Brave New World Essay Draft One

After school ich werde schlafen.  I said this as I sat in my bed this morning contemplating the demise of my alarm clock.  Alas, no rest for the wicked and here goes nothing....Really nothing.

     Oliver Twist, Pinocchio, and Galileo.  All names of celebrated outcasts of history.  Through their persecution, their punishers' values and assumptions were exposed.  A boy without a family is no good to society.  A boy is worthless if he isn't a real boy at all.  If you try to prove the church wrong, they will be offended and denounce your name.  Similarly, John of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World is a pariah with experience to heed.  His upbringing as the shame of his "city-slicker" mother and the outsider child of a tribal village create a perspective through which the two fictional societies of savages and a world government can be effectively compared based on the ideals they value.
     The most natural effect of John's social isolation is the irregularity of his emotional capacity.  Although he was exposed to the indifference his mother treated intimate contact with, John's romanticized concept of a relationship, due to his education in Shakespeare and the monogamous culture of the tribe he was raised in, lead him to deny his own carnal desires and grow attached to his mother.  His refusal to accept the advances of Lenina or the death of his mother were comparatively pious in relation to the norms of the Brave New World where erotic play and promiscuity are encouraged beginning in early childhood.
    The product of John's socially unacceptable emotions is a confusion and depression he escapes through self-inflicted abuse and isolation.  When John begins life yet again, alone in the countryside, he whips himself, a process reminiscent of the tribal ritual he was denied.  In comparison, the citizens of the brave new world indulge in doses of soma to avoid any emotion they are uncomfortable with (that very discomfort originating from hypnopaedia).
    In addition to John's quixotic self-improvement practices is his servile personality.  Although he had been an outcast at the reservation in New Mexico, his loyalty still belonged to its people, offering himself as sacrifice for the rain that would ensure the community's survival.  Devoting your person to the good of the community is clearly traduced by its conforming members when the incident of Linda's sexual practices within the reservation is considered.  While the community never wanted either of them, they were not expected nor treated as if they should participate in its improvement.  Similarly, when John attempted to liberate the people of the brave new world from the influences of soma after the death of his mother he was greeted with opposition.  In effect, the conclusion to derive from the government's reaction is that individuality, a trait which soma allays through solidarity services and orgy-porgies, is detrimental to any overarching organization and consistency characteristic of a socialist society.

Aldous Huxley, Soothsayer Extraordinaire

While watching this video of an interview with Aldous Huxley by Mark Wallace, I took notes.  They were really standard and I only paraphrased what was said.  Nevertheless, the bees living in the beehive that is my brain crawled out of their honey hot tubs and pollen picnics to decipher and collect all the good bits of the dialogue.  What I wrote afterward made me proud.  So proud, in fact, that I decided to copy-pasta my comment here(with a few choice edits).


Over twenty years after the fall of the Soviet Union and its tyrannic, misanthropic infrastructure, there still exist arguments that the world, or rather its human population, has fallen prey to the dictatorial society of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World.
In his 1958 interview with Mark Wallace, the political and social zeitgeist of the period foster direct comparisons between Huxley's fictional society and that of the Soviets or Communist China. He notes two main impersonal forces of freedom diminishment: overpopulation and hyper-organization. Essentially, these factors persuaded and prepared the populations of the communist societies to welcome a political regime devoted to increased productivity and removal of consent from the governed, just as the government of the Brave New World had accomplished through express deification of Ford and the assembly line. Huxley also stated that the devices such societies will use to achieve this goal are propaganda, terror, and "a chicken in every pot." Just as soma is consumed under suggestion of the government to increase happiness, the communists promised their public enough to eat and fair labor.
Re-analyzing today's society presents similar conditions to fear. There are certainly more assembly line industries, including those we buy our food from and more people use drugs than in the 1950's. Are we in a position to deny that we have avoided the Brave New World? Considering the frequency and intensity of the aforementioned devices' of individual restraint use, we have moved closer towards a puppet society. The natural human desire for power stands timeless and the technology, as Huxley warned in the video, seems to be passing us by. Soon, or perhaps now(in secret), 3-D printers will be used to create anything from writing utensils to weapons. Coping with the unemployment and resource consumption such a revolutionary technological development would cause appears to draw closer the likelihood of the Brave New World as well as a curtain on the final showing of individual thought.