In Brave New World, by Alduous Huxley, a new and controversial society is presented to its audience. A world of artificial intelligence where humans are cultivated in test tubes and social class is predetermined by the chemical mix they receive in vitro leads John Savage into corruption. He is torn between a world in which people’s fates were placed upon themselves and a world in which Alphas and Betas ruled a society with n identity. Thomas Mavin gives thorough insight into the classification of the two societies and favors the world of Malpais, a society that allows people to have control over their lives and experience true feelings instead of fake happiness. Between these two worlds with different positions on free will, the only way for people to live a truly meaningful life would be to live in Malpais.
In the Brave New World, Huxley created a society in which people acted upon the cast they were born in. There was no such thing as free will and happiness could be purchased in a pill, soma. In fact, Arthur Cross wrote in A Shorter History of England and Greater Britain that “In Brave New World, there’s pleasure as a substitute for freedom.” In this world, people would rather become blind to the truth of life by forcing themselves into a “high” instead of dealing with the facts of life. With this pill, people are able to take themselves away from stressful, depressing, or uncomfortable moments of life. They become oblivious to true life. In fact, to many of they characters who constantly use the pill, their lives become dreams because often they are not truly living in it. Cross also points out that the Brave New World was more stable and well maintained because of conformity and single points of views. In the society today, there is the constant threat of wars and altercations with different people or countries. With a uniform society, comes uniform ideas and peace. With this in mind, countries save millions of dollars because there is no need for weapons of mass destruction. This new society becomes thoroughly efficient. There is only one leader, the World Leader, and the people live under his iron- clad fist. With the Democratic Party and Republican Party in today’s society comes constant conflict and there is always one side that will be unpleased with certain decisions and laws.
As analyzed by social critic Neil Postman, Huxley's vision of the future, portrayed in the novel Brave New World, holds far more relevance to present day society than that of Orwell's classic 1984. Huxley's vision was simple: it was a vision of a trivial society, drowned in a sea of pleasure and ignorant of knowledge and pain, slightly resembling the world of today. In society today, knowledge is no longer appreciated as it has been in past cultures, in turn causing a deficiency in intelligence and will to learn. Also, as envisioned by Huxley, mind altering substances are becoming of greater availability and distribution as technology advances. These drugs allow society to escape from the problems of life instead of dealing with reality. With divorce rates higher than ever in the past few decades, it has become evident that lust has ruined the society's sexual covenants. People are indulging in their sexual motives; lust runs rampant, thus strong, long-lasting relationships are becoming a rarity.
Paradox Of The Pill. (Cover Story)." Time 175.17 (2010): 40-47. Military & Government Collection. Web. 9 Apr. 2014.
“Brave New World,” is a novel written by Aldous Huxley where he explains that everything is based on a futuristic science which he claimed sprang forth from him because of his experience as “an ordered universe in a world of plan less incoherence” (River 4 1974). People seem to care more about temporal things rather than emotions. Technology also seems to be the most important aspect and everyone is affected by it in one way or another, whether if it is negative or positive. This does not necessarily mean that everyone is fully happy with technology because in a way they are all slaves to it. Another thing discussed in the novel is the lack of freedom. Due to a lot of technological development there exists this division in between people even before their birth that their fate has already been decided where subsist these casts such as Alphas, Betas, Gammas, Deltas e.t.c. They are pushed away from freedom of choice and forced to live in a bubble of their own.
Watkins, E. (2012). How the pill became a lifestyle drug: the pharmaceutical industry and birth
Although our world is not extreme as the World State, we are closer than we have ever been to Aldous Huxley’s future prediction of the world. In this dystopian novel, people want what they want, but never what they can’t have. They live through meaningless relationships, extreme censorship, and a substantial amount of soma. Writer, Frances Tapon, says, “Psychologists believe that there are seven factors that influence your happiness: wealth, education, personal freedom, equality, health, social position, and positive life events.” The only difference between what makes us happy and what makes them happy is conditioning. In the World State, people are conditioned from the day they are decanted with chemicals, hypnopaedia, and Neo Pavlova. Humans today have always been told “money is power” and “go to college, get a good job, then you will be happy.” Even though we feel emotions, people will do anything to feel happy just like the World State. Brave New World is our world with a surplus of drugs, sex, and people conditioned to think that their life is happy and
Brave New World is a novel about a dystopian society named “The World State” set in A.F. 632 (632 years after Henry Ford’s Death). In this society, advanced technology is used to mass produce people and condition them into only wanting and doing certain things, creating a caste system. However, doing so takes away people’s freedom to think for one’s self. Certain people are able to step back from the monotony of this society and because of this they feel detached. This scenario adds an element of alienation, this scenario poses as a question, is it better to be happy or individualistic.
