Technology In Brave New World

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley is one of the earlier examples of the interpretation of a science fiction dystopian world within English literature. The society of Brave New World is organized through genetic engineering, sorting humans into a caste system by division into roles relevant to their intelligence and traits through predetermined genetic control, with free thinking Alphas at the top and intellectually inferior Epsilons at the bottom. Despite Huxley basing his portrayal of this ideal society created in Brave New World on events relevant to the context and time of the writing of the novel, key concepts and issues raised throughout are applicable in modern day scenarios. Huxley explores concepts relating to the dangerous aspects of

When explaining advancement of new scientific inventions to those who have questioned the nature of the new world that Mond has helped to create, he says that “‘Science is dangerous: we have to keep it most carefully chained and muzzled’”. How is Mond able to say that the advancement of science is dangerous and must be kept ‘muzzled’, as if the current state of their society has not been monumentally affected by the very thing that he wants to control - science itself? Mustapha has no awareness of how already deeply the effects of scientific inventions have already affected the world, controlling an individual's very own personality to make them fit into the society's well oiled machine. However despite being hypocritical and naive, I also found Monds statement as a voice of reason for current events affecting our society today. Huxey suggests through this statement, the question of whether we put aside concern of ethical, moral and human rights for the advancement of technology and science. Are we stopping ourselves from advancing as a species by containing the knowledge to bring ourselves into the future, keeping our own development ‘chained and muzzled’? Currently in the United States major breakthroughs of research into genome editing, genetically modifying the DNA of

The system in place in this new world creates a hierarchy formed by genetic control, essentially determining the limits of a person's freedom before they are even conceived in order for society to function as working body. Mustapha Mond, continuing his philosophical debate on the ‘old world’, reasons with the current societal structure saying that there is “No social stability without individual stability”. I found this statement to be entirely misguided as Mond is essentially saying that the advancement of this technology in this new society overshadows our worth and value as humans. By controlling every aspect of a person's being, all freedom of, essentially, being human is stripped. Brave New World sacrifices all racial religious and gender classifications for a stable society free of hate and misconduct, with the consequence of censorship of singularity. These classifications are what make us human, yet in contrast are the very reason for conflict and hate in our society. Hates crimes involving racial, ancestry, sexual and religious biases are at an all time high globally. In the United States hate crimes have risen over 10% since 2015, with the EU rising to a record number of 6000 monthly incidents in 2017 according to statistics taken from recent Police records. Despite these classifications and so-called ‘labels’ we put upon ourselves and each other causing so much harm and hate