ENGLISH105 Carol Liao(LISYC91) Essay#1 Loss of Free Will and Personality in Brave New World The novel Brave New World written by Aldous Huxley is like no other in fantasy or satire. It predicts a future overpowered by technology where the people have no religion. With advanced technology and the genetic engineering, people live flourishing, material lives in their society. This is a society with no love, starvation ,disease, coldness, wars, crimes, and artistic creativity . As the World State’s motto declares: “community, identity, stability. ” (Huxley,1). Thinking will threaten the tability of the society since people are more difficult to control when they think for themselves. This essay will talk about how the government control the society to make it stable. This essay will also show that because the government use different kinds of inhuman methods to control the society, people lost their free will and personality. In the brave new world, Huxley wants to against this thesis, in the world state, government use different kinds of method to control the society, actually what is called a brave new world is a terrible and inhuman society and it destroys people’s free will.
For a start, government use the Genetic Engineering and Bokanovsky Process to control the society. The Director of Genetic Engineering and Bokanouvsky Process explains that this Utopia breeds people to order, artificially fertilizing a mother’s eggs to create babies that grow in bottles. They are not born, but decanted. Everyone belongs to one of five classes through the Caste System, from the Alphas, the most intelligent, to the Epsilons, morons bred to do the dirty jobs that nobody else wants to do. Different level’s people have different kinds of job. They do whatever the government tell them to do.
The lower the cast, the shorter the oxygen. (Huxley, p. 13) It seems unfair that even before you are born, your future is already written out for you. People have no way to change their levels no matter how they try their best. The lower classes are multiplied by a budding process that can create up to 96 identical clones and produce over 15,000 brothers and sisters from a single ovary. All the babies are conditioned, physically and chemically in the bottle, and psychologically after birth, to make them happy citizens of the society with both a liking and an aptitude for the work they will do.
In this kind of society, science exploited to create stability and happiness, not to advance knowledge or to apprehend truth. Because of the Genetic Engineering and Bokanovsky Process, state destroys institutions like family and marriage in the name of stability, people have no parents, brothers, or sisters. Because they have no family, they have no ideas about what is love. And also with such a huge amount of identical humans, the identity is abolished. People have no personality, they have no ideas what they are good at. Everyone is the same, and no one is unique. Huxley’s purpose in Brave New World is to warn us the dangers of
Totalitarianism. One psychological conditioning technique is Hypnopeadia, or teaching people while they are sleeping not teaching facts or analysis, but planting suggestions that will make people behave in certain ways. However for them there is no need for education because they do not need power. Power will not get them any farther in life then what is already written out for them. The only kind of books in Brave New World accessible to the public are reference books. Books with opinions and emotions are non-existing. This discretion is needed because those types of books could challenge the hypnopaedia propaganda served to the people.
The hypnopaedia was given for a reason, it is the tool used to stabilize the society. If stability is threatened so will be the utopian world. Of course some will say that they will miss their families and relationships and most of all, love. But the people in Utopia once again have never experienced any of these. They were brought up in conditioning centers and feel that parents and family are primitive. The mere sound of the word annoys them. Mother, he repeated loudly rubbing in the science ; and, leaning back in his chair, these, he said gravely are unpleasant facts; I know it.
But then most historical facts are unpleasant (Huxley,23). It is a series of repeated sayings used to teach children everything from their place in society to clever little sayings and proverbs. Basically, it is a form of thought control, or the imposing of a mind-script. While the children at the Central London Hatcheries and Conditioning Centre are napping, these ‘lessons’ are played time and time again, thousands of times between the ages of three and sixteen. For example, when children want to know something about family, professor take them to a place with adults which is dirty,small and dark.
And tell them this is so called family. Since that, once children think about family, the have a picture of a disgusting and horrible place. So they will not think about it anymore. One must remember that being born and raised in Utopia, one does not know what freedom is and therefore does not know what is missing. Freedom leads to happiness, and if one already possesses happiness, then there is no need for freedom, especially if your government is making sure that all your needs are satisfied. Citizens do not care about personal freedoms or free will and live in total conformity to the all-powerful stat’s alues. This is a total loss of dignity, morals, and individual emotions. In order to make people happy, they are asked to use soma. Soma, not nuclear bombs, is the weapon of choice for the World Controllers in Brave New World. These men have realized that fear and intimidation have only limited power; after all, these tactics simply build up resentment in the minds of the oppressed. Subconscious persuasion and mind-altering drugs, on the other hand, appear to have no side effects. Add to this the method of genetic engineering, and soon almost all “pre-Ford” problems have been wiped out permanently.
Instead, soma provides a mindless, inauthentic “imbecile happiness” – a vacuous which makes people comfortable with their lack of freedom. The drug heightens suggestibility, leaving its users vulnerable to government propaganda. Soma is a narcotic that raises “a quite impenetrable wall between the actual universe and their minds. ” Happiness defined in terms of an ability to satisfy economic needs. The government pursuit of happiness undermines scientific, empirical truth, and knowledge. Because people are happy, they don’t question the government and do whatever the government tell them to do. In order to chieve the stable od the society. It seems very good because people are happy anytime, but they lose their free will. The key to happiness is enjoying who you are and what you do. Unfortunately, people who live in the World State have no ideas about who they are and what do they. The happiness of theirs is not true. They can not have any other emotion except happy. In my mind, if people don’t have sad, jealous, angry, or unhappy, they are not human being. Brave New World pictures a dark view of a different world in the future. Citizens of the World State live in an inhuman world under a totalitarianism government.
Their thoughts have been controlled by different kinds of advanced technology since they are cultured in the battles. This new world cannot contain any personal consciousness like Lenina says: “when the individual feels, the community reals” (Huxely, 81). The Controller prevents people from creation of personality by satisfying people’s feeling desire and make them happy. Although the society is developing stability, but the people are no more human being any more. they lose the basic feeling and free will for a man. ?? Work Citation ?? Huxley, Aldous. Brave New World. Toronto: Vintage Canada, 2007. Print.