Imagine living in a society where there is no sense of independence, individual thought or freedom. A society where the government uses disturbing methods that dehumanize people in order to force conformity upon them. Taking away any sense of emotion, It would be very undesirable to live in a society with such oppression. Such society is portrayed in Aldous Huxley's novel Brave New World. The World State uses social restrictions to create permanent artificial personalities for people within the society. The World State also uses controlled groupings of people to brainwash them further to be thoughtless people with no sense of individualism. Lastly, the World State uses drugs to create artificial happiness for people, leaving no room for intense emotion which causes people to revolt against the World State. Within the novel Brave New World, it is seen that the World State eliminates individuality through social restrictions, government controlled groupings and the abuse of drugs to maintain control of the population.
"'God isn't compatible with machinery and scientific medicine and universal happiness.'" So says Mustapha Mond, the World Controller for Western Europe in Aldous Huxley's novel Brave New World. In doing so, he highlights a major theme in this story of a Utopian society. Although the people in this modernized world enjoy no disease, effects of old age, war, poverty, social unrest, or any other infirmities or discomforts, Huxley asks 'is the price they pay really worth the benefits?' This novel shows that when you must give up religion, high art, true science, and other foundations of modern life in place of a sort of unending happiness, it is not worth the sacrifice.
Huxley effectively uses distortion in Brave New World in his depiction of Soma as a replacement for religion. Soma is a rationed narcotic that is emphasized by the government to help the people escape from their problems. The people of Utopia have become dependent on the drug to keep them in a constant state of pleasure. In their "perfect" society there is no escape from happiness. The primary example of the degrading effects of Soma is Linda. Brought back from the Savage Reservation after being left behind pregnant, Linda faced many moral and ethical dilemmas she chose to avoid. Her addiction to Soma, which is looked upon as a good thing by everyone except John, brings about the terrible end to her life in which she was in a state of constant delusion. Soma, as Mustapha Mond puts it, is "Christianity without tears" (244). Soma, in effect, is the key to social stability in Utopia. Soma prevents uprisings, saves revolutions and suppresses emotions. Although Huxley's distortion of religion is powerful, there are other strong arguments in the book.
1.) The Savage Reservation is similar to the Utopia world in several ways. They both have drugs that are designed to calm people down. Soma, used in the Utopia and mescal used in the Reservation. They both also have a separation within their own society. The Utopia has social castes and the reservation has separation between the men and women, the men having more power. The two worlds also both have ceremonies. The Utopia has the orgy porgy ceremony in which everyone gathers around and has an orgy, hence the name. The Savage Reservation has traditional dancing ceremonies like the many traditional Indian tribes have today. The two cultures have many similar ideas, just expressed a little differently.
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 Huxley’s, Brave New World, there is a society, known as the World State, where people are divided into different castes, and depending on the caste they are set in determines their place in the community and purpose in the world. If one is an Alpha, he/she will be highly intelligent and be a leader of the free world, while one who is an Epsilon has lowered intelligence and is conditioned to do physical labor. From the process of the human beings being created in test tubes, to their birth and development, they are trained to believe in certain truths. Brave New World is a Utopian novel that uses a form of brainwashing to conform people to the ideal society placed in the plot. Other literature works, and real life occurrences, make it evident that brainwashing is used to condition to believe and behave I certain ways, which become their morals and truths.
For years, authors and philosophers have satirized the “perfect” society to incite change. In Brave New World, Aldous Huxley describes a so-called utopian society in which everyone is happy. This society is a “controlled environment where technology has essentially [expunged] suffering” (“Brave New World”). A member of this society never needs to be inconvenienced by emotion, “And if anything should go wrong, there's soma” (Huxley 220). Citizens spend their lives sleeping with as many people as they please, taking soma to dull any unpleasant thoughts that arise, and happily working in the jobs they were conditioned to want. They are genetically altered and conditioned to be averse to socially destructive things, like nature and families. They are trained to enjoy things that are socially beneficial: “'That is the secret of happiness and virtue – liking what you've got to do. All conditioning aims at that: making people like their inescapable social destiny'” (Huxley 16). Citizens operate more like machinery, and less like humans. Humanity is defined as “the quality of being human” (“Humanity”). To some, humanity refers to the aspects that define a human: love, compassion and emotions. Huxley satirizes humanity by dehumanizing the citizens in the Brave New World society.
Many individuals wonder about whether using artificial pathways to happiness, through drugs, yields more positive or negative results for society. People enjoy the fact that they can easily escape from their stress by using these drugs. However, these drugs also can lead to terrible consequences, such as becoming more oblivious to reality or overdosing. In the novel Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, Huxley criticizes society’s reliance on drugs to provide citizens with artificial happiness. By writing about soma, a made-up drug that the government distributes in order to ensure that their citizens remain happy, Huxley implies that the allowance of similar drugs can lead individuals to become dependent on them and fine with their lack of freedom,
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.