Representation Of Truth In Society In Aldous Huxley's Brave New World

Subtitle

A study into the representation of truth in our society and the role of a designer in framing that perception.

Introduction

What is perceived as true is influenced by our knowledge – carrying with it complications that we may not be aware of. Such ‘perception’ can be framed by factors so subtle that go unnoticed. These factors include the education system, the media and even advertising.

Importance of Research

Our concepts govern our thoughts and structure what we perceive, right down to our daily functioning. Thus, it plays a central role in defining everyday realities (Lakoff & Johnson 1980, p.12). However, we are usually not aware of our conceptual system and we act and think more or less automatically along certain lines everyday.

In Huxley’s book, the people in the city were controlled and peace is maintained by conditioning infant minds and soothing adults with a tranquilizer drug called ‘soma’. Soma is used by citizens to escape bouts of dissatisfaction, so much so that they become enslaved by the drug and are turned into mindless drones. Outside the city were savages who were not conditioned. When one of them enters into the city, he tries to point out their conditioning but people refuse to hear it. Huxley then suggests that society is controlled through inflicting pleasure that people become distracted to the point they stop thinking or questioning. Perhaps the only way to create a stable and permanent society is for a totalitarian regime to have full power. This regime would ensure people’s satisfaction so that they can control their behavior. As a result, independent thinkers are forbidden from disturbing the social fabric. By doing so, it creates a society that welcomes people who conform and frowns upon individual

People these days rarely define themselves by ‘thinking’ but by the clothes and shoes they wear. The overwhelming influx of advertisements are saturating people’s minds to the point that they hardly stop to think and question their decisions.

With that being said, this reduces people to become ‘spectacles’. This spectacle suggests a mediated reality and demands obedience. As Debord (1967) suggests in the society of the spectacle, ‘everything has become mere representations’ and that ‘the spectacles’ one-sidedness eliminates any possibility of a dialogue.’ George Orwell and Aldous Huxley’s predictions were true in their own essence. We are controlled, no longer by the censorship of information by the government, but by a society created in which confuses us with so much information that the truth would be submerged in a sea of irrelevance.

3. A Designer’s Role in Framing