Issues of Social Control in ‘Brave New World’

Social control monitors the actions of individuals in society by using rules, regulations, and standards to create stability. Stability is created through governing cultural opinions, behaviors, and life circumstances. In the novel Brave New World, the author Aldous Huxley describes the various forms of social control used by the state to regulate society functioning without key elements such as family, friends, emotions, and individuality. Three types of social control found within the fiction text include informal and formal social control as well as medical social control.

Brave New World discusses a process called Bokanovsky that is considered a primary tool in creating stability, this method creates the development of how individuals are made and how many are made from the same egg. The embryo is created when the Bokanovsky egg buds and the buds turn into embryos eventually leading to each embryo becoming a potential human being (Huxley, 2006). The embryo is thus considered brothers and sisters due to each of them enduring the same fertilization process, this process displays how production can continue or end at any given time since it is the state using science and technology to dictate population growth. Using technology to create the development of children, creates an environment where individuals grew up without parents and or family. This would transform individuals’ emotions so he or they would not feel a sense of attachment, belongingness, or emotions to family but to their job class.

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Informal control changes an individual’s behavior varying from positive to negative moods, thus developing social disapproval based on family, friends, and employers’ social norms, and accepted behaviors. When an individual experiences ridicule, shame, and or sarcasm it can suppress one’s defiant actions and develop a different perspective. On the other hand instead of family, friends, or co-workers making a difference in how the individual brains form and views society as an individual, in the state of Brave New World individuals has no self-identity, family, or friend, or life experience to create morals, or instead they are instilled with certain values and norms that will not be questioned or viewed indifferently so that happiness is the only type of emotion or action that is displayed. Before individuals reach adulthood, they are placed within different hierarchies by the state, the hierarchy is based on most intelligent to least starting with Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, and Epsilon. As each child sleeps at night various types of tapes continuously play conditioning the children on how to feel and act. Elementary sex discusses being promiscuous and how one should not belong to a single person, and the following lesson Elementary Class consciousness discusses how the hierarchy in which the individual is is better than the previous and how he or she should be happy to be in the position that their in (Huxley, 2006) the lessons are repeated for thirty months, three times a week for a hundred and twenty times.

A similarity between Brave New World and informal social control shows how refusing to be promiscuously caused a problem with Lenina and her peer, also the D.H.C also experienced his share of disapproval and judgment. Lenina Crowne was consistently seeing Henry Foster for four months without seeing any other guy and was being judged by Fanny with a disapproving look as well a change of tone dictating her disapproval (Huxley, 2006). Fanny also stated that D.H.C Thomas, The Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning doesn’t condone any behavior that’s intensive or powerful. However, shame was brought upon the D.H.C when he was deemed a parent from having a past love affair. In a society that was solely based on not having parents, D.H.C was a parent of himself, his fellow people looked at him with disdain and he fled the society he created. Key characteristics of informal social control come from the disapproval of others, shame, embarrassment, and dishonor to show one has made a mistake and must fix the error of their way. Once Crowne realized that she was wrong for being with Henry she decided that she should be promiscuous because she was bored and was interested in another person.

Formal control involves authority officials that establish rules and guidelines that monitor violations of laws pertaining to the criminal justice system. If a person breaks the law an authority figure will then process the individual through the court system eventually leading into a prison institution thus the criminal justice system. In contrast, Brave New World police officers were established when an individual was trying to give other people their freedom by getting rid of soma. The police officers proceeded to use a powder form of soma to regain control of the environment by distracting people with the mood stimulant, so they would disregard the previous disruption of someone trying to express self-identity. The fiction text did not explain the process of handling the individual who was violating the regulation, there seemed to be no court. However, there was a type of prison created to house those who did not meet the social norms, the punishment would be to become banished and relocated to another destination such as an island. Banishment is a method of social control that legally forces individuals to leave an area for an extended period (Beckett & Herbert 2011).

Medical social control is defined as having the authority to distinguish between certain behaviors, persons, and things (Conrad, Schneider, & Gusfleld 1992). This social control stems from technology pertaining to drugs and or genetics, it can also sort symptoms or disorders into medical condition that requires treatment or drug. For example, in the fiction novel, a drug known as Soma was continuously used to alter the mood of the individuals, when a person felt uneasy, confused, sad, or depressed they would take soma to generate a mood of happiness and drift into another element where their problems or emotions would dissipate. Lenina stated “why don’t you take soma when you have these dreadful ideas, you would forget all about them and feel jolly” (Huxley, 2006). When a person was feeling anything other than happiness, she or he was considered depressed, withdrawn or anxious using the drug soma would suppress those negative emotions and allow the person to revert to their natural state of being. With individuals not having a self-identity and the ability to experience life, they were unable to cope with foreign emotions thus leading them to partake in the drug. Somo provides stability and can be compared to modern-day medicine as a way of controlling how society can withdraw from problems by taking a mood enhancer.

In addition to medical social control technology can undergo processes that protect people from experiencing diseases, monitoring genetics is another way of distinguishing similarities amongst a community. By doing blood transfusions from youths, balancing internal secretions in a youthful equilibrium, and keeping adults’ metabolism stabilized adults are guaranteed to live longer without facing any medical conditions (Huxley, 2006). The difference between fictional medical social control and modern pertains to individuals such as children having disorders such as ADHD, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder are based on emotional self-control that causes unstable emotions such as anger resulting in unacceptable behavior symptoms (Singh, 2011). Medicine can help control individuals who have ADHD by reducing anger and reactive and disruptive behaviors, unlike soma the medicine for ADHD doesn’t send the person into a state of eternity but it calms the person so he or she is more aware of their actions. The medicine doesn’t get rid of their emotions altogether and provides a sense of happiness, but it allows the person to have more emotional control over what actions can and cannot cause a reaction.

In conclusion, although informal and formal control is based on structure pertaining to how individuals interact with one another on what is deemed acceptable in society and the use of authority figures using the criminal justice system to regulate violations. The fiction text also had conditions individuals were expected to uphold, when they weren’t adjusting to the expectations medical social control was given as a method to elevate their mood to a happy frame of mind. If individuals were an outcast they were then banished. There were many differences however, there were similarities in identifying key elements such as disapproval, and disgrace that influenced Crowne to partake in promiscuity and Thomas the D.H.C leaving because he was ashamed of parenting a child in a society he developed that would not have the ability to become or have a parent.