The Absence of Passion

The Absence of Passion
In Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, the government is a controlling figure that sets varying limits over all of it’s citizens. They have sculpted a perfect world, but with perfection comes sacrifice. They have removed all ideas that could possibly lead to social instability. To our society not having family, daily drug holidays, and lack of knowledge are outrageous ideas, but the people of the World State know of nothing else.
The people of this new society not only have no parents, but are disgusted of the idea of it. All citizens of the world state are removed from the viviparous birthing system and unwillingly put through Bokanovsky’s process. The controller explains, “ One egg, one embryo, one adult - normality. But a bokanovskified egg will bud, will proliferate, will divide. From eight to ninety-six buds, and every bud will grow into a perfectly formed embryo, and every embryo into a full sized adult. Making ninety-six human beings grow where only one grew before. Progress” (6). The fact that they can create many more human beings with Bokanovsky’s process over the standard pregnant woman is not the only reason they chose it. It removes love, diseases and any permanent social attachments. By creating babies in a tube you can easily give them chemicals and sculpt them to be exactly what you want them to be, whether it’s an epsilon or an Alpha. Huxley exclaims, “Bokanovsky’s process is the key to social stability!” This new process takes away love, passion, attachments, and many diseases. It makes the physical difference of a epsilon and Alpha as different as the mental variability. But Bokanovsky’s process is only crucial to their society, it would destroy ones like ours.
The lack of History in this alternate universe comes with the lack of education, keeping everyone clueless and under control. If the people don’t know about the history, they won’t be curious about it. If they were to find out about it, there would be conflicting views, arguments, riots, and chaos. Huxley writes, “... and you can’t make tragedies without social instability. The world’s stable now” (220). Why risk the stability when they’re better off unaware? They were fine for generations, and they would continue on happy and oblivious for many more. Then there are the few who question the system, like Bernard Marx, Helmholtz Watson, and Mustapha Mond. The savage says to the controller, “Art, science - you seem to have paid a fairly high price for your happiness” (230). Those people who see past the distractions are the ones rewarded with knowledge. They are shipped somewhere remote and isolated, but are given the space and resources to study. But to the rest of the population, Pre-Ford history is irrelevant.
The World State offers a “happy” drug in order to control the ideas of people and prevent unsettled minds. Soma is the biggest development of the World State. It is used to dumb down the population, to keep them bubbly and happy, and to distract them from gaining unwanted knowledge. Lenina frantically says to Bernard, “Why don’t you take soma when you have dreadful ideas of yours. You’d forget all about them and instead of being miserable, you’d be jolly. So jolly” (52). Soma is used in every situation, whether you’re partying, trying to forget something bad, or even just bored. But overall, the drug is used as an escape. When Linda returned to England, she spent no more than an hour off the drug at a time. Huxley states, “The remedy was to make the holiday continuous. Greedily she clamoured for ever larger, ever more frequent doses. Dr. Shaw at first demurred; then let her have what she wanted. She took as much as twenty grammes a day. ‘Which will finish her off in a month or two,’ the doctor confided...” (154). Even though she is aware that the large doses are quickly killing her, she obsessively asks for more. Yes, soma is slowly shortening everybody’s lives, but in a place like that what’s to live for? Electromagnetic golf? Soma is their escape from the limiting, passion free World State.
The government censors almost everything we live for today. Our families, our education, our passion. Passion is the overall idea that the government is trying to eliminate, because with the strong affection towards something comes an opinion, ending in a societal disaster. By ruling out viviparous births, irrelevant history, and relying heavily on soma for all entertainment, it leaves no room to be passionate about anything, and without passion social stability is achieved.