Cost Of Stability In Brave New World
The Cost of Stability in Brave New World
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. The conditioning of the citizens, the categorical division of society, and the censorship of art and religion carry out these methods of limiting human behavior.
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 its earnings. People can be conditioned chemically and physically prior to birth, and psychologically afterwards.
Brave New World takes place in the future, 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 behavior. 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 the new world, since there is no need to make every female fertile, only as many as thirty per cent of the female embryos … develop normally. The others get a dose of male sex hormone … Result: they are decanted as freemartins… (Huxley 10). Freemartins are sterile females who sometimes grow beards. Conditioning is Huxley’s message to the world that you could dominate people by social, educational and pharmaceutical methods (Bedford 249). The babies can be preset on a course of life before they even take their first breaths, taking away their freedom to choose their future destinies.
Psychological conditioning of the citizens continues after birth. The mind is altered to accept the moral education of the government. Two processes the new world uses to control human judgement are the Neo-Pavlovian process and hypnopaedia. The Neo-Pavlovian process is named after Ivan Pavlov, a Twentieth Century Russian scientist who experimented with conditioned reflexes in dogs. The children, during early childhood, are trained to like and dislike certain aspects of life, nature, and science so that they can consume the maximum resources. Babies receive electric shocks in the presence of flowers and books so that they will grow up with what the psychologists … call an ‘instinctive’ hatred of books and flowers … they’ll be safe from books and botany all their lives (Huxley 18). The conditioning of the children forms a barrier in their minds so that they are never free to decide for themselves, but are always bounded by the instructions of the state. Hypnopaedia is another form of psychological conditioning. It is used to teach moral education. While they sleep, the children of the new world are drilled with moral education such as when the individual feels, the community reels, …cleanliness is next to fordliness (Huxley 98). These phrases are repeated thousands of times throughout childhood till at last the child’s mind is these suggestions … the mind that judges and desires and decides… (Huxley 25). The psychological conditioning limits the mental freedom of the citizens so that they are never at liberty to decide what they want for themselves.
Thomas Jefferson once said, all men are created equal. Equality, however, fails to exist in the imperfect society created by humans. Just as there are social classes in today’s society, citizens of the world state are categorized into distinct social classes (Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta and Epsilon) before they come into existence. The social classes, in turn, set a standard of prejudice. The people do not have the freedom to choose who or what they want to be, they have no choice but to follow the tracks preset for them.
Stability is a goal in every society. It may be achieved
