Brave New World Order

In Brave New World, we are shown what it takes to run a so called “perfect” society. According to the book, in order to have a stable civilization, you need social classes. Even though in theory it seems reasonable to have the less able individuals doing the less demanding jobs, Aldous Huxley demonstrates the need to manipulate people’s lives to create this ideal utopian world. Huxley shows this through Mond’s description of social equality, “Or the Caste System. Constantly proposed, constantly rejected. There was something called democracy. As though men were more than physico-chemically equal.” This quote explains how democracy is based on the fact that all men are created equal, however there is a need for different jobs and leadership. Who gets stuck doing the lower class jobs if all men are supposedly equal? The explanation comes from the book, which goes to show how cruel a society must really be in order to be perfectly stable. Huxley demonstrates how people would need to be physically handicapped before birth in order to keep them interested in their lower class jobs. He shows how conditioning the population can lead to a society focused on consumption, with a thriving economy. Huxley shows how the negatives of a utopian society greatly outweigh the positives of one.  If everything up to human reproduction and DNA needs to be messed with in order to provide society with the type of people it needs, why bother? War and other crisis may be abolished under their “New World,” but at what cost? Mond describes the symbolic wheels as needing to be turned, which is exactly what a society needs. However, Huxley shows the absurdity of truly attempting to create a utopia through his description of the completely artificial future, the focus on Ford’s assembly line technology, and the loss of individuality.