratic comedy of errors. But for it to even exist, the people at the top must be true believers, right? The ones running the show must be living examples of this intellectual purity. Olivia: That’s the most delicious and tragic part of the whole story. The man at the very top, the visionary behind the entire Ministry of Brains, is the system's single greatest hypocrite.

Jackson: Wait, the guy in charge is breaking his own rules? Now I’m hooked. Tell me everything. Olivia: The Minister of Brains is a man named Nicholas Chester. He's a passionate idealist, utterly convinced that eradicating stupidity will save humanity. He's the one who designed the whole system of certifications and baby taxes. But he has a secret. Jackson: Let me guess. He secretly loves trashy reality TV. Olivia: Worse. According to his own laws, he is "uncertificated for marriage." His family has a history of what the book calls "deficiency"—he has a twin sister who is "half-witted." His own genetic stock is considered flawed. The architect of the system is, by its own definition, defective. Jackson: Wow. Okay, so he's built a prison and locked himself out of it. That’s some next-level irony. Olivia: And it gets better. He falls deeply in love with Kitty Grammont, a sharp, cynical woman who works for him. She's brilliant, she's an 'A' certificate, but she's also a pragmatist who sees the flaws in his grand vision. He proposes, and she points out the obvious: "You're the Minister of Brains. Your marriage would be illegal under the laws you wrote. It would be the end of your career." Jackson: But love, as they say, finds a way. Or in this case, finds a way to commit a felony. Olivia: Exactly. Overwhelmed by what the book calls "simple human emotions," they decide they can't live without each other. They get married in secret, under false names, in a tiny country village. They're trying to have it all: his public ideals and their private happiness. Jackson: And I'm guessing that works out for about five minutes. How do they get caught? Olivia: It’s a slow, agonizing unraveling. First, they run into a colleague while on their honeymoon in Italy, forcing them to lie and scramble. But the real threat comes from a muckraking journalist named Percy Jenkins, who runs a paper called 'The Patriot.' Jenkins smells a story and starts digging into Chester's life. Jackson: The press, the eternal enemy of secret-keeping idealists. Olivia: Jenkins finally gets a meeting with Chester and, with this chilling subtlety, reveals that he knows everything—about Chester's "deficient" family and about the secret marriage. And in a moment of defiant honesty, Chester confirms it all. He refuses to lie. Jackson: That’s a powerful moment. He’s a hypocrite, but he’s an honest hypocrite. Olivia: It is. But it’s also his doom. Jenkins’s paper publishes the scandal, complete with a cartoon of Chester with "deficient, little Chesters clinging to his coat." The public, already resentful of the baby taxes and mind-training courses, explodes with rage. The man telling them how to live was a fraud. Jackson: So the personal scandal is the spark that lights the whole forest fire. Olivia: It’s the catalyst for the book's climax: the storming of the Ministry of Brains. An angry mob, fueled by the scandal, marches on the Ministry building. Chester, in a final act of defiance, goes out on a balcony to confront them, calling them fools. Jenkins, in the crowd, shouts, "Are you certificated for marriage?" The crowd roars. They drag Chester over the balcony rail, and the whole place is set on fire. His career, his ministry, his great idea—it all goes up in flames.

Jackson: Wow. So in the end, the grand system wasn't defeated by a philosophical argument or a rival political party. It was brought down by a love affair and a public scandal. Olivia: Exactly. And Chester himself understands this in the aftermath. He tells a friend, "The Ministry was down and under, in any case. People were determined not to stand laws that inconvenienced them—as I was. I was merely an example, not a cause, of that disease." Jackson: That’s a stunning piece of self-awareness. The "disease" he's talking about isn't stupidity. It's just… being human. The desire for love, for family, for personal freedom, even when it’s inconvenient or illogical. Olivia: That's the core of it. Macaulay is showing us that you can't engineer humanity. You can't create a perfect, rational society because people aren't perfect, rational beings. Our messy, emotional, hypocritical nature will always be the glitch in the system. And maybe that glitch is the most important part of us. Jackson: The book is called a "prophetic comedy," and it really is. She was writing in 1918, but that central conflict feels so modern. We're living in a world that constantly tries to optimize us, to categorize us with algorithms, to turn our lives into data points for some grander scheme. Olivia: And Macaulay's message, from over a century ago, is a powerful reminder that those schemes will always have their limits. The Bishop in the story, Chester's father, says it best after the scandal breaks. He tells his son, "Humanity; the simple human things; love, birth, family life. They're the simple things, but, after all, the deep and grand things. No laws will ever supersede them." Jackson: It’s a surprisingly hopeful ending, in a way. Even amidst the ruined careers and burned-down ministries, the human stuff endures. It makes you wonder, in our own world of algorithms and social credit scores, where are we building our own 'Ministries of Brains' without even realizing it? Olivia: A question Rose Macaulay would have loved. Jackson: This is Aibrary, signing off.