Aldous Huxley's Brave New World

Huxley’s Brave New World could be considered almost prophetic by many people today. It is alarmingly obvious how modern society is eerily similar to Huxley’s novel with the constant demand for instant gratification encouraging laziness, greed, and entitlement. Neil Postman, a contemporary social critic, seems to have noticed this similarity, as he has made bold, valid statements regarding the text and its relevance to our world today. This response is strongly in support of those statements and will prove both their accuracy in clarifying Huxley’s intentions and how Postman’s assertions compare to society today.

Huxley’s Brave New World could be considered almost prophetic by many people today. It is alarmingly obvious how modern society is eerily similar to Huxley’s novel with the constant demand for instant gratification encouraging unnatural changes. Neil Postman, a contemporary social critic, seems to have noticed this similarity as he has made very bold, very valid statements regarding the text and its relevance to our world today. This statement is strongly in support of those statements and will provide both support and counterargument in an effort to thoroughly explain why.

In the texts 1984 by George Orwell and Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, the regulations and the restrictions imposed by the government leads to decline in the society. Technology plays a major role in both texts, the confidence of the people in these technologies eventually makes them surrender their humanness. In the novel 1984, the everyday lives of the people were monitored around-the-clock. Technology is also used to demolish the past, to make the citizens accept something divergent, a new present and the future. The central direction in the technological progress is not for promoting love between people or for the enlightenment of minds, but rather it is used for industrialization and for humanity to be the

In Brave New World, author Aldous Huxley employs a variety of rhetorical strategies, including Aristotelian appeals, symbolism and figurative language to express that while extreme technological advancements may be innovative, it can lead to government totalitarianism, stripping free thought and self expression from a society.

The human mind consistently wonders what if, and soon finds itself looking into the future for different possibilities in life. In Aldous Huxley’s novel Brave New World, the reader finds Huxley exploring a nuance in humanity, creating a dystopia, where science becomes the new focus and humans are mass produced in test tubes. Huxley creates a world which contrasts to some aspects of what the world is today. In this dystopia, the values of people are in the technologies which are developed to speed the process of developing babies. Through Huxley’s effective use of syntax and diction, his use of literary techniques, the structure, and playing of theme, Huxley creates an image of a society that worships technology

“Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards” (“Aldous Huxley Quotes”). Aldous L. Huxley, author of Brave New World, is one the most influential writers in history, writing timeless works that still boggle minds almost a century later. Huxley didn’t just become an unparalleled writer overnight, but it is his life that shapes his works. While Huxley’s Keratitis Punctuate, sudden death in the family and strong influences in science and evolution changed his life greatly, it is the influence on his writing that has left a lasting mark forever.

Aldous Huxley’s repeated phrase and title “Brave New World” represents the climax of an unprincipled society in which technological advances changes the lives of many.

As for intelligence there have been three capacities and virtues that should be targeted for moral enhancement, which are the sensitivity to the features of situations, thoughtfulness about doing what is moral, and the proper capacity for people to make proper judgments. The continued progress in the modification of learning, cognition, memory, the capabilities of decision-making will help assist the moral enhancement with these tasks. There have also been many neurochemicals that have been used to enhance cognitive abilities, which include increased attention span and cognition span. Drugs like OxyContin have also been used to help with empathy, and to make people feel happier. It may be believed that a drug like soma was only possible in Aldous Huxley’s novel Brave New World, but perhaps not. Utilitarian’s have been pushing for human enhancement that uses drugs, genetic engineering and nanotechnology to ensure the maximum amount of happiness possible while attempting to eliminate any pain. Proponents believe that this would reset the brain’s thinking patterns, and allow people to think more positively by keeping our minds engaged, rather than in a constant dull and depressing state. Many anti- depressant drugs are attempting to do just this. It is safe to say that moral enhancement is not just a potential innovation, but a technology that is already beginning.

Imagine a life where the technology is so great that no one ever has to be worried about being sad or bothered by all the day to day stress. In Brave New World published in 1932, Aldous Huxley brings the reader into the future of London to see just what technology can do to a society. As the novel opens, the reader learns about how the futuristic London is a Utopia, what life is like, and all about the great technological advancements. After Bernard is introduced to the reader, he goes to the Reservation and meets John, the Salvage, where he finds out how different life is between the two societies. In the end, the Controller Mustapha Mond sends Bernard and

Aldous Huxley, the author of Brave New World, portrays a World State that has made consumption one of its centerpieces. Economic stability is essential to the effectiveness of the World State. They are brainwashed by advertisements and organizations that make them feel as though they are free. The people within the World State continuously consume because of the conditioning they obtained when they were younger. They are educated that when an object or good is in need of fixing, they must get rid of it. By not possessing the latest and greatest good, the people within the World State are looked less upon and is in the lower class. In this new society, emotions, religion, and culture are forfeited for social stability. The reason for which

Aldous Huxley created a literary masterpiece which shows a possible, dismal future produced by the misuse of science and technology. In his book, Brave New World, the World Controllers use various scientific methods to dehumanize the population in order to control them. The advanced use of biotechnology has allowed the government to completely eliminate family and have the population physically engineered to fit specific specifications according to the needs of society. They also use different methods of brainwashing in order to ensure the population properly conforms to their outline of civilization. Through the use of primitive conditioning techniques combined with current ones, everything the people think, like, and dislike is

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley depicts a future that seems happy and stable on the surface, but when you dig deeper you realize that it is not so bright at all. People almost autonomously fall in line to do what they have been taught to do through constant conditioning and hypnopædia. Neil Postman’s argument that Huxley’s book is becoming more relevant than George Orwell’s 1984 is partly true. Huxley’s vision of the future is not only partly true, but it is only the beginning of what is to come.

Technology, which has brought mankind from the Stone Age to the 21st century, can also ruin the life of peoples. In the novel Brave New World, the author Aldous Huxley shows us what technology can do if we exercise it too much. From the novel we can see that humans can lose humanity if we rely on technology too much. In the novel, the author sets the world in the future where everything is being controlled by technology. This world seems to be a very perfectly working utopian society that does not have any disease, war, problems, crisis but it is also a sad society with no feelings, emotions or human characteristics. This is a very scary society because everything is being controlled even before someone is born, in test tube, where they

The Russian Revolution and challenges to the British Empire abroad raised the possibility of change on a world scale. At home, the expansion of transportation and communication, the cars, telephones, and radios made affordable through mass production, also brought revolutionary changes to daily life. With this new technology, distances grew suddenly shorter and true privacy rarer. In Brave New World, such technologies and more have been introduced to The World State, and this society brings to life these exact fears of distance between people: While people in industrialized societies welcomed these advances, they also worried about losing a familiar way of life, and perhaps even themselves. Huxley’s novel also attempts to show how science, when taken too far, can limit the flourishing of human thought: “The lower the caste,’ said Mr. Foster, ‘"the shorter the oxygen.’ The first organ affected was the brain. After that the skeleton. At seventy per cent of normal oxygen you got dwarfs. At less than seventy eyeless monsters.’” (Huxley, 70). In World War I, humanity had seen the great destruction that technology such as bombs, planes, and machine guns could cause. Huxley believed that the possibility for such destruction did not only belong to weapons of war but to other scientific advancements as well, such

In Brave New World, Aldous Huxley tries to show that the role of technology in society can be used in a way that it could have a negative impact. As seen in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, the conditioning technology is used to control the people of the World State and restrict them from doing things through its use. Aldous Huxley tries to warn us that technology can be used to gain control of everything.