Brave New World: Technology and Materials Essay

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How is it possible for one to know the difference between happiness and unhappiness if unhappiness has never been experienced? Although it sounds silly, the world Aldous Huxley created actually resembles certain aspects of the world today. Brave New World is a utopia fulfilled with nothing but happiness, but in reality it is a world in which materials and technology rule the world; much of which our world today seems to have in common. What does our world have to do with the world of Brave New World? Drugs, the media, and death seem to be some of the things that stand out among the other couple similarities. It seems unbelievable and rather unusual, but if you analyze the two, you’ll see a pattern. In Brave New World, soma plays a major part of the society. Without this powerful substance, Brave New World would not be complete. “Happiness” seems to be the only emotion ever felt, “and if ever, by some unlucky chance, anything unpleasant should somehow happen, why there’s always soma to give you a holiday from the fact” (Huxley 237). The fact that one `truly isn’t happy; the fact that sadness does indeed exist. What similar situations are there in our world today? Let’s say one day you wake up with a small stomach ache. What do you do? You go straight for some painkillers. Why? Because you are told that the pain will go away; just like the citizens of Brave New World are told while they’re being conditioned. Another real life example: your parents are going through a divorce and you are the one suffering, so what do you do? You begin to have bad thoughts and those thoughts lead to actions. Drugs will make you forget you problems, they said. And that is what you do. In the novel, there is a scene in which Bernard attends a Solidarity Service. During his time there, the group is offered to take a bit of soma and (of course) everyone takes some. By the time the soma began working, “eyes shone, cheeks were flushed, the inner light of universal benevolence broke out on every face in happy, friendly smiles. Even Bernard felt himself a little melted” (Huxley 81). Does this sound familiar yet? So the question is, are drugs the new so called “soma” today? Humans born in Brave New World undergo a process called hypnopaedia. This process is used in order to control a person’s thoughts by repeating the same phrase over and over until the message is mentally recorded into their mind. They have no control over what is placed in their mind because according to the Director, “that is the secret of happiness and virtue- liking what you’ve got to do. All conditioning aims at that: making people like their unescapable social destiny” (Huxley 16). During their childhood, children are trained to like and dislike certain aspects of science, nature, and life so they can gain the maximum resources. In the aim for perfection, this autocratic society no longer allows people the right to choose who or what they want to be. The media today majorly contributes in the similarity between the two worlds. It might not be in the same process, but it has an identical idea. In our world today, commercials and advertisements replace the job of conditioning. You always hear about being thin, fit, pretty, but never of being yourself. The idea that being thin and pretty is the definition of perfect is repeatedly said over and over, making people believe they should be something more than what they really are or want to be. In Brave New World, the Director states that they “…also predestine and condition” and they decant their babies as “socialized human beings, as Alphas or Epsilons, as future sewage workers…” (Huxley 13). This means that the conditioning of the child forms a sort of barrier in their mind so
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