David Grayson once said that "Commandment Number One of any truly civilized society is this: Let people be different". Difference, or individuality, however, may not be possible under a dictatorial government. Aldous Huxley's satirical novel Brave New World shows that a government-controlled society often places restraints upon its citizens, which results in a loss of social and mental freedom. These methods of limiting human behavior are carried out by the conditioning of the citizens, the categorical division of society, and the censorship of art and religion.
Conditioning the citizens to like what they have and reject what they do not have is an authoritative government's ideal way of maximizing efficiency. The citizens will consume what they are told to, there will be no brawls or disagreements and the state will retain high profits from the earnings. People can be conditioned chemically and physically prior to birth and psychologically afterwards.
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...
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...rolled society appears to be a Utopia, where everyone is happy and lives in harmony, but the price paid is comparable to the superficial happiness that the citizens receive. Without the freedom of choice, the citizens do not actually realize the joy when a task is accomplished. Without having to work for a goal, the people do not appreciate the pleasure once the goal is achieved and do not actually understand the true meaning of happiness. The price for Utopia, in a word, is freedom.
Works Cited and Consulted
Bedford, Sybill. Alodus Huxley. New York: Harper and Row, 1974.
Berton, Pierre. The Great Depression. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1990.
Huxley, Aldous. Brave New World. London: Flamingo, 1994.
Rae, John. Henry Ford. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1969.
Woodcock, George. Dawn and the Darkest Hour. London: Faber and Faber, 1972.
The Cajuns are considered to be descendants of Acadian exiles who live mostly within the state of Louisiana. The French colonized the region of Acadia which is now Nova Scotia and the Acadians were the French colonists who lived in the area. However there were also English colonists in the area and the groups didn’t get along well. The French lost Nova Scotia to the British in a war which led to the Treaty of Utrecht (signed in 1713) which formally named Acadia as a British territory (Dormon, 39). The treaty forced the Acadians to swear an oath of allegiance to the British crown which they refused because this would require them to renounce their Catholic religion for that of the Anglican church, because of this the likelihood of another war with the French was high. The Acadians refusal to swear an oath to the British caused the British to order a deportation of the Acadians who then fled with whatever they could carry. In 1784, the King of Spain consented to allowing the Acadians to settle in Southern Louisiana. However when the Acadians arrived they had some issues with the French aristocracy who didn’t rea...
The larger of the two subgroups, Cajun French, is more properly known in today’s society as Louisiana French. Cajuns are an ethic group that is comprised of the Acadian exiles. The Acadians are a group of French speaking people who travelled from Canada to Louisiana in the late eighteenth century. The reason they wore forced to leave Acadia is because of the British Conquest. The language of the Acadians originated from the French of seventeenth century France. Once they arrived and settl...
... ?gris-gris? or hex existed as a common belief and no one questioned their abilities. The ones who practiced this were known as ?traiteurs?. Traiteurs were greatly respected and thought to be very reliable. They were used for minor ailments when doctors were not available. The term ?traiteurs? means ?treator? and originated from the French (Post, 1974). As long as Cajuns lived in Louisiana so have these ?traiteurs? and they will forever be a part of Cajun culture.
In his novel Brave New World, Aldous Huxley illustrates ways in which government and advanced science control society. Through actual visualization of this Utopian society, the reader is able to see how this state affects Huxley’s characters. Throughout the book, the author deals with many different aspects of control. Whether it is of his subjects’ feelings and emotions or of the society’s restraint of population growth, Huxley depicts government’s and science’s role in the brave new world of tomorrow.
Imagine a society in which its citizens have forfeited all personal liberties for government protection and stability; Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, explores a civilization in which this hypothetical has become reality. The inevitable trade-off of citizens’ freedoms for government protection traditionally follows periods of war and terror. The voluntary degradation of the citizens’ rights begins with small, benign steps to full, totalitarian control. Major methods for government control and censorship are political, religious, economic, and moral avenues. Huxley’s Brave New World provides a prophetic glimpse of government censorship and control through technology; the citizens of the World State mimic those of the real world by trading their personal liberties for safety and stability, suggesting that a society similar to Huxley’s could exist outside the realm of dystopian science fiction.
