In the novel, “Brave New World,” written by Aldous Huxley, the World State upholds a unique set of values to establish a perfect and stable society. Along with the motto “Community, Identity, Stability,” the government uses various techniques to manipulate every individual’s mind. Some are obvious, such as genetic engineering, social conditioning, mind-altering drugs, and several types of entertainment. The primary goal of this artificial world is to maintain happiness in order to prevent conflict and dissatisfaction. To certain criteria, sacrifices that the World State requires of its citizens aren’t a price worth paying to sustain social stability since citizens’ freedom and individuality are abandoned. Excessive consumption of drugs mostly hides people away from letting them experience reality. Once Linda returns to civilization, she spends her days “lying in bed and taking holiday after holiday, without ever having to come back to a headache or a fit of vomiting, without ever being made to feel as you always felt peyolt,… …show more content…
At birth, people are classified into their own caste system and assigned their own social roles. Then, they are taught to perform their designated tasks properly to preserve stability. The World State controller assumes “People are happy; they get what they want, and they never want what they can't get,... they're so conditioned that they practically can't help behaving as they ought to behave” (pg. 220). Every person is expected to follow the principle of collectivism which generally views themselves as a whole in a community. They ought to have no unique thoughts since satisfaction is generated through communal activities and mind-altering drugs. Consequently, the World State has suppressed its citizens from freely expressing desires and forced them to pursue the norms as humanoid
Aldous Huxley’s text, Brave New World, will leave you questioning your perspective on life and it’s choices. Within the novel, curious readers can see that government control over all in an attempt to create a utopia, can sometimes have a counter effect, creating a dystopia. Wielding it’s tool of conformity, The World State has forced its ideology into the minds of its people at a young age, in hopes of avoiding rebellion. In many ways this is how our society functions in the real world. The genre of Huxley's text may be fiction, but the society fabricated in Brave New World may not be so fictional after all.
The world is an organized, methodical place where the government nurtures classes to rule and creates classes to be ruled. Everyone is indoctrinated from birth to the World State’s consumerist ideologies to support the world’s economy and the ruling classes. The society of Brave New World is superficially happy with a
A Society under Control: Pre-established Unsatisfied Classes in Brave New World Utopian societies are supposed to fall under the parameters of what is known as perfect, they are expected to work properly, maintain their citizen under control and provide them with a sense of happiness. In Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, the ideal and futuristic society “World State”, has everything predetermined by the main leaders and officials. In the World State, through the use of science and technology embryos are created with characteristics accordingly to the castes they will be placed at, dividing citizens into classes and limiting up each individuals’ freedom and uniqueness. World State government’s main goal is to maintain within the community,
The alternative environment, the Savage Reservation, allows for the freedom of thought and choice; however, these freedoms had previously resulted in chaos and instability, in which the World State seeks to prevent. The World State is the superior place to reside due to its blissful ignorance and sustainability. According to the Controller, “No pains have been spared to make your lives emotionally easy – to preserve you, so far as that possible, from having emotions at all” (Huxley 44). By being inherently emotionless, the citizens of the World State are free from every emotion, thus negativity and pain are unfamiliar.
“[T]hat is the secret of happiness and virtue-liking what you’ve got to do. All conditioning aims at that: making people like their unescapable social destiny,” spoke the Director (Huxley 87). In this society, people's life quality is low but their personal satisfaction is high. They are conditioned by Word Controllers to always feel happy and have every one of their desires met without any choice or freedom. In the novel, Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, the effort to sacrifice people's happiness prevents them from exposure to the truth, real emotions, and deep thoughts.
However, while initially providing beneficial leaps and bounds as pleasantries to the public, the World State discreetly uses positive technology against its citizens by manipulating people’s reliance on technology for their happiness and satisfaction in life. Institutional manipulation of its citizens’ obsessions over technology can be clearly seen with the World State sponsored drug soma, which people take to escape the realities and hardships life presents them with. The momentary lapse of happiness soma provides is used as a vessel of supremacy over the individual by the World State in order to reduce any sense of individuality a person may feel, further protecting the superpower from any revolutionary ideals or attempts at reform from its populace. In addition to manipulating its citizens with technology, the World State also manipulates technology itself, creating the Hatcheries from positive, life-improving technology to control the birth of its masses. When controlling the reproduction of the populace, the World State can freely indoctrinate more people into its ideology, thus increasing its power without the consequence of opposition.
Mustapha Mond reflects on his belief that societies happiness and social stability are, in all respects, directly proportional. His approach to societal happiness is achieved through the technological control and manipulation of the population, which leaves the individuals of the society unable to form genuine human connections. He sees the pursuit of individual freedom and individuality as a threat to his adamancy of happiness-through-conformity. This is particularly relevant to modern society given its increasing hand-held technological dependency and its corresponding effect on individuality. In an article on the
The World State in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World values social stability above anything else, and the motto "Community, Identity, Stability" reflects this idea. Mustapha Mond, one of the World State's leaders, states that to maintain this stability, individuals must sacrifice real feelings and emotional attachments. The significance of "community" and "identity" in the motto is that they are essential for achieving stability in society. The World State creates a sense of community by conditioning its citizens to think and act alike, while also promoting a strong sense of identity through the caste system. These concepts are essential to maintaining social stability, as they prevent dissent and ensure that everyone is working towards the same goals.
Conformity and group mentality are major aspects of social influence that have governed some of the most notorious events and experiments in history. The Holocaust is a shocking example of group mentality, or groupthink, which states that all members of the group must support the group’s decisions strongly, and all evidence leading to the contrary must be ignored. Social norms are an example of conformity on a smaller scale, such as tipping your waiter or waitress, saying please and thank you, and getting a job and becoming a productive member of society. Our society hinges on an individual’s inherent need to belong and focuses on manipulating that need in order to create compliant members of society by using the ‘majority rules’ concept. This
This idea of the machine controlling every aspect of people's lives and pushing them away from other people is similar to the government's influence over addiction and pleasure in Brave New World and is further explored in Guy Debord's The Society of the Spectacle, wherein Debord argues that the modern world is characterized by the creation of artificial desires (like Soma) and the promotion of consumerism which is again similar to the World State. This leads to a society where people are unable to find meaning and purpose in their lives. As Debord writes, "The spectacle is the sun that never sets over the empire of modern passivity" that the government's control over addiction and pleasure creates a society of passivity (Debord, 17). In Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, the government's use of addiction and pleasure as a means of control has significant social implications, leading to a society where individuality is suppressed, human
Aldous Huxley’s dystopian novel Brave New World presents an entirely unrecognizable world almost six-hundred years in the future. In this futuristic society or “World State”, conventional ideals such as marriage and family are now viewed as archaic and grossly pornographic. This negative perception of current societal standards stems largely from the World State’s guiding phrase “community, identity, and stability”. To achieve these new ideals, people are no longer born but decanted from bottles, wherein they not only develop as a fetus but also begin to undergo conditioning. The goal of this conditioning is to make people perfectly content in their predetermined caste.
In the novel, Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley provides several examples of the truths individuals refuse in order to live in ignorance and bliss. Society thrives on its stability.(BS) The Controllers revoke any option of truth because it creates discomfort and discomfort encourage unhappiness. Huxley writes Mustapha Mond as the perfect example of the control of truth to ensure happiness. Mond explains how stability plays a major part in the pursuit of happiness.
Truth and happiness are two things people desire, and in the novel, an impressive view of this dystopia’s two issues is described. In this society, people are created through cloning. The “World State” controls every aspect of the citizens lives to eliminate unhappiness. Happiness and truth are contradictory and incompatible, and this is another theme that is discussed in “Brave New World” (Huxley 131). In the world regulated by the government, its citizens have lost their freedom; instead, they are presented with pleasure and happiness in exchange.
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).
These ideals are ingrained in the children of the World State by drowning their minds with hypnopaedic sayings on a consistent schedule. A majority of the personality of individuals in this society boils down to these hypnopaedic sayings as the citizens unconsciously believe them as truth. The citizens of the World State have little chance to develop any depth of personality due to hypnopaedia, resulting in a society that has