Aldous Huxley uses perversion in his book Brave New World to successfully admonish present society about its growing interest in technology and stability. The setting takes place in a futuristic society, The World State, that worships Henry Ford because of the assembly line. Mustapha Mond is the controller who executes all rules and regulations for the people. He creates a society that functions around a state motto: Community, Identity, and Stability. These prime goals motivate how people spend their everyday lives. Community is accomplished because of the “everyone belongs to everyone” principle. Identity is shown through the five caste system. Stability extends from conditioning and an excessive amount of restrictions. These principles create the perfect Utopia, but they are the reason for problems evolving throughout the novel.
Mustapha Mond uses the community as a component of the motto to occupy and discipline the citizens. The community itself in the World State is portrayed ironically. Each individual is conditioned to believe they are happy about all aspects of the World State. Distractions and entertainment leave the people with full contentment. For example, sporting events are meant to bring a community of similar people together. Instead, the World State uses sports as a way to keep the economy running. Additionally, sex is shown to play an important role in the community. Monogamous relationships are forbidden and love is never correlated with intimacy. Money and sex are the focuses of their lives where “Everyone works for everyone else. We can't do without anyone” (Huxley 91). This quote from Lenina (female protagonist) demonstrates the high priority the community holds over everyone. Social castes descend from Alphas, the smartest and most beautiful people, to the Epsilons, society’s laborers and consumers. And relationships are defined as how many people can sleep together in one week. However, conditioning causes every person to feel like they are part of a much larger, ideal economic and social operation. This helps Huxley prove his argument that the concern for foolproof systems leads to no emotional socialization and priorities for becoming rich.
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Identity is used as a component of the motto to create an easily influenced race and to teach everyone to conform. Society is divided into five castes from highest to lowest: Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, and Epsilon. Alphas and Betas are more complex because they do not undergo the Bokanovsky Process. This process produces thousands of genetically identical twins, and it only applies to Gammas, Deltas, and Epsilons. Each caste has its own identity like jobs, clothing, intelligence, attractiveness, etc. But there is no individuality among each person. Twins are the basis of society’s population, which contradicts the reason for identity but makes it easier to be influenced. For example, the same surnames are used more than once, “...the two thousand million inhabitants of the plant had only ten thousand names between them, the coincidence was not particularly surprising” (Huxley 58). If individuals have identical genes and are raised in the same environment, then there's nothing to distinguish one from another. In the nurseries, children are subjected to hypnopaedia, or sleep-conditioning, as well as electric shock when they touch certain things. They are taught to find the idea of individual parents repulsive; they learn to hate books and nature and only desire to engage in consumerism. Each caste is conditioned the same way so they recite the same platitudes and beliefs in adulthood. Identity among the people does not exist, and they are taught to not question it. This helps prove how technology in the future will be abused to create a perfect society. Individuality will no longer exist and identity will be easily influenced.
Mustapha Mond uses stability as a component of the motto to eradicate history and use drugs as a form of control. The immense cost of stability is the contradiction itself. Mond deprived the people of religion, history, art, literature, emotions, and personal development. The only religion allowed in the World State is praising Henry Ford through a Solidarity Service. Any form of history was hidden because the people would simply not understand it. Literature was a large expense because, with reading, people would start to think deeply about their situations and start revolutions. Emotions are deliberately taken away in hindsight through Soma. Whenever something that seems the least bit problematic arises, Soma is taken to ease any feelings other than happiness. This eliminates any problem-solving and rids of overall satisfaction from overcoming difficulties. The detriment of stability is defined as “You've got to choose between happiness and what people used to call high art. We've sacrificed the high art' (Huxley 226). In this line, Mustapha Mond responds to John Savage's protests that Shakespeare's literature is better than anything that results from society’s emotional engineering. Mond agrees that John has a point, but he claims that in this society, happiness is the greatest good, and great literature can only come from turmoil and unhappiness. To achieve the greatest amount of happiness possible, civilized society has sacrificed art. This maintains Huxley’s argument that stability creates uneasy sacrifices. Stability is designing the pathway to an unstable, unhealthy society for the future.
Advancement in new technology is consistently made for the sole purpose of stabilizing all of society. Huxley performed that statement by creating a place where the purposes of society became its destruction. Community needs connections, feelings, and entertainment other than consumerism. Identity belongs to each person, not groups of them who all look alike. Individuality is progressed through differences, and that does not occur in a place where everyone is conditioned to do the same thing. Lastly, stability needs emotions, determination, and history/literature. Presently, society is on the path to destruction because priorities are not set straight. Technology needs to be used as an assistant in good progression instead of the elimination of humanity.
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