Community Stability Identity

Imagine living in a society where there are no problems and everything is perfect, but how can you live in a society with no individuality or freedom. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley reveals a dystopian and utopian society in the future where everything is perfect: stability and happiness. People in the World State live in a totalitarian regime, they are brainwashed and conditioned to follow certain rules to keep their society stable. To keep everyone from being emotional, they are conditioned to take “the perfect drug” called soma; it stimulates them to be happy.

Huxley shows a government that controls everyone to be the same, but it creates the loss of individuality and freedom in each person. Nothing in a society is ever perfect. Civilization in the society of Brave New World is different from our own society.

“Community, Identity, Stability” is the World State’s motto. Their goal is to ensure happiness and stability in their society. The utopian society takes place in the year A.

F 632; A.F stands for “After Ford”. Although religion doesn’t exist, they only praise one man, Henry Ford (they also call him “Our Ford”). He was the one who invented the first assembly line. It was the starting point in the World State’s society. The World State is in dystopia; a society they can achieve when everyone is happy. At the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre infants are raised from embryos. Bokanovsky’s process is one of the major instruments of social stability.

It gives the government control of the number of people in the world and in each caste. Bokanovsky process is a method of human reproduction in which a fertilized egg is split into identical genetic copies. Infants are then divided based on their intelligence level. The caste systems separated them into the Greek alphabet: Alpha, Beta, Delta, Gamma and Epsilon.

Alphas are the highest and smartest class and the Epsilon’s are the lowest class. Little kids are also conditioned to do “sexual play”, when one boy is reluctant about it, he is then sent to a physiologist. This also shows that their society is never perfect, some people are conditioned to do the same as everyone else but they will have defects. “Everyone belongs to everyone else” is the psychological state of the society. This quote tells how the government in Brave New World tries to create a perfect society. No one perform excessive manual labor. Everyone is the same.

The World State had designed to erase the problems we had in our society. Therefore, literature, religion, and art are erased because the government doesn’t want anyone to have feelings, emotions and freedom of thought. In chapter two, babies were given an electric shock from liking flowers and books. This gave the effect of babies to dislike flowers and books. As they grow older, the hate of books and flowers conditioned them to move out of the country and only wanting a job to become a factory worker. On page 23, many people seemed peculiar to hear about the word “parents” and “born” from the story of the little polish boy, Reuben.

Children are birthed in bottles and women don’t give birth, that’s what they were conditioned to know. The histories behind the idea of a family are not important to the society because they never had emotions and feelings that people in the past had. Lastly on page 34, “History is bunk”; histories of the past don’t exist because the past interferes with the future. The problems we had in our society, the World State designed to erase it because they didn’t want feelings and emotions to corrupt the society. They only wanted everyone to work in the factory.

In Brave New World, hypnopaedia consists in repeating series of catchy phrases or slogans while the child is sleeping this way; the message gets into their brain. Information is passed through a person’s mind as they sleep. Through a sound recording played multiple times, snappy catch phrases repeated during sleep. However on page 26, the experiment of hypnopaedia failed when a little boy failed to memorize the phrase of the longest river. This problem shows that there are always flaws in the society. Hypnopaedia drills ensure community, identity, and stability. It is used in the novel to condition the mind to believe in certain ideas. There are many phrases that they are conditioned to say for example “A gramme is better than a damn”(55) which means to take a soma, relax and be happy, it’s how people use drugs to escape from their problems and reality.

Each caste system memorizes a phrase “a hundred and twenty times three times a week for thirty months”, they are conditioned to say that they better than all the other caste systems. “Oh no, I don’t want to play with the Delta children and Epsilons are still worse. They’re too stupid to be able to read or write…I’m so glad I’m a Beta”(27-28) Hypnopaedia is the most common method of teaching values and morals but it’s also a strong method of manipulating people’s minds. But it creates the loss of individuality because no one has the freedom on speech but instead they are all brainwashed to say the same thing over and over again.

In conclusion, living in a society with no problems to worry and nothing to care is perfect but how could you live in a society where you are commanded to do things with no freedom. The World State’s motto, “Community, Identity, and Stability” ensures that the society is stable and everyone is happy. The World State is a totalitarian regime where people in their society are brainwashed and conditioned to follow certain rules. Everyone is conditioned to be the same and do the same thing based on their intelligence. Huxley shows a government that controls everyone to be the same, but it creates the loss of individuality and freedom in each person. Nothing in a society is always perfect; there will always be weakness in some point of the society.