The Controlled World By Aldous Huxley

A world with technology could either be beneficial or harmful; friendly or aloof; accommodating or destructive. Huxley’s Controlled World and the contemporary world both engage in activities that could potentially help, but also come with underlying atrocious outcomes. Both worlds have their respective dangers – conditioning, pleasure and control – which could conceivably harm people in both worlds/societies. As individuals, everyone is conditioned to believe the entirety of the material told and provided to them. In Huxley’s Controlled World, they begin the conditioning on individuals as early as their infancy. In the earlier chapters, Huxley introduces to the readers the method used for conditioning each individual: hypnopædia. They are
One of its main uses still to this day is for pleasure. As individuals in Huxley’s World – more specifically those from the Other World – they are conditioned to not think and simply escape obstacles and reality. In order for this method to be implemented, soma is taken by the individuals. In Chapter 7, Bernard and Lenina watch a celebration in the Savage Reservation, which almost brings a distraught Lenina to tears. Wanting to erase the morbid scene she had just witnessed, she thought of taking soma to numb herself, but she was not equipped with any, which is where she says “Oh, I wish I had my soma” (Huxley, 110). Now although gramme tablets of the medication is more common, advanced technology also offers soma. In Chapter 14, Linda is hospitalized and connected to different machines, and Huxley states that she is “transformed and embellished by the soma in her blood” (Huxley, 132). Meanwhile in the contemporary world, people tend to turn to technology for anything, most especially pleasure. When celebrating, phones are used as a way of communicating and expressing their excitement. Likewise, they are also utilised to share information with the rest of the world through social media using words and/or pictures, which is where the danger lies. With just one click, your personal data could be shared with your friends as well as strangers, and with another click it could
In Huxley’s Controlled World, the individuals are all test tube-born and test tube-raised. If that is not enough to prove the amount of control that the World State government possesses over the minority, they also control every stage of their development. In the earlier chapters of Brave New World, Huxley introduced the Bokanovsky Process that is “applied to fertilized human eggs, causing them to split into genetically identical copies of the original” (Conor). This demonstrates the fact that these individuals cannot even be an “individual” and does not have control over their own life and journey. Along with hypnopædia and soma intake, these courses of action wholly establishes the control and influence focal point on Brave New World. Similarly, there is also a group of people in the contemporary world responsible for being superior over the minority. Millennials tend to reach out to their idols and favourite artists through social media, which all their idols and favourite artists participate in as well. The way control and influence works in the contemporary world is when a huge “somebody” in the industry promotes and has a firm belief on a certain topic, their fanbase will obviously be influenced with their idol’s, overall controlling their honest thoughts. These instances showcase how both control and influence are made even more complex and alarming with the