Intimacy In Brave New World

Relationships have evolved from strong bonds between two people to a weak link among many. Instead, society has generated a tight connection to material items instead of people. People have a hard time letting their “stuff” go, but cutting emotional ties with one for another is no big deal. Sleeping around is more of a bragging right than having real relationships. Similar to the dystopian society of Brave New World, promiscuity is high while intimacy is quite low. Aldous Huxley predicted the decline of intimacy between people through the World States’ promotion of mass consumerism, and today we see the mirrored trends through people having stronger relationships with material belongings than with their surrounding community. Intimacy, in Huxley’s World State, is an ideal of the past because its instability is too irreversible. The old ways of relationships are deemed “dangerous, insane, obscene” since they are “reeking with emotion” (Huxley 37). The goal of the World State was to create a stable environment, but “feeling strongly, how could they be stable?” (Huxley 41). Therefore, the directors decided to rid the universe of intimate

Having that phrase drilled into their minds for hours while they sleep, it’s no surprise that the members of the World State grow up believing that old clothes and antiques of any sort are a disgrace to their society’s prosperity. The conditioning preaches a paradox, “The more stitches, the less riches” (Huxley 49). Out with the old, and in with the new. Trying to imagine all of the excess items the World State produces is overwhelming. Where does it all go? So far, that is one question Huxley hasn’t answered, and most likely because it would accuse the society of living so wastefully and shed light on a not so pretty part of a seemingly perfect