Brave New World - society and socio-economic class
Uploaded by *unaverse* on May 11, 2001
Discuss how the society in Brave New World works to ensure that people do not change their socio-economic class.Through Brave New World, Huxley depicts a new, industrialized world, which is financially stable and has prevented poverty and self-destruction. Dictatorial governments are there to ensure stability and maintain perfection of the world.
Therefore, just like under any other totalitarian government, social, mental and economic freedoms are abolished in order to retain social stability. The government eliminated these freedoms by censoring art and religion, by predestining peoples’ social caste prior their birth, and by controlling each individual’s life with the introduction of conditioning.
At the beginning of the novel, the Director addresses his students and mentions, “ We also predestine and condition. We decant our babies as socialized human beings, as Alphas or Epsilons, as future sewage workers or future Directors of Hatcheries,” (p. 29). Citizens of the World State are categorized into distinct social classes, before they come into existence. Mr. Foster explains, “The lower the caste, the shorter the oxygen,” and this shows how chemical conditioning of the embryos presets the mentality and physical features of individuals towards a certain standard specified by the government. (p. 29) In an autocratic society whose aim is to maintain perfection, people no longer have the right to choose who or what they want to be. The government engineers babies to grow into efficient adults, who will then again contribute towards a stabilized society.
After birth babies’ minds are altered to accept the moral education of the government. Two processes the new world uses to control human judgement are the Neo-Pavlovian process and hypnopaedia. The children, during early childhood, are trained to like and dislike certain aspects of life, nature, and science so that they can consume the maximum resources. Beta babies receive electric shocks in the presence of flowers and books and then the Director teaches how, “ They’ll grow up with what the psychologists … call an ‘instinctive’ hatred of books and flowers … they’ll be safe from books and botany all their lives," (p. 36). The conditioning of the children forms a barrier in their minds, so that they are never free to decide for themselves, but are always bounded by the instructions of the state. Thus, the government is achieving its goal, the maintenance of stability.
The Alpha students also got a chance to hear one of the hypnopaedic repetitions addressing Beta...