The Mechanization Of Man In Brave New World, By Aldous Huxley

The Mechanization of Man
As human beings, it is natural to feel emotions that are both pleasant and unpleasant, because one cannot truly enjoy the highest mountains without experiencing the deepest valleys. Aldous Huxley’s novel Brave New World depicts a society ruled by a totalitarian government, striving to achieve “Community. Identity. Stability” (1). It is a world where every aspect of human life is artificial, from one’s birth to death. Technological advancements in the World State has allowed for life to be mass produced and biologically engineered in laboratories, eliminating concepts of emotional and familial connections. Human genetic modification/manipulation has become a crucial pillar of the social caste system, categorizing each
citizen, much like commercial goods, into castes by natural selection: Alphas, Betas, Gammas, Deltas, and Epsilons.
Although children already assigned an “unescapable social destiny” (12), they must also undergo several types of social conditioning to ensure absolute conformity, including hypnopaedic conditioning, the Neo Pavlovian technique, death conditioning, and so on. Despite the World State’s intentions of maximizing societal happiness, it is impossible to achieve a state of complete perfection, as the political system itself is not perfect. Therefore, citizens are taught to rely on soma, a hallucinant drug, to annihilate any unpleasant emotions, and to “Take a holiday from reality whenever you like” (46). Citizens are essentially dehumanized into mindless human drones, incapable of feeling genuine emotions or thinking unconventional thoughts. Huxley’s Brave New World inspires horror, not awe, as it is based on the flawed idea that mankind is capable of fabricating a perfect world, which will inevitably
lead to a loss of humanity.
There are a number of methods that the World State practices on citizens, for it is not a simple task to defy the basic tenets of human nature. Hypnopaedic conditioning, specifically, forms the basis of societal values and beliefs. Citizens are kept content with their shallow, superficial lives with suggestive phrases being repeated over and over again beneath the pillows of sleeping children. In order to create a world absence of individual thought, hypnopaedia is carried out since birth, robbing children of their innocence and stifling philosophic growth,“Till at last the child’s mind is these suggestions, and the sum of the suggestions is the child’s mind” (23). Throughout the novel, characters like Lenina tend to mindlessly recite these phrases when they are placed in uncomfortable situations or intellectual conversations. For example, when Henry takes Lenina on the helicopter that oversees the crematorium releasing hot gas of dead people, he wonders who it is that just disappeared from their world. After a moment, they mindlessly draw back to the conclusion that whoever they may have been, they are in a better place, and Lenina echoes “Yes, everybody’s happy now” (65), the words that have been repeated “a hundred and fifty times every night for twelve years” (65). Despite the citizens’ capability to reiterate certain moral values, they bear no significance as hypnopaedia is merely an attempt of mental programming to form the desired identities of their dependents. As Helmholtz metaphorically compares, “Words can be like X-rays, if you use them properly. They’ll go through anything. You read and you’re pierced” (60). Words are truly a powerful gift, yet the Brave New World society sees it as the “labour of discovery" (26) and transforms it into a weapon to terminate/eradicate one’s independent thinking.
In addition to impeding citizens’ freedom of thought, the World State sacrifices the free exercise of any form of self-expression at the cost of humanity. A fundamental value that the World State upholds is that “history is bunk” (29), replacing ideas like religion, art, and honour, with lust and superficiality. As Helmholtz states, his creativity and thinking seems be restricted by invisible boundaries, “like all the water that goes down the falls instead of through the turbines”. Citizens are instead taught to only live in the present moment with no purpose or goals. The lack of religion, particularly, maintains the social order by preventing individuals from thinking meaningful thoughts. In fact, Mustapha Mond admits that religion is simply incapable of existing in a world of senseless beings, substantiating that “it [is] the fault of civilization. God isn’t compatible with machinery and scientific medicine and universal happiness” (207). This is because the concept of a higher being to their simple lives will be detrimental to the stability of society. Without religious beliefs, a phenomenon that calls out for a better understanding of the world, however, citizens are destined to be lost without direction and purpose. Regardless of one’s judgment of the validity of religion, whether they choose to follow them or not, they should be given the right to choose. Rather, they are forced into worshipping materialism and consumerism, as well as other Fordist values. The World State’s attempt to eliminate individual belief of religion ultimately desensitizes citizens into mindless mechanical beings, unconscious of their reason of existence.
Not only does the World State limit the outlets of self-expression, but they are also deprived of intimate relationships, the basis of human connection. As a further means toward absolute control, concepts like family, monogamy, and marriage are forbidden, and perceived as “suffocating intimacies . . . dangerous, insane obscene relationships” (32). To illustrate this, when John comes to reunite with his father, the Director, he falls on his knees before and cries “My father!” (131), which causes an uproar of laughter among the groups of desensitized and ignorant workers. Thus, the process of natural childbirth and marriage have been eradicated altogether. This amplifies the crumbling of humanity, as citizens have lost some of the most essential elements of human nature: to feel loved and nurtured. The consequences of emotional and sensorial deprivation extends to adulthood, where there citizens are morally obliged to value promiscuity over fidelity. As procreation is no longer necessary, sex is used casually as distraction, and ultimately to shorten the time intervals “between desire and its consummation” (38). As sex begins to pervade every member and function of society, however, it becomes devoid of passion and meaning. Like Bernard tells Lenina, “[going] to bed together . . . like infants, instead of being adults and waiting” (81) would never allow them to grow up and live independently as an individual. The instant gratification of satisfaction of which Brave New World operates comes with a great cost to humanity, taking away the emotions that humans are entitled to.
Furthermore, the World State relies on soma, a mind-altering drug described as “Euphoric, narcotic, [and] pleasantly hallucinant” (12) taken to quell unpleasant emotions.
With hypnopaedia, citizens are taught that “One cubic centimetre cures ten gloomy sentiments” (46), and thus are enslaved by soma and the illusion of escaping. However, these gloomy sentiments that the World State refers to, be it anger or envy, are never truly dealt with, only avoided, which can have long lasting effects on one’s growth. While anger and envy are natural emotions that help human beings learn and grow, continual repression of them simply takes away their entire condition of being human. Without emotional extremities, one may never experience the heart-wrenchingly painful side of life, but at the same time, it is just as impossible to experience true happiness and excitement, even with the use of
soma.
Huxley’s novel Brave New World inspires horror as it constructs a seemingly perfect utopian society at the expense of human nature. From the cradle of the grave, a representation of one’s life cycle, every detail of the citizens’ are controlled. In the eyes of the World State, individuals is defined as successful if they are “happy, hard-working, goods consuming citizen”. To reinforce this in the minds of citizens, the caste system was created to ensure social order, assigning each citizen into one of five castes based on intellectual capability and appearance . In reality, though, most of these tasks fail to make life worthwhile, the ultimate goal that human beings strive for. In response, hypnopaedic phrases such as “Everyone works for everyone else” (34) are repeated into the minds of pliable and susceptible children, continuing into adulthood. These moral values are instilled to prevent the thinking of creation, thus all forms of religion and art are denied. As a result of taking away citizens’ fundamental human rights, individuals become commodified into ordinary factory goods. Citizens lack the experience of feeling real emotions like humans, and instead rely on drugs to escape from the nightmarish reality of Brave New World.