Censorship In Brave New World

Science Fiction can be seen as fictional but also suggestive of our world today, with implications of science, technology and history. With technology growing at a rapid pace, there may be a need to control what is put out. As technology is growing, so is the government with their need to censor certain parts of technology and its bearings. This can be seen in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, citizens are conditioned to pay no mind to the past, allowing the government to control and censor certain parts of history. The amount of information they/re allowed to know is very limited, as it also is in our world today.

Huxley’s idea of governmental control over information suggest that in our current time, we are moving away from history

and the past; instead, we are accelerating into a world similar to Huxley’s Brave New World. The existence of history and the past isn't dominant in Brave New World; instead people live in the present, paying no attention to what has previously happened to them. In our society today, it seems like we too are emigrating and paying less attention to the past, with social media and technology being supreme. As the government withholds more information for us, we seen to pay less attention to our past and pay more attention to the technology given to us. History and technology is relevant to Brave New World because it explains their lifestyle and our possible future, page 24 states, “Then, turning to his students, “What I’m going to tell you now,” he said, “may sound incredible. But then, when you’re not accustomed to history, most facts about the past do sound incredible. ’” This implies as technology accelerates and becomes stronger and stronger, we may forget who we are or who we used to be.

Huxley’s theory about history becoming irrelevant is shown in our world today with the decline of history majors. In the article “The Number of History Majors Continues to Drop” it states, “Research institutions have been hit hardest by this decline in history majors, but baccalaureate colleges and master’s colleges and universities are not very far behind.” It entails that the decrease has been going on for a while, and it may as well continue dropping all together. This suggests that in time, our history may be vague or gone in the future. With the new generation, the students being less interested in studying history and the new interest of technology can lead to the teaching of history to future generations. The article continues, ““According to Mikaelian’s data, which he draws from the National Center for Education Statistics, the number of bachelor’s degrees in history dropped by 9 percent for the second year in a row. Not good. ” With the high percentage of a 9% decrease of history majors two years in a row, we could be looking at a faster or steady decrease. Therefore, Huxley’s theory of the depletion and importance of history is shown in the current modern day drop of history majors.

Governmental control and how the government censors part of our history in our society today is shown in the article, “The Long History of Censorship” The article explaining our long history of censored information from the government states, “Censorship has followed the free expressions of men and women like a shadow throughout history.

In ancient societies, for example China, censorship was considered a legitimate instrument for regulating the moral and political life of the population. The origin of the term censor can be traced to the office of censor established in Rome i 443 BC. ” This quote explains that we may know less about our history than we think. Since the beginning of an established government, they have been retaining information from us for various unknown reasons. Similar to our world today, many citizens from Huxley’s Brave New World don't even know any part of their history. They are conditioned to pay no mind by the government and go by their everyday life. We too may be conditioned since long ago, but now it’s prominent that the government retains and ensors our information and is keeping us from knowing the truth about

history.

Furthermore, the fact that we may not know our own history is seen more as citizens start to question the reality of their situations and their past.

This is shown in the article, “Do You Know Your Own History? Lessons From My Father. ” stating, “I was saddened by a reality that maybe I don’t know my history. Maybe we as African Americans haven’t found our full voice yet because we don’t know. We don’t know how many great contributions, inventions, discoveries or innovations our own people have made. And not just contributions to the United States but contributions to the world. ” The reality is, due to our hardships in history such as slavery and discrimination, many African Americans may not know their own cultural history. This is due to the current governmental circumstances at the time and the government’s decision to decide that African Americans at the time did not deserve a history. Similarly, in Brave New World, their government decided from the start that they did not deserve to know their own history. Evidently, this led to many lead to the fall of history and as a result, many may not know what happened. In the long run, the piece of history that was censored by the government could disappear

altogether.

Finally, based on Huxley’s Brave New World and contemporary articles, it can be proven that governmental control over information suggest that in our current time, we are moving away from history and the past. We may be accelerating into a world similar to Brave New World, where history and information about the past isn't relevant. Many people today are unaware of their past due to past government censorship. As information continues to be censored and the fall of the interest in history, we soon may not know of our own history. With technology and the government growing at such a rapid pace, we may not know what the truth is anymore.