Discuss how the society in Brave New World works to ensure that people do not change their socio-economic class.
Through Brave New World, Huxley depicts a new, industrialized world, which is financially stable and has prevented poverty and self-destruction. Dictatorial governments are there to ensure stability and maintain perfection of the world.
Therefore, just like under any other totalitarian government, social, mental and economic freedoms are abolished in order to retain social stability. The government eliminated these freedoms by censoring art and religion, by predestining peoples’ social caste prior their birth, and by controlling each individual’s life with the introduction of conditioning.
At the beginning of the novel, the Director addresses his students and mentions, “ We also predestine and condition. We decant our babies as socialized human beings, as Alphas or Epsilons, as future sewage workers or future Directors of Hatcheries,” (p. 29). Citizens of the World State are categorized into distinct social classes, before they come into existence. Mr. Foster explains, “The lower the caste, the shorter the oxygen,” and this shows how chemical conditioning of the embryos presets the mentality and physical features of individuals towards a certain standard specified by the government. (p. 29) In an autocratic society whose aim is to maintain perfection, people no longer have the right to choose who or what they want to be. The government engineers babies to grow into efficient adults, who will then again contribute towards a stabilized society.
After birth babies’ minds are altered to accept the moral education of the government. Two processes the new world uses to control human judgement are the Neo-Pavlovian process and hypnopaedia. The children, during early childhood, are trained to like and dislike certain aspects of life, nature, and science so that they can consume the maximum resources. Beta babies receive electric shocks in the presence of flowers and books and then the Director teaches how, “ They’ll grow up with what the psychologists … call an ‘instinctive’ hatred of books and flowers … they’ll be safe from books and botany all their lives," (p. 36). The conditioning of the children forms a barrier in their minds, so that they are never free to decide for themselves, but are always bounded by the instructions of the state. Thus, the government is achieving its goal, the maintenance of stability.
The Alpha students also got a chance to hear one of the hypnopaedic repetitions addressing Beta babies which echoed, “ Alpha children wear grey.
Brave New World is an unsettling, loveless and even sinister place. This is because Huxley endows his "ideal" society with features calculated to alienate his audience. Typically, reading Brave New World elicits the very same disturbing feelings in the reader which the society it depicts has notionally vanquished - not a sense of joyful anticipation. Huxley's novel presents a startling view of the future which on the surface appears almost comical. His intent, however, is not humor. Huxley's message is dark and depressing. His idea that in centuries to come, a one-world government will rise to power, stripping people's freedom, is not a new idea. What makes Huxley's interpretation different is the fact that his fictional society not only lives in a totalitarian government, but takes an embracive approach like mindless robots. For example, Soma, not nuclear bombs, is the weapon of choice for the World Controllers in Brave New World. The world leaders have realized that fear and intimidation have only limited power; these tactics simply build up resentment in the minds of the oppressed. Subconscious persuasion and mind-altering drugs, on the other hand, appear to have no side effects.
Totalitarian rulers often control the thoughts and beliefs of people as well. The citizens of the community are forbidden to question or explore things that are unknown to other citizens. By doing this, the government emphasizes that they know everything and have ...
The children screamed; their faces were distorted with terror.” (16) Even at a young age, the world state uses technology for children to understand what the society wants and does not want, repeatedly, so that they do not do so in the future either. In this case, the world state does not want children to read, reading produces emotions and a greater spectrum of knowledge. Shocks are used in Neo Pavlovian conditioning as a method used by children to fear books.
The novel Brave New World written by Aldous Huxley has been reviewed over time by many different people. Neil Postman is a man who has read Huxley’s novel and came to conclusions himself about the comparison between the novel, and the modern day problems we have in today’s society. Postman has made many relevant assertions as to how our modern society is similar to what Huxley had written about in his novel. The three main points I agree on with Postman is that people will begin to love their oppression; people would have no reason to fear books; and that the truth will be drowned by irrelevance. The first assertion Postman made regarded people loving their oppression.
In his novel Brave New World, Aldous Huxley illustrates ways in which government and advanced science control society. Through actual visualization of this Utopian society, the reader is able to see how this state affects Huxley’s characters. Throughout the book, the author deals with many different aspects of control. Whether it is of his subjects’ feelings and emotions or of the society’s restraint of population growth, Huxley depicts government’s and science’s role in the brave new world of tomorrow.
