Very recently, I finished Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, and I must honestly say that this book made me think a little differently about society. It began to scare me when I saw that a lot of Huxley’s ideas were making sense. However, when I was reading, I was stuck on the fact that these people do not have any sense of individuality; no thoughts that are really theirs. In the book, the children are raised by the community and are fed the rules and morals that they want them to live by through their sleep. Because of this, nothing is really passed down, and there is really no uniqueness. Bernard thinks that Lenina thinks of herself as a piece of meat and that there is really no other reason for her being there. She has no real individuality, and really, no one does. There is no art in the world or pure emotion. This seems completely odd to me because in our modern world, one of the things we all strive to get is individualism. What I wonder is did they give up individuality for constant happiness, or did they not even realize what they were sacrificing? And most importantly, how do they expect to have any progress, if they raised everyone the same way, with the very same thought processes? It takes different people with different thoughts and ideas to improve different things, so how did they have any progress at all in the society if they had complete lack of individualism? Mustapha Mond said, “Science is dangerous. We have to keep it most carefully chained and muzzled.” (pg.225) He is meaning that progress is dangerous in his perfect society. In my opinion, I believe he is setting his people up for failure. What I mean is things are always changing, even if you don’t want them to. If some natural disaster occurs or a new disease plagues the population, then who will come up with the solution? They purposely create dozens of twins, all who think the same thing, so that industry can continue steadily. If one of them can’t figure it out, then really none of them can. It’s a world of clones. My question is do you think individuality is necessary for a society to survive?
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In "Brave New World," Huxley strains individualism, though he stills utilizes it to an extent. The young are mesmerized into believing false individualism, but in a world of media and mass intercommunication, we are technically brought up the same way. We believe and attempt to achieve a stereotype, even if it may be successful and meaningful to society. The idea you brought up about the World Controllers sacrificing individualism for happiness is peculiar. What I believe the goal of the World Controllers was to install the right amount of individualism into a being until perfected, and then stop with any more growth of that same individualism. This allows for more time being spent on consumption and less on pursuits of the individual. What I found from Mustapha Mond's lectures was that no new natural disasters or plagues will appear, so why is it meaningful to society to allow free individualism? One can argue that the only art available in Huxley's society is that of sexual fantasy, or the trips that one takes while they are on soma, which is art in itself. I believe individuality is necessary for a society of humans to survive, but if those humans are in a world of clones, then no, individualism will only further complicate the ability to survive.
ReplyDeleteHmmm interesting. I do see your point. Thank you for helping to make sense on that because when I was reading the book that didn't really make sense to me. I didn't consider the different classes that he had created different parts of uniqueness, but now I can see that it is. I was only giving plagues and disasters as an example, but if none of that happens then they really don’t need to worry about it, but if it does, then they’re kind of in trouble. Mustapha basically does say that art is a threat to society, so I was only going off that when I had said that there was no art, and also that they had taken away the literature and such. Thank you for making that clearer. It was kind of bothering me.
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