Time In Brave New World

In Brave New World, time is significant not only in the general sense of the novel but also in the developing of the physical novel itself. Aldous Huxley transcends time in his chillingly accurate depiction of both humanity’s scientific presence and humanity’s direction. The concept of time is ever-present in Brave New World in that it is hardly present—the various mechanisms established by the reformers of society have near-wholly eliminated the importance of time.

The role of time in the World State is directly explored through the mention of the revised timeline. The timeline begins at Henry’s Ford’s release of the first Model T, as this date was “chosen as the opening date of the new era” (Huxley, 52). The people of this dystopia are bred

to view everything as happening A.F., or Anno Ford. In 632 A.F., the society modeled after Ford’s assembly line is playing out well. It is able to expand thanks to surgically removed ovaries that produce ova that are manually fertilized and incubated within the parameters necessary for their predetermined caste. Those at the hatchery “predestine and condition...decant[ing] the babies as socialized human beings” (Huxley, 13). People are bred both for and to like what they do—the supposed key to happiness and virtue in a society in which one is grown to fulfill their “unescapable social destiny” (Huxley, 16).
As per quota, an “Epsilon embryo must have an Epsilon environment as well as an Epsilon heredity” (Huxley, 14).

The society has been carefully mapped out, as to “stabilize the population” and maximize productivity, cooperation and consumption. On average, 11,000 cloned individuals are spawned from one ovary, through a process known as Bokanovsky’s process, “one of the major instruments of social stability” (Huxley, 7). Another instrument of stability practiced on these groups of humans is conditioning prior to being placed in the environment. As citizens are spawned in a hatchery, there is no concept of family, the most biological and oftentimes strongest attachment. The nine months in the womb do not happen, and even outside of that the concept of parents, siblings, or any deviation of family does not exist. In fact, when children were taken on a tour of the hatching facility, known also as a State Conditioning Centre, at the beginning of the novel, they blushed at the mention of “parent”, even questioning the actual existence of the term as non-smut. Beyond the family, the “home” also has been eliminated from the World State. Previously the center of life, a home is described as “a few small rooms, stiflingly over-inhabited..no air, no space; an understerilized prison...hot with the frictions of tightly packed life, reeking with emotion” (Huxley, 37). It is explained that Ford himself was “the first to reveal the appalling dangers of family life. The world was full of

fathers—was therefore full of misery; full of mothers—therefore of every kind of perversion from sadism to chastity; full of brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts—full of madness and suicide” (Huxley, 39). The complexities, the “suffocating intimacies” that were associated with the ”dangerous, insane, obscene relationships between the members of the family group!” (Huxley, 37) were simply too much for Mr. Ford. Children of the World State are in fact just that, as every individual is created by the state for the state and lives without affiliation with others for the entirety of their lives. Monogamy is not practiced, and citizens of this world are encouraged and required to participate in “normal erotic play” from birth (Huxley, 32). “Every one belongs to every one else” (Huxley, 40) is one of the hypnopædic proverbs, and it is quite unusual, even “horribly bad form” (Huxley, 41) to practice monogamy of any degree, especially with the looming risks because of “how strongly the D. H. C. objects to anything intense or long-drawn” (Huxley, 41). Associations, especially those between and individual and their mothers and lovers (Huxley, 41) were now seen as ridiculous in comparison to feeling nothing at all.
As many experiences are not something to reach or grow towards and those that are not Alphas or Betas work as a way of life (uniformly, and are bred to be content doing so), time in the World State is relevant only to those spawning the future members of the state, and even then in a purely mathematical, calculating form. The people of the World State are bred to serve their ideals of “Community, Identity, [and] Stability“ (Huxley, 3). “For particulars, as everyone knows, make for virtue and happiness; generalities are intellectually necessary evils. Not philosophers but fretsawyers and stamp collectors compose the backbone of society.” (Huxley, 4). The backbone of the World State, as one could imagine, is the caste system. The key to the caste system is conditioned responses and the implications of such conditioning. Hypnopædia and the clever genetic engineering done in the hatchery allow for a complacent society successfully controlled and maintained by cross-conditioning. Even the castes with the most power and individuality (members of these castes are not clones), the Alpha and Beta castes, are cross-conditioned to remain complacent. It is common knowledge that “Every one works for every one else. We can't do this without any one. Even Epsilons are useful. We couldn't do without Epsilons. Every one works for every one else” (Huxley, 74). Hypnopædia allows those in control to embed social norms and class consciousness. It is truly “The greatest moralizing and socializing force of all time” (Huxley, 28). By reciting hypnopædic proverbs but “one hundred repetitions three nights a week for four years” (Huxley, 47), the Controllers of the World State are able to influence even the subconscious minds of their citizens. Citizens of the World State live happily under the influence of soma, a cocaine-like, “Euphoric, narcotic, pleasantly hallucinant” (Huxley, 53) drug that citizens are given rations of and encouraged to take to absolve them of any bouts of mild dissatisfaction, anger, sadness and to enhance positive sensations such as joy, arousal and overall well-being—the “perfect drug” (Huxley, 53). It is not questioned, of course, due to conditioning, but it is even known to the citizens of the World State that the “poor pre-moderns were mad and wicked and miserable. The world didn’t allow them to be sane, virtuous, happy [because they were not] conditioned to obey” (Huxley, 41). Conditioning is seen as a positive process, because after all, who would want to deal with the feeling associated with temptations, loneliness, remorses, diseases, uncertainties, and poverty? “How could [one] be stable?” (Huxley, 41). The Controllers succeeded in making the lives of their people “emotionally easy—to preserve [them]...from having emotions at all” (Huxley, 44). Soma has “All the advantages of Christianity and alcohol; none of their defects...[and allow citizens to] Take a holiday from reality wherever [they] like” (Huxley, 54) and “return to the solid ground of daily labour and distraction” (Huxley, 55) whenever they fancied. With the implementation of soma mind control, “Stability was practically assured” (Huxley, 54).
The systems put in place by the reformers created a world centered around stability at the cost of not only sadness and war, but at the cost of individuality, history, literature and freedom. By claiming that pre-moderns had only the “Liberty to be inefficient and and miserable” (Huxley, 46) and structuring the society on “Stability, stability. The primal and the ultimate need. Stability” (Huxley, 43) through their various brainwashing processes at every stage of life, the Controllers of the World State are able to wholly control their citizens. “The main activities besides labouring are consuming and having fun” (M. H. N. Schermer, Section 1), and the layout is such that every one is regularly doing bits of all three. Though it is not incorrect to say that "The world's stable now. People are happy; they get what they want, and they never want what they can't get” (Huxley, 200), the fact that they have little-absolutely no say in why they are content is certainly grounds for speculation.
The role of time in Brave New World is explicitly undermined.

