Synthesis Essay #3: “Our Direction: A Brave New World” Paralyzingly forbidding lifelessness filled the callous laboratories, where embryos were genetically engineered and conditioned for their caste and occupation. In this dystopian society, concepts and principles, such as individuality, tranquility, reclusion, marriage, love, and diversity, are tremendously neglected. This is the picture that Aldous Huxley paints in his satiric book Brave New World, in which the society turns to the drug soma to fix a majority of their problems, isolates threats, such as innovative outcasts, on islands away from the main populations, and spends all its time being “happy.” Though Huxley’s depiction may not portray the future, which we now call our modern …show more content…
In Huxley’s Brave New World as the one of the ten Controllers of the world Mustapha Mond explains, the drug soma is Christianity without tears, meaning in their society, instead of turning to God in a state of crisis, the citizens turn to soma, which makes them “happy” and high without any of the negative side effects that a religion may have. Essentially, soma is just a quick fix, a way of covering up the negative emotions that may occasionally lead to people questioning all that their world stands for. In this way, soma is similar to some antidepressant drugs, such as the class of antidepressant drugs tricyclics. According to Laura Ann King, a psychologist and the author of the textbook Experience Psychology, “[t]ricyclics reduce the symptoms of depression in approximately 60 to 70 percent of cases” (493). This implies that, like soma, tricyclics do not cure depression but masks it and its symptoms. Tricyclics are an entire class of antidepressant drugs, which means there is not solely one drug that, like soma, covers up the negative emotions; there are many. As King explains, depressive disorders, disorders in which one suffers from depression, are common (450). This means that it is common for people in our world to take antidepressant drugs, like the class tricyclics, to suppress the negative emotions that depression constantly brings up. This …show more content…
If anything, we definitely seem as if we are everything, except even remotely close to that type of world; however, we may not distant from that world due to electronics. According to the article “Mobile Mindset Study,” a study, conducted by the means of an online survey by Harris Interactive from May 8 through 10, 2012, among 2,097 adults ages 18 and older, concluded that 30% of those surveyed admitted that they check their phones during a meal with others. If you keep in account that this survey has a limited opening, age range, situation, and sample size, this signifies that well over 30% people use a phone in the presence of friends and family. Also according to the article “How Your Cell Phone Hurts Your Relationships” written by Helen Lee Lin and published online on Scientific American, “. . . a recent set of studies by Andrew K. Przybylski and Netta Weinstein of the University of Essex showed that our phones can hurt our close relationships.” This means that well over 30% of the population are hurting and possibly destroying their relationships with others, which can lead to the decline of meaningful relationships among people. As Nicholas G. Carr states in his book The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, “[t]he seduction of technology are hard to resist . . .” (224).
In Aldous Huxley’s dystopian phenomenon Brave New World, the resonating idea of a free will fronts the truth of enslavement through the malicious conditioning that they experience throughout their lives. Huxley introduces the theme of through the widespread use of soma, a free drug handed out to the citizens of the World State used to make people feel “happy.” Represents how the leaders of World State use drugs to control their society through making them believe they are happy, when they really are not. Multiple characters throughout Brave New World experience this manipulation of the government but it ends up not turning out how the government expected it too.
In the novel The Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley, the residents of the World State no longer live in the human condition. The negative emotions of fear and embarrassment have been suppressed by their lifelong conditioning and the perfect drug, soma. This could at first seem appealing, however in reality, it can have serious drawbacks. All of the residents of the World State believe they are happy, however, they have never experienced anything of a negative nature happen to them so they can compare. The importance of our negative emotions cannot be overlooked; these emotions, especially fear and embarrassment, help us to learn from our or others experiences, provide a counterbalance to the happiness in our lives, and bring us together as people.
Aldous Huxley’s compelling futuristic novel, Brave New World, takes place in an elaborately constructed society whose citizens have their intellect highly conditioned from birth to be entirely “jolly” [as stated in the text] throughout life merely through superficial fulfillment that the government is able to provide. However, the perpetually gleeful yet blind citizens are stripped of their dignity, compassion, values and morals-ultimately losing their human emotions without the realization that they’ve lost such an important aspect in life. When problems arise, the drug soma is a quick ‘solution’ to the distress it brings. An outcast to the new society, Bernard Marx struggles through his life, seeking to understand why his peer’s,
The people are being denied personal freedom and true happiness in their lives. By avoiding the underlying truth in their lives with the consumption of Soma. The citizens can 't gain any scientific or realistic truth, and the “Brave New World” society destroys all truths such as friendship and love. The truth related to human relationships and emotions such as love, sadness, compassion, and sympathy are some of those truths. Normally, people feel these emotions, and it is what identifies us as humans.
In Aldous Huxley’s dystopia of Brave New World, he clarifies how the government and advances in technology can easily control a society. The World State is a prime example of how societal advancements can be misused for the sake of control and pacification of individuals. Control is a main theme in Brave New World since it capitalizes on the idea of falsified happiness. Mollification strengthens Huxley’s satirical views on the needs for social order and stability. In the first line of Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, we are taught the three pillars on which the novels world is allegedly built upon, “Community, Identity, Stability" (Huxley 7).