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How Is Brave New World Relevant Today

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Brave New World by Aldous Huxley demonstrates a dystopian society where humans are created in laboratories by the government. They are able to keep all citizens artificially happy so that they don’t realize the totalitarian regime that they live under. This novel was written in the 1930s when multiple global powers were fascist or communist. Citizens were terrified of their countries falling to totalitarian rulers. Huxley’s novel demonstrated a different type of totalitarianism where the citizens don’t conform out of fear but out of the inability to recognize that their situation is oppressive. Using the tool of immediate gratification to keep citizens in line, Brave New World was revolutionary and continues to be extremely relevant today. …show more content…

It was gained by making the population so artificially happy that they couldn’t recognize that they are oppressed. The World State is a softer form of a totalitarian regime as the people are controlled via manufacturing infants and by hypnotizing society into thinking that they are happy. If everyone has everything, nothing matters (Atwood). It could be said that society is built upon maximum happiness, using “soma,” a hallucinogenic drug, to eliminate negative emotions. Society refuses to dwell on anything that isn’t positive and avoids thinking about anything deeply (Keisman). In addition to drugs, there are several other ways that the Controllers attain maximum happiness. By choosing the caste and job that one will do, it eliminates the stress of deciding one’s life. In reality, it takes away any opportunity for oneself to decide what they want to do with their lives. Love and relationships have no meaning within this dystopian world (Gittos). Their happiness is entirely falsified by drugs and meaningless …show more content…

Instant gratification to keep the population distracted and drugs to keep everyone happy all of the time (Atwood). The use of these tools within the novel are a warning from Huxley. When these are used frequently it takes away a person’s ability to detect corruption. Huxley predicted the future better than any other dystopian author. He predicted that society would be controlled by instant gratification. The World State is a nightmare society where everyone is distracted all of the time (Hendricks). We as a society are controlled by our phones, constantly checking, texting, and posting. We are anxious when we don’t have our phones and use them excessively, some use upwards of 10 hours a day. In recent years mental illness has been on the rise and it’s been treated by the use of several drugs: antidepressants, antipsychotics, sleeping pills, minor tranquilizers, lithium, and other mood stabilizers. If someone has negative thoughts/emotions they see a psychiatrist and receive medication for it. This is reflected in the novel by “Soma.” Soma is a drug that makes an individual feel good. In large doses this drug can produce hallucinations and a feeling of timelessness. This drug is taken when one feels any kind of unhappiness or discontentedness

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Suggestions from the State” (21). What Huxley implies here is that the minds of the citizens are controlled by the state with certain technology, like soma. People are controlled in the World State by the soma, and with fake news, our news channels are controlling our own people of what to think. We are no longer coming up with our own ideas, rather we are being given them to benefit others. Later on in the book, Huxley talks about the disadvantages of technology.

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1508 Words | 7 Pages

People living in the world today surrender themselves to the effects of drugs and alcohol. In Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley, the drug soma is used to satirize people who allow stimulants to suppress their problems and create happiness, but true happiness can only be obtained through control over one’s own mind. With the drug soma, the citizens are able to provide their own superficial happiness and instability is prevented. It allows each part of society to work in perfect order. With the help of soma, all of the people are happy and satisfied with their manufactured lifestyles.

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1214 Words | 5 Pages

The citizens of the World State are encouraged to take Soma to avoid any unpleasant or difficult emotions. As a result, they cannot experience genuine human connection and emotional depth. The use of Soma also warns of the dangers of a society where people are not allowed to experience negative emotions, as it leads to a lack of empathy and understanding. It presents a society where people cannot experience the full range of human emotions. This lack of emotional depth further contributes to the idea of control and manipulation.

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Aldous Huxley’s text, Brave New World, will leave you questioning your perspective on life and it’s choices. Within the novel, curious readers can see that government control over all in an attempt to create a utopia, can sometimes have a counter effect, creating a dystopia. Wielding it’s tool of conformity, The World State has forced its ideology into the minds of its people at a young age, in hopes of avoiding rebellion. In many ways this is how our society functions in the real world. The genre of Huxley's text may be fiction, but the society fabricated in Brave New World may not be so fictional after all.

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1773 Words | 8 Pages

Since the beginning of human civilization, a form of government has been enacted to ensure a nation’s continuity; however, these institutions often become exceedingly powerful over their people. In Brave New World, the author, Aldous Huxley creates a theme expressing the significant danger that resides in the existence of extreme, administrative control over a populace, as leaders will retain their power continuously and unregulated. At the time when the this narrative was devised, the rise of communism and dictatorships were a threat to human rights. Through the creation of the dystopian society indicated in the novel, people are able to realize the effects of these types of governments. The thematic political issues are developed by utilizing

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527 Words | 3 Pages

But they used to take morphia and cocaine… Six years later it was being produced commercially. The perfect drug… Euphoric, narcotic, pleasantly hallucinate. " It quiets, calms, and in particular diverts a person from understanding that there's something very wrong, that thing is that the people in the Utopian Society are enslaved to the government.

