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Brave New World
One of the surprising aspects of Brave New World, which was written by Aldous Huxley in 1931, is its parallels with today's society. People drug themselves with soma and meaningless sex in Huxley's dystopia. Today, we live in a world where people are over-prescribed pharmaceuticals; are more interested in their smartphones than the person sitting in front of them; and everyone can easily find meaningless hookups by using an app. The worship of Henry Ford may be no more but many are equally worshipful of the Apple Corporation that designed their phones. Today's emphasis on self-esteem and feeling good about one's self, taken to the extreme, can also be seen as analogous to the conditioned contentment with the status quo in Brave New World, along with the inhabitant's lack of political activism, despite living in a society which denies them any kind of freedom to choose their future. The Internet connects us 24/7 yet we are less apt to do things in 'real life' with people. In Brave New World, people have lost the ability to be emotionally intimate even though they seldom engage in solitary pastimes.
In exchange for the freedom from pain, the World State...
They are not allowed to try new things they might be good at, for fear that this will make them unhappy. They have no inner life. They are conditioned from birth to think that their status is the best, regardless of what it is, and are genetically engineered in a lab so they have no mothers and fathers to have feelings for, which might cause them pain. Almost all sex is communal and casual because sex in the context of a relationship could cause potential unhappiness. In the absence of any pain, however, there is also a lack of creativity, individualism, and distinctiveness, since being in the presence of someone who is different can be profoundly disquieting, as demonstrated by the unexpected presence of the savage John.
Reading Brave New World made me much more critical of our own society and its focus on momentary pleasure versus the ability to lead a meaningful life. Even activism today is relatively disconnected -- achieved by pushing 'like' on a Facebook status, more often than not, than actually taking action. However, because we have come to take these aspects of our society for granted, we…
Works Cited
Huxley, Aldous. Brave New World. New York: HarperPerennial, 2006.
Miner, Horace. "Body Ritual among the Nacirema." The American Anthropologist, 58.3 (1956),
pp. 503-507.
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