Huxley illustrates just how a real world government can come to tyrannical power over its citizens through the fear of war and terror. Barr explains this very method when he states:
There is an assembly line where different processes are performed in order for the subject to have the characteristics desired by the designers. “The surrogate goes round slower; therefore passes through the lung at longer intervals; therefore gives the embryo less oxygen. Nothing like oxygen-shortage for keeping an embryo below par” (7). The shortage of oxygen provided to the Epsilon children serves as a natural inhibitor in order to keep them from being free thinkers aspiring to disrupt the status quo. This allows them to create workers who are the backbone of the society while ensuring that they will not revolt as they cannot see how they are being mistreated. Treating these children no better than a new smartphone being assembled on a production line shows how far the World State is willing to go to remove the humanity out of its subject’s lives. This process allows for the World State to create an ever growing obedient population. While this is partly due to the creation of the people as subjects, it is also due to the conditioning provided by the World State in order to keep them obedient. However, if these children were to be brought up by their own kind, no matter how they were created, it would be far harder for the World State to control them. This would be because they would be brought up in the best interest of humanity not in the best interest of the World
In Brave New World, stability is ensured through each individual’s conformity to the state’s values. Conformity begins in the hatchery where babies are modified and mass produced. In the
However, Huxley was afraid of these perfectionists. The world that he saw developing was one where thought was limited by the government. As a writer he decided to show what the world of the future was really turning into, a world of dictators, a world of totalitarianism. A major part of any culture is the way the passage of time is marked. In our neo-Christian society we say a time is either BC or AD, (equated with the birth and death of Christ).
Social restriction robs individuals of their creative personalities by preventing freedom of thought, behavior, and expression; but is vital to the World State for maintaining complete control over the society. Social restriction’s purpose is to enforce obedience conformity and compliance out of people. The World State achieves this through two methods; hypnopaedia and shock therapy. Hypnopaedia is sleep-teaching where morals are taught on on repeat during the infant years of children while they are asleep, these messages become permanently embedded in their mind and become their permanent, new, artificial personality. This is proven in the quote “... drops of liquid sealing wax, drops that adhere, incrust and inc...
The novel, Brave New World, takes place in the future, 632 A. F. (After Ford), where biological engineering reaches new heights. Babies are no longer born viviparously, they are now decanted in bottles passed through a 2136 metre assembly line. Pre-natal conditioning of embryos is an effective way of limiting human behaviour. Chemical additives can be used to control the population not only in Huxley's future society, but also in the real world today. This method of control can easily be exercised within a government-controlled society to limit population growth and to control the flaws in future citizens. In today's world, there are chemical drugs, which can help a pregnant mother conceive more easily or undergo an abortion. In the new world, since there is no need...
" In fact, "‘An Alpha-decanted, Alpha-conditioned man would go mad if he had to do Epsilon Semi-Moron work… Alphas can be completely socialized—but only on condition that you make them do Alpha
Even though the novel, Brave New World was written quite some time ago, Huxley still makes points that are relevant today. By using satire, he warns us on issues such as science, technology and religion. We should slow down our uses of science and technology, especially when using them for abusive purposes. We also need to be careful about letting the government get too involved in aspects of our everyday lives. If we start letting simple freedoms go, we could lose some major ones.
They program these humans to have needs and desires that will sustain a lucrative economy while not thinking of themselves as an individual. Huxley describes the World State’s intent to control their society through medical intervention, happiness, and consumerism, which has similarities to modern society. Designing life from conception is an intriguing concept. Brave New World’s World State is in control of the reproduction of people by intervening medically. The Hatchery and Conditioning Centre is the factory that produces human beings.
...l needs children before they are born. This may seem good in this moment, but in the future when better options become more available, these choices may be regretted. Tim Challies believes that although people can pick traits for children, they may also regret their decision in the future. If people pick traits of their child and it comes out “wrong,” will the parents not love them (Challies)? The morality of parents will change if they can customize their own children because any mistake will make the child unloved. In Huxley’s novel, the citizens of the London have no parents. When scientists create babies in a lab, they are opening up the possibility that society will become completely customized and that parents will not exist. Tim Challies stated that “Endless choice brings endless regret.” This regret has the potential to change the morality of society.