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451 Words | 2 Pages

The citizens are conditioned from birth to be pleased with their social standing and occupations. If, however, there is some discomfort they can simply take a gram of soma, a perfected drug. It is not only offered to anyone to elevate his or her mood, but refusal is highly discouraged. This is seen in the quote, “ “ (pg. ) Besides soma, the children of this fictional work are taught to engage in erotic play; thus encouraging promiscuity.

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Aldous Huxley utilises a variety of conventions of speculative fiction in Brave New World to provoke a response within the audience by incorporating them into the text along with his complex and descriptive style of writing. This is to make the audience react in different ways and think of certain ideas or messages as the story goes on. Huxley uses a variety of themes of speculative fiction to evoke a reaction within the viewers as they give them an overview of how the story will play out. The theme of technology and control makes the audience feel worried as having control over advanced and powerful technologies such as Bokanovsky's Process and special conditioning can be especially dangerous.

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2650 Words | 11 Pages

In Aldous Huxley’s dystopian phenomenon Brave New World, the resonating idea of a free will fronts the truth of enslavement through the malicious conditioning that they experience throughout their lives. Huxley introduces the theme of through the widespread use of soma, a free drug handed out to the citizens of the World State used to make people feel “happy.” Represents how the leaders of World State use drugs to control their society through making them believe they are happy, when they really are not. Multiple characters throughout Brave New World experience this manipulation of the government but it ends up not turning out how the government expected it too.

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Some people think that Brave New World is no longer relevant today because it was written more than 70 years ago. However, there are many ideas in Brave New World that are present in today’s society. For example, in chapter 16 of Brave New World, Mond is talking to John about why shakespeare is forbidden in their society. He mentions how in a society full of consumers, everything must always be new to keep the people buying, so they have to get rid of things that would be popular for a while like good books or beautiful art. In today’s society, we seem to have the same mindset.

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875 Words | 4 Pages

Would the society one day present you with a fancy commercial narcotic that would put an end to all your bad days? Huxley believed so especially with society's growing need for instant gratification seen more and more recently through the use of advertisement. Today it is also seen that the addiction of drugs has gone up amongst people all around the world. Recreational drugs are seen being used to achieve an instant height of emotions and feeling as if all your problems are taken away from you that moment. Seem familiar to Lenina’s need for soma to escape her problems “It’s awful.

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1038 Words | 5 Pages

In Aldous Huxley’s dystopia of Brave New World, he clarifies how the government and advances in technology can easily control a society. The World State is a prime example of how societal advancements can be misused for the sake of control and pacification of individuals. Control is a main theme in Brave New World since it capitalizes on the idea of falsified happiness. Mollification strengthens Huxley’s satirical views on the needs for social order and stability. In the first line of Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, we are taught the three pillars on which the novels world is allegedly built upon, “Community, Identity, Stability" (Huxley 7).

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1690 Words | 7 Pages

There is great dependence on technologies that integrate extremities such as ectogenesis, advanced genetic engineering, and hypospadia into normalities. These technologies raise ethical questions about the role of science and technology in society, and how they are used towards controlling and manipulating its citizens, and contradictorily, society as one. In Brave New World, Mustapha Mond is one of the ten World Controllers, the ruling elite who govern the dystopian society. His view on happiness is that it is something that can and should be engineered and controlled through the use of technology. Mond believes that “the world’s stable now” because “people are happy; they get what they want, and they never want what they can’t get” (Huxley 244).

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427 Words | 2 Pages

Truth and happiness are two things people desire, and in the novel, an impressive view of this dystopia’s two issues is described. In this society, people are created through cloning. The “World State” controls every aspect of the citizens lives to eliminate unhappiness. Happiness and truth are contradictory and incompatible, and this is another theme that is discussed in “Brave New World” (Huxley 131). In the world regulated by the government, its citizens have lost their freedom; instead, they are presented with pleasure and happiness in exchange.

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1977 Words | 8 Pages

Authors of dystopian literature give the reader their own vision of the future. It is often a view of a repressive society that is controlled by a totalitarian government (Tor.com). 1984 by George Orwell and Brave New World by Aldous Huxley are no exceptions to this. These works of literature depict societies that are strictly monitored and controlled by an omnipresent and dogmatic regime. The governments of these societies keep a watchful eye over their citizens, and carefully survey every aspect of their daily lives.

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