Brave New World is an unsettling, loveless and even sinister place. This is because Huxley endows his "ideal" society with features calculated to alienate his audience. Typically, reading Brave New World elicits the very same disturbing feelings in the reader which the society it depicts has notionally vanquished - not a sense of joyful anticipation. Huxley's novel presents a startling view of the future which on the surface appears almost comical. His intent, however, is not humor. Huxley's message is dark and depressing. His idea that in centuries to come, a one-world government will rise to power, stripping people's freedom, is not a new idea. What makes Huxley's interpretation different is the fact that his fictional society not only lives in a totalitarian government, but takes an embracive approach like mindless robots. For example, Soma, not nuclear bombs, is the weapon of choice for the World Controllers in Brave New World. The world leaders have realized that fear and intimidation have only limited power; these tactics simply build up resentment in the minds of the oppressed. Subconscious persuasion and mind-altering drugs, on the other hand, appear to have no side effects.
In most countries in our world, society has experienced technological advances to the point of being able to accomplish what Huxley envisioned. In contrast to Huxley’s vision, the moral standards of most nations allow all humans to enjoy basic human rights that embrace family, personal relationships, and individualism. Today’s society is able to comprehend how with the technological advances Huxley’s world could be a reality, but with the privilege of a democratic society, civilization would not allow the medical intervention for reproduction, the conditioning for happiness and consumerism. Work Cited "Brave New World by Aldous Huxley : Barron's Notes" Brave New World by Aldous Huxley: Barron's Notes. N.p., n.d. Web.
Islam has a deep history, beginning with ideas originating before Muhammad and spanning to the present day. Before Islam, the Bedouin people’s faith contained a belief in supreme beings alongside animism. They also put a large emphasis on ancestor worship (Swartz 15). Some groups...
Social restriction robs individuals of their creative personalities by preventing freedom of thought, behavior, and expression; but is vital to the World State for maintaining complete control over the society. Social restriction’s purpose is to enforce obedience conformity and compliance out of people. The World State achieves this through two methods; hypnopaedia and shock therapy. Hypnopaedia is sleep-teaching where morals are taught on on repeat during the infant years of children while they are asleep, these messages become permanently embedded in their mind and become their permanent, new, artificial personality. This is proven in the quote “... drops of liquid sealing wax, drops that adhere, incrust and inc...
One way that classical conditioning can be used to better society is through forms of controlling
The acceptance of “abnormal” sexualities has been a prolonged, controversial battle. The segregation is excruciating and the prejudice remarks are so spiteful that some people never truly recover. Homosexuals have been left suffering for ages. Life, for most homosexuals during the first half of the twentieth century, was mostly one of hiding: having to constantly hide their true feelings and tastes. Instead of restaurants and movies, they had to sit quiet in the dark and meet each other in concealed places such as bars. Homosexuals were those with “mental and psychic abnormalities” and were the victim of medical prejudice, police harassment, and church condemnation (Jagose 24). The minuscule mention or assumption of one’s homosexuality could easily lead to the loss of family, livelihood, and sometimes even their lives. It was only after the Stonewall riots and the organization of gay/lesbian groups that times for homosexuals started to look brighter.
Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World illustrates a perfect society: “community, identity, stability” (Huxley 7). This superb environment, however, is only achieved through the dehumanization of each individual. The world is run by world-controllers, a powerful oligarchy, whom have successfully brainwashed, or conditioned, children for the sole purpose of controlling their minds (Biderman 549). In result, individuals have lost their ability to think and act for themselves. Children are stripped of human rights, even before conditioning, by being a product of governmental test tube reproduction. They are artificially produced and only made with the consent of the world-controllers. Not only are they produced by the government, but they are produced in scores of embryos that are all identical for a sole purpose. Their lives are then controlled by the government to ensure happiness and success. Each citizen has their own little job in the social system and during afterhours, is told to be adventurous, dangerous, and promiscuous. It all sounds like a magical fairy-land, until suicide becomes the only option to escape dehumanization.
One of the most pressing issues in Brave New World is the use of science and technology and how it affects people’s lives. In the novel, technology is far more advanced than it was in Huxley’s time. One of the main uses of technology in the book is for making human beings. Humans are no longer born, but rather “decanted (Huxley 18).” Technology and science are used to make an embryo into whatever kind of human that is desired. Some embryos are even deprived of oxygen in order to make the person less intelligent much like a soggy piece of pizza.
Next, a more diverse environment is found in public schools than in private schools. At public schools the ethnic makeup is as follows: 58% white, 20% hispanic, 16% black, 4% Asian, 1% Native American, 1% other. In private schools, 74% o...
Everybody has an opinion about education and what method is the best. Homeschooling is a new class of education that is growing in popularity, public school is a type of education that has been around for several years and is most universally used, and private school is the other conventional form of education that some people still prefer over the other options. Nowadays, more and more parents are pulling their children out of ordinary school environments and have chosen to teach their children at home. Now more than ever, parents are confused about which type of education is the best for their children.