‘I wanted to change the world. But I have found that the only thing one can be sure of changing is oneself.’ Aldous Huxley . His seminal work, Brave New World, is set in the year of Our Ford 632 (ad 2540) which is 632 years after Henry Ford created the first mass produced car, the Model T ford, and Ford himself became the object of worship. The book was inspired by the H G Wells novel Men like Gods which encouraged him to write a parody of its Utopian society, but in the process he created a far more chilling vision of what the future could hold.
The society that Huxley describes is based on the principles of ‘community, identity and stability’, where the concept of the family no longer exists and everyone is programmed both biologically and psychologically to willingly and pleasurably accept their station in life.
One of the major themes is that of the use of technology to control the world, and the book warns of the dangers of allowing the Stateto exercise control over new and powerful technologies, and how ultimately they can be misused. The Stateuses science to create the technology that enables them to keep people in a permanent, but unreal state, of false contentment but at the same time they restrict research into science as they see it as a means for the potential disruption of their perfect’ world.
Brave New World is full of people who will go to any lengths to avoid facing the harsh realities of their situation and the use of the drug Soma shows the lengths they are prepared to go to in order to keep reality at bay.
Like George Orwell’s 1984, Brave New World this story depicts a dystopian society where those in charge use every possible means in order to control those underneath themTo halt them ultimately rising up and rebelling against that control. The massive difference between the two is that in 1984 it is constant surveillance and the concept of a Police State that keeps control, whereas in Brave New World it is technological intervention that changes what people believe they actually want. The government in 1984 keep control through force and intimidation whilst in Brave New World they are keep superficially happy so they don’t care about their loss of freedom. Ultimately what they’ve lost is their humanity.
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