Technology In Aldous Huxley's Brave New World

Albert Einstein once said, “It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity,” and he was right. The shockingly vast advance of technology continues to affect society, and individual lives, in seemingly more negative ways than positive. In Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, Huxley demonstrates the impact scientific technology plays on the lives of Bernard and Lenina.

Huxley first became interested in science, and majored in biology. He is said to have planned on becoming a doctor, but contracted a disease called “keratitis,” which is described as an inflammation of the cornea, and soon became almost blind (World). He later turned to the study of Literature due to his failing eyesight. One positive result from his

Huxley connected his last novel, Island, with one of his most famous novels known as Brave New World. In both novels, Huxley introduces drugs that affect human experiences, one called “soma” and the other “moksha”. The differences between the two drugs are that soma “flattens and attenuates human experience,” whereas moksha “enhances and enlightens it,” which makes some wonder what it means to be “truly human.” Throughout all of his works, Huxley was aware that technological science, especially “biomedical science,” could essentially modify these aspects of life (Briggle).

Despite Huxley’s many works criticizing these new developments in science and technology, Huxley was “not opposed” to it. His message is the advances must be directed by ethical analysis and held to the standards of “individual dignity and enlightenment as well as social sanity and peace,” suggesting that even though scientific advances are

Bernard, however, refuses to take the drug soma to calm himself down after the incident in the changing rooms with Henry. Lenina, it seems, is a walking soma advertisement. She not only advertises soma though, but all of the hypnopaediac phrases that were murmured to her in her sleep. While Bernard and Lenina are frolicking about, Bernard becomes moody because of Lenina’s insistence of being in a crowd, and Lenina counters his attitude with the saying, “a gramme in time saves nine,” and after Bernard pushes her away impatiently, reiterating another saying, “one cubic centimeter cures ten gloomy sentiments” (89). Even this early in the novel, Lenina is inducing an impact on