FREE ESSAY ON COST OF STABILITY IN BRAVE NEW WORLD

COST OF STABILITY IN BRAVE NEW WORLD

The Cost of Stability in Brave New World 
David Grayson once said that Commandment Number One of any truly civilized society is
this: Let people be different. Difference, or individuality, however, may not be possible
under a dictatorial government. Aldous Huxley's satirical novel Brave New World shows
that a government-controlled society often places restraints upon its citizens, which
results in a loss of social and mental freedom. The conditioning of the citizens, the
categorical division of society, and the censorship of art and religion carry out these
methods of limiting human behavior.
Conditioning the citizens to like what they have and reject what they do not have is an
authoritative government's ideal way of maximizing efficiency. The citizens will consume
what they are told to, there will be no brawls or disagreements, and the state will
retain high profits from its earnings. People can be conditioned chemically and
physically prior to birth, and psychologically afterwards.
Brave New World takes place in the future, where biological engineering reaches new
heights. Babies are no longer born viviparously; they are now decanted in bottles passed
through a 2136 metre assembly line. Pre-natal conditioning of embryos is an effective way
of limiting human behavior. Chemical additives can be used to control the population not
only in Huxley's future society, but also in the real world today. This method of control
can easily be exercised within a government-controlled society to limit population growth
and to control the flaws in future citizens. In the new world, since there is no need to
make every female fertile, only as many as thirty per cent of the female embryos …
develop normally. The others get a dose of male sex hormone … Result: they are
decanted as freemartins… (Huxley 10). Freemartins are sterile females who sometimes
grow beards. Conditioning is Huxley's message to the world that you could dominate people
by social, educational and pharmaceutical methods (Bedford 249). The babies can be preset
on a course of life before they even take their first breaths, taking away their freedom
to choose their future destinies.
Psychological conditioning of the citizens continues after birth. The mind is altered to
accept the moral education of the government. Two processes the new world uses to control
human judgement are the Neo-Pavlovian process and hypnopaedia. The Neo-Pavlovian process
is named after Ivan Pavlov, a Twentieth Century Russian scientist who experimented with
conditioned reflexes in dogs. The children, during early childhood, are trained to like
and dislike certain aspects of life, nature, and science so that they can consume the
maximum resources. Babies receive electric shocks in the presence of flowers and books so
that they will grow up with what the psychologists … call an 'instinctive' hatred
of books and flowers … they'll be safe from books and botany all their lives
(Huxley 18). The conditioning of the children forms a barrier in their minds so that they
are never free to decide for themselves, but are always bounded by the instructions of
the state. Hypnopaedia is another form of psychological conditioning. It is used to teach
moral education. While they sleep, the children of the new world are drilled with moral
education such as when the individual feels, the community reels, …cleanliness is
next to fordliness (Huxley 98). These phrases are repeated thousands of times throughout
childhood till at last the child's mind is these suggestions … the mind that judges
and desires and decides… (Huxley 25). The psychological conditioning limits the
mental freedom of the citizens so that they are never at liberty to decide what they want
for themselves.
Thomas Jefferson once said, all men are created equal. Equality, however, fails to exist
in the imperfect society created by humans. Just as there are social classes in today's
society, citizens of the world state are categorized into distinct social classes (Alpha,
Beta, Gamma, Delta and Epsilon) before they come into existence. The social classes, in
turn, set a standard of prejudice. The people do not have the freedom to choose who or
what they want to be, they have no choice but to follow the tracks preset for them.
Stability is a goal in every society. It may be achieved by the cloning of citizens.
Advances in biological research in the new world allow one embryo to separate into
ninety-six individual embryos by means of the Bokanovsky Process, an advanced method of
cloning. Embryos destined to be the lower classes (Gamma's, Delta's and Epsilon's) are
cloned, and the cloning ensures social stability of the lower classes. Essentially
… bokanovskification consists of a series of arrests of development … the egg
responds by budding (Huxley 4). This creates a standardized form of operation, with
ninety-six identical twins working ninety-six identical machines (Huxley 5). The
Bokanovsky Process provides social stability by having dozens of identical twins to work,
eat and live together, where there would be no brawls or conflicts. As the Director of
Hatchery and Conditioning says, Bokanovsky's Process is one of the major instruments of
social stability (Huxley 5). 
