Community, Identity, Stability In Brave New World By Aldous Huxley

Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World takes place in what some would call a futuristic dystopia, one that seems cold and sterile, and whose inhabitants are alien to ourselves. Their society is succinctly described by their world motto: “Community, Identity, Stability”. The world that Huxley depicts is one that has completely abandoned many of the things that we consider to be essential to our humanity in favor a stable civilization in which everyone is happy. As a result, their perception of community and identity are very different than our own as they are completely geared towards maintaining stability. Huxley uses the extreme practices of the planetary motto in Brave New World to draw attention to our reality and to causes us to question our social …show more content…
Everyone thinks in terms of their position in the community and what they do for the community. The lack of freedom and injustice to those who are predestined to the lower castes is meant to invoke both feelings of pity and disgust in the reader. In the book, the characters are quite happy with their position and their justifications (even though they are hypnopedically spoon fed to them) are eerