Introduction Biography of Aldous Huxley

2.Comparison of Brave new world with modern society.
In many cases when you read a novel you may find comparisons between the “fictional” society and your realistic one. The author may concsciously or unconsciously create similarities between these two worlds. The novelist can forsee the future and write according to this vision. In Brave New World, Adlous Huxley evnsions the future of our society and the dangeroud direction it is headed in. Brave New World is greatly dependant upon soma, as in our world where prescribed drugs and drug abuse are prominent. This is evident when Bernard and Lenina return from the Savage Reservation.
Lenina is devestated from her experiences, so decides to take soma. it Illustates how like our world when something upsets us instead of trying to solve the probelm we use drugs to mask them. Linda’s addiction to soma is also an illustration of the similarities of drug abuse between our two worlds. Linda’s retuen to brave new world after many years brings her to the abuse of soma. She uses it as an escape from reality. Some of us use drugs to escape from the harshness and the tough brutality of reality. We always dream of the perfect utopia and expect our world to transform into it.
Some of us always look for the easy way out and drugs allow us that. A further similarity of Brave New World to us, si when John is in the hospital after hos mother’s death due to soma abuse, and witnesses the workers receiving their soma rations. John begins to throw the soma out if the window, causing hysteria among the workers. For these workers soma is everything. They cannot imagine life without it. People addicted to cocaine, heroine and other drugs go through a similar stage called withdrawl. Living without the drugs seem unimaginable and frightening.
If our world does not stop this dangerous overuse of drugs we will see ourselves evolve into the frightening direction of Brave New World and will be unable to stop it. Physical and mental controlling (hypnopedia) is used to teach moral lessons in Brave New World, our world uses hypnotism for the same purposes. The incident with Ruben Rabinovich illustates how our world is similar to brave new world. Ruben Rabinovivch was a young boy who fell asleep witht he radio on listening to a professor give a lecture.
When he awoke the next morning he could recite the facts he heard but, he did not know what they meant. This is sililar to our world because people use tapes to help them learn and memorize facts and speeches. In Brave New World their society is taught moral lessons and slogans by hypnopedia. For example “a gramme is better than a damn. ” Today we are forced into beleiving propaganda and advertisements. We are bombarded with ads and pressure to buy certain things, or beleive what people tell us. In Brave New World if they do not follow propaganda they are considered abnormal, and are forced out of society.
When we are young children we are soothed from our crying by music and the voices of our parents. We are told we are loved and are spoken to. Throughout our lives we are taught, valuable lessons through our sleeping moments. In Brave New World the children are also taught valuable, life changing lessons during their sleep. These lessons will be used for the rest of their lives. If we do not carefilly monitor the use of hypnotism we will be finding ourselves in a horrific situation like Brave New World The discovery of cloning has many similarities to the decanting process.
The process of cloning can produse a living creature that is a perfect copy of it’s “parents”. The Bokanovsky groups in Brave New World do the same. They create multiple, identical beings. Cloning must be closely watched. If we do not closly monitor this rapidly developing science it can get out of control and our world will evolve into the created life that Brave New World is. Our world has many alarming similarites to Brave New World. If they are not closely monitored we will find ourselves rapidly evolving into the frightening reality of Brave New World.
While the human assembly line described in the first part of the story is still a far-off fantasy, the basic concepts that make it work are already here. Today, people make choices to influence the genetic makeup of their children regularly.
Pre-natal screening has created the ability for many parents to decide if they wish to carry a disabled fetus to term or not. In Iceland, this has resulted in the near eradication of new cases of Down Syndrome in the country. Almost 100% of detected cases lead to an abortion shortly after.
Similarly, testing for a child’s sex before birth is a well-known procedure that leads to a wide gender gap in many countries. Less well known is the process of sperm sorting, which allows for a couple to choose the gender of their child as part of the process of in-vitro fertilization.
The above examples suggest we’re open to soft eugenics already. Imagine what would happen if people could determine their child’s potential IQ before birth, or how rebellious they will be as a teenager. It would be difficult to suggest that the development of such technology would not be hailed as progress by those who could afford to use it. Huxley’s visions of a genetically perfected upper caste might be available soon.
As this article suggests, some choice in baby design is already here and more will be available soon.
When most people think of what dystopia our society is sprinting towards, they tend to think of 1984, The Handmaid’s Tale, or the Hunger Games. These top selling, well known, and well-written titles are excellent warnings of worlds that could come to pass that we would all do well to read.
However, one lesser-known dystopian novel has done a much better job at predicting the future than these three books. Brave New World, written in 1931 by author, psychonaut, and philosopher Aldous Huxley, is well known but hasn’t quite had the pop-culture breakthrough that the other three did.
This is regrettable, as it offers us a detailed image of a dystopia that our society is not only moving towards but would be happy to have.
The characters of Brave New World enjoy endless distractions between their hours at work. Various complex games have been invented, movies now engage all five senses, and there are even televisions at the feet of death beds. Nobody ever has to worry about being bored for long. The idea of enjoying solitude is taboo, and most people go out to parties every night.
In our modern society, most people genuinely can’t go thirty minutes without wanting to check their phones. We have, just as Huxley predicted, made it possible to abolish boredom and time for spare thoughts no matter where you are. This is already having measurable effects on our mental health and our brain structure.
Huxley wasn’t warning us against watching television or going to the movies occasionally; he says in this interview with Mike Wallace that TV can be harmless, but rather against the constant barrage of distraction becoming more important in our lives than facing the problems that affect us. Given how stressful people find the idea of a tech-free day and how we take our pop culture so seriously that it was targeted for use by Russian bots, he might have been onto something.
Brave New World‘s favorite pill, Soma, is quite the drug. In small doses it causes euphoria. In moderate doses, it causes enjoyable hallucinations, and in large doses, it is a tranquilizer. It is probably a pharmacological impossibility, but his concept of a society that pops pills to eradicate any vestige of negative feelings and escape the doldrums of the day is very real.
While it seems odd to say that we are moving towards Brave New World in this era when official policy is opposed to drug use, Huxley would suggest we consider it a blessing, since a dictatorship that encouraged drug use to zonk out their population would be a powerful, if light handed one.
While the human assembly line described in the first part of the story is still a far-off fantasy, the basic concepts that make it work are alreadyhere. Today, people make choices to influence the genetic makeup of their children regularly.
Pre-natal screening has created the ability for many parents to decide if they wish to carry a disabled fetus to term or not. In Iceland, this has resulted in the near eradication of new cases of Down Syndrome in the country. Almost 100% of detected cases lead to an abortion shortly after.
Similarly, testing for a child’s sex before birth is a well-known procedure that leads to a wide gender gap in many countries. Less well known is the process of sperm sorting, which allows for a couple to choose the gender of their child as part of the process of in-vitro fertilization.
The above examples suggest we’re open to soft eugenics already. Imagine what would happen if people could determine their child’s potential IQ before birth, or how rebellious they will be as a teenager. It would be difficult to suggest that the development of such technology would not be hailed as progress by those who could afford to use it. Huxley’s visions of a genetically perfected upper caste might be available soon.
As this article suggests, some choice in baby design is already here and more will be available soon.1
___ ¹How Your Brain Is Getting Hacked: Facebook, Tinder, Slot Machines | Tristan Harriswww.youtube.com
When most people think of what dystopia our society is sprinting towards, they tend to think of 1984, The Handmaid’s Tale, or the Hunger Games. These top selling, well known, and well-written titles are excellent warnings of worlds that could come to pass that we would all do well to read.
However, one lesser-known dystopian novel has done a much better job at predicting the future than these three books. Brave New World, written in 1931 by author, psychonaut, and philosopher Aldous Huxley, is well known but hasn’t quite had the pop-culture breakthrough that the other three did.
This is regrettable, as it offers us a detailed image of a dystopia that our society is not only moving towards but would be happy to have.
The characters of Brave New World enjoy endless distractions between their hours at work. Various complex games have been invented, movies now engage all five senses, and there are even televisions at the feet of death beds. Nobody ever has to worry about being bored for long. The idea of enjoying solitude is taboo, and most people go out to parties every night.
In our modern society, most people genuinely can’t go thirty minutes without wanting to check their phones. We have, just as Huxley predicted, made it possible to abolish boredom and time for spare thoughts no matter where you are. This is already having measurable effects on our mental health and our brain structure.
Huxley wasn’t warning us against watching television or going to the movies occasionally; he says in this interview with Mike Wallace that TV can be harmless, but rather against the constant barrage of distraction becoming more important in our lives than facing the problems that affect us. Given how stressful people find the idea of a tech-free day and how we take our pop culture so seriously that it was targeted for use by Russian bots, he might have been onto something.2
Brave New World‘s favorite pill, Soma, is quite the drug. In small doses it causes euphoria. In moderate doses, it causes enjoyable hallucinations, and in large doses, it is a tranquilizer. It is probably a pharmacological impossibility, but his concept of a society that pops pills to eradicate any vestige of negative feelings and escape the doldrums of the day is very real.
While it seems odd to say that we are moving towards Brave New World in this era when official policy is opposed to drug use, Huxley would suggest we consider it a blessing, since a dictatorship that encouraged drug use to zonk out their population would be a powerful, if light handed one.
_________ _ ²Women Are Taking Too Many Drugswww.youtube.com

While today we have a war on drugs, it is not on all drugs. Anti-depressants, a powerful tool for the treatment of mental illness, are so popular that one in eight Americans are on them right now. This doesn’t include the large number of Americans on tranquilizers, anti-anxiety medications, or those who self-medicate with alcohol or increasingly legal marijuana.

These drugs aren’t quite Soma, but they bear a striking resemblance in function and use.3
In the book, the stability of the world state is partly based on total employment. A character informs us that automation has been purposely stalled to assure everybody can work since free time would give them enough extra time to think about their condition. Mass employment relies on mass consumption, however, and numerous systems are in place to assure everybody keeps using new products even when they don’t need anything.
Consumerism is a significant element in all major economies today. While it makes sense that a company would have an incentive to keep us buying things to remain profitable, Huxley’s point is that consumerism can also be used to keep us pointlessly chasing after items that we think we need to be happy as a distraction from exploring other pursuits.
While Huxley thought a dictatorship would have to condition people to want to buy new things and throw out last year’s products to buy similar but newer ones, the lines and fights at Black Friday sales suggest otherwise. Or the lines for every new release of the iPhone.
And just in case you thought it was only corporations getting in on the pressure, don’t forget George Bush wanted you to fight terror by shopping. In our modern lives, a similar view on happiness as exists in the novel is developing. In his book The Happiness Industry, William Davies argues that modern capitalism has come across the concept of making happiness the only acceptable mental state and run with it to make more money. Our new found slew of Corporate Happiness Officers and self-help gurus are all designed to keep us happy, consuming, and unwilling to question the larger system in place, he argues.
__________________ ^3. Nina DiSesa: : Has advertising made our society too consumerist?www.youtube.com ⁴Happiness Is an Empty Promisewww.youtube.com