The establishment of a social caste system, where everyone belongs to a certain group and
obtains certain powers, limits citizens to mingle only with those of their own caste and
produces a set of prejudice between citizens. The Alpha and Beta citizens live in small
houses and apartments in the suburbs surrounding the city, while the Gammas, Deltas and
Epsilons stay in huge lower-caste barracks (Huxley 64) inside the city. The social caste
system, along with the conditioning of the citizens, creates prejudice among those who
represent difference. Bernard Marx, an Alpha citizen, has a physical deficiency. He is
short and small, eight centimetres short of the standard Alpha height (Huxley 57), and is
often neglected for his deformed figure. While Marx is sharing an elevator with two
coworkers, Henry Foster and the Assistant Director of Predestination rather pointedly
turned their backs on Bernard Marx (Huxley 29). Bernard himself says that, I am I, but
wish I wasn't (Huxley 57). This self-hatred indicates that even in the most ordered,
stable society, injustice still occurs in the form of discrimination. The right to choose
no longer exists in an autocratic society where social freedom is eliminated by the
distinct categorical division of citizens.
History is more or less bunk (Rae 53), said Henry Ford. This ideology is taken to extreme
measures in the world state and in many totalitarian nations where censorship of art and
religion completely conceals the past and eliminates the freedoms of thought and speech.
People live in the present with no knowledge of history, and those who explore certain
new, prohibited ideas are censored.
Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known, said Oscar Wilde.
Individualism, however, is not permitted in the world state where everyone works for
everyone else (Huxley 81). Many pieces of literature are eliminated, and censorship is
applied everywhere to attain stability. Without the books to give the people ideas, and
with the conditioning of the mind, no one would attempt a revolution or an uprising. No
one in the world state would recognize the title Othello, or the name William
Shakespeare, no one but the people who make the rules, the World Controllers. The state
did not give excuses for their actions, and the citizens simply accepted them. In the
world state, not only are the old books gone, the new ones are also censored. The World
Controller residing over Western Europe writes, after reviewing a book, …The
author's…conception of purpose is novel and highly ingenious, but heretical
and…dangerous and potentially subversive…Not to be published …The
author will be kept under supervision (Huxley 160). The censorship of ideas forms a
barrier in the citizens' minds, which halts the progression of human quest for knowledge
and suppresses the freedom of thought and imagination.
The freedom of belief can be destroyed with a dictatorial government controlling society.
Huxley's Brave New World illustrates how religion can be sacrificed for stability, where
religion is no longer needed to satisfy human desire:
… why should we go hunting for a substitute for youthful desires, when youthful
desires never fail? A substitute for distractions, when we go on enjoying all the old
fooleries to the very last? What need have we of repose when our minds and bodies
continue to delight in activity? Of consolation, when we have soma? Of something
immovable, when there is the social order (Huxley 213)?
God now manifests himself as an absence; as though he weren't there at all (Huxley 214).
By not allowing the citizens to believe in something holy, something beyond imagination,
the state is restricting the faith in her citizens and taking away the freedom to dream
and believe. Henry Ford is glorified in the world state for his induction of the mass
production method and the introduction of Our Ford's first T-model … chosen as the
opening date of the new era (Huxley 46). Big Ben is renamed Big Henry, the crucifix is
replaced by the symbol T, and Ford is the basis of religion in the world state just as
Christ is in many modern religions. The people's minds can easily be manipulated by the
state into believing anything, but the prolonged brainwash of the citizens creates a
suppression of creativity, which results to a direct loss of mental freedom.
The stable world of a government controlled society appears to be a Utopia, where
everyone is happy and lives in harmony, but the price paid is comparable to the
superficial happiness that the citizens receive. Without the freedom of choice, the
citizens do not actually realize the joy when a task is accomplished. Without having to
work for a goal, the people do not appreciate the pleasure once the goal is achieved and
do not actually understand the true meaning of happiness. The price for Utopia in one
word is freedom.
Bibliography
Bedford, Sybill. Alodus Huxley. New York: Harper and Row, 1974.
Huxley, Aldous. Brave New World. London: Flamingo, 1994.
Rae, John. Henry Ford. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1969.