There is no sense of growth within the individual, no being is bound to another and all individuals are consumed by their work, essentially emotion-free. As one ages, there are no “stages” or goals to reach—no sexual maturity, no symptoms of aging, no conscious learning of the skills needed to work and no choice regarding the path one takes. From birth, everything is planned, and beyond that, there is not much to experience. The lack of long-term growth and the careful planning of even minute details eliminates the need for time, and the manipulating of even mind growth eliminates the grounds to wonder about circumstances. Life is taken day by day. For the mindless clones, this means work, but for the higher castes this simply means to “Never put off till to-morrow the fun you can have today” (Huxley, 93), to take soma as deemed ideal and to go about doing so until the end of time. Consumption is encouraged, practiced, preached—which explains the elimination of Christianity, not only as an emotion-brainwash device but due to it being “...the ethics and philosophy of under-consumption. [It was] essential when there was under-production; but in an age of machine and the fixation of nitrogen—positively a crime against humanity” (Huxley, 52). The citizens of Huxley’s dystopia condemn pre-moderns for doing “Anything not to consume. [For going] Back to nature...Back to culture. Yes...to culture. You can't consume much

if you sit still and read books.” (Huxley, 49-50). With no knowledge to attain, no aspirations outside of working and all ailments cured by soma, time is not of the essence. “Ending is better than mending,” (Huxley, 49) so there is no reason to think about anything too much, be too careful with something—consumption is key, right? The goals are to consume and to suppress. With everything, for the most part, controlled outside of age, it was seen necessary to deal with that as well, so “all the physiological stigmata of old age have been abolished...along with them all the old man’s mental peculiarities. Characters remain constant throughout a whole lifetime...at sixty, our powers and tastes are what they were at seventeen. Old men in the bad old days used to renounce, retire, take to religion, spend their time reading, thinking—thinking!” (Huxley, 54). It is praised that older beings have “no time, no leisure from pleasure, not a moment to sit down and think—or if ever by some unlucky chance such a crevice of time should yawn in the solid substance of their distractions, there is always soma” (Huxley, 55). Life has become a mechanical, diluted event in which no eccentricities or even differences at all are present. All are united only in their bland, mechanical ways of being and mindless allegiance to the World State.
Huxley’s insight into the entire regime is absolutely brilliant. Genetic engineering, of course, was not even accomplished until 1973. The recognition of soma, “the perfect drug” (53), as key in the Utopia was perceptive and especially relevant today as substance abuse, as well as the physiological impact of substances is only being explored and understood more as time goes on. Huxley truly transcends time, though, with his ability to capture the eerie, darker side of the perfect world. Humans are literally not differentiable in the lower castes, but even in the higher castes all are forced to live in similar chains.
Ultimately, “There must be men to tend [to the needs of this society,] men as steady as the wheels upon their axles, sane men, obedient men, stable in contentment” (Huxley, 42). Humanity needed to be alleviated from all war and poverty, and this was done through the elimination of associations. After all, there is “No civilization without social stability. No social stability without individual stability” (Huxley, 42) and no individual stability without complete control during all stages of life. Life has been made an easy, coast-able track. “The Controllers realized that force was no good. The slower but infinitely surer method of ectogenesis, neo-Pavlovian conditioning and hypnopædia” (Huxley, 50) allow for a perfectly maneuvered society in which all individuals are molded into being and forced to stay there by soma and other devices just mentioned. There are no “insurmountable obstacle[s],” no “long time-interval between the consciousness of a desire and its fulfillment” (Huxley, 45). Time is insignificant, as there is nothing to strive for, or even to attain, and there is no growth to be had.