Brave New World

Central Quote

"And that," put in the Director sententiously, "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" (16).

This quote illustrates the central theme of the society depicted in Brave New World. Their society is built upon being happy, so babies are conditioned from before decanting to like what it has been determined they will be doing for the rest of their lives. If they are going to work in the tropics they are conditioned to like heat, if they will be working on rockets they will be conditioned to like being topsy-turvy.

Connections

The Matrix -
Like in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, in The Matrix, humans are not born, they are farmed. Huxley's vision illustrates what would happen in humans initiated this process, whereas The Matrix illustrated what would happen if the machines took over and ran the show. In Brave New World Huxley "The Machine turns, turns and must keep on turning-forever. It is death if it stands still." (Huxley 42). The machine in Brave New World is the stability of Society and the world, whereas the more literal machine in The Matrix is the machines farming humans for their energy. Brave New World also shares similarities with The Matrix in that originally the machines made The Matrix a perfect place but the human mind rejected this and they lost a whole crop of humans. This seems similar to the reaction the Savage had to civilization, in that eventually he killed himself.

1984 -
Brave New World is a different spin of George Orwell's 1984, instead of a world bred from fear and hate, Brave New World talks of a world based on happiness. However both societies have taken away the freedoms of their citizens, in Brave New World this is masked by eternal happiness, whereas 1984 has a decidedly bleaker outlook and ruling philosophy. Suggesting people to love what they will be forced to do instead of flogging them into obedience, as is done in 1984. This difference in philosophy is reflected by the slogans of each respective society. The harsh totalitarian rule of 1984 is exemplefied by their slogans, "War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength" (Orwell 26). Where as the focus on social stability and global happiness of the world of Brave New World is reflected by their motto, "Community, Identity, Stability" (Huxley 3).

Artificial Life -

Last year in Biology we learned about how a group of scientists had managed to create artificial life. This would be a first crucial step in the direction of making a world such as Brave New World possible. The process of bottling and conditioning babies would be made much easier with a greater understanding of how life works and how to create and manipulate life. It might even be possible to perform Bokanovsky's Process, or something similar to it in the future, " 'Essentialy,' the D.H.C. concluded, 'bokanovskification consists of a series of arrests of development. We check the normal growth and, paradoxically enough, the egg responds by budding" (Huxley 6). The applications of this process would be very widespread if it were to become real, for instance, the meat industry would be revolutionized. They would no longer have to manually breed animals, they could get thousands of cows from one egg and sperm.

Visual Representation

This image shows a factory assembly line, this relates to Brave New World because their society is based off the factory assembly lines pioneered by Henry Ford, they even view him as a sort of religious figure, exclaiming Oh, Ford! Instead of Oh, God! Babies are conditioned and nursed in bottles on assembly lines that slowly work their way from fertilization and Bokanovskification (essentially making hundreds of identical twins from a single egg) to decanting (birth). Babies are "Each bottle could be placed on one of fifteen racks, each rack... was a conveyor... two thousand one hundred and thirty-six metres in all. One circuit on the cellar at ground level, one on the first gallery, half on the second, and on the two hundred and sixty-seventh morning, daylight in the Decanting Room. Independent existence-so called." (Huxley 12). In Brave New World the assembly line has become the giver of life and a way of life. Children from a young age are conditioned to want and buy new things, thereby turning the wheels of economy.

Questions

Is it better to be happy or to be free?

Is the happiness experience by the people in Brave New World fake?

What is real happiness?

Is there such a thing as real happiness?

Are the world controllers evil?

Reflection

I really enjoyed Brave New World, especially enjoyed the beginning of the book where Huxley described the shining civilization built off the efficiency and precision of the factory assembly line. While reading the book I had very vivid images of what the world looked like, and of what different scenes looked like in the book. I particularly enjoyed Huxley's basis of science in the book, it made the whole deal believable and seem, at least partially, plausible. However I think the book got a bit stale as they moved to the Savage Reservation and came back from it. Yes it did get into the deeper philosophical issues and dealings with Huxley's imagined society but I was not as enthralled as I had been in the beginning.

That said, I would thoroughly recommend others read this book, it shows basically another take off 1984's world and I would especially recommend it to anyone who is scientifically oriented or takes and interest in science. That was what really got me hooked in this book was the scientific relevance of the concept. I recommend that anyone who reads this book read it in conjunction with 1984, there are so many similarities and differences that can provide a broad view of issues the authors saw in society and really get you thinking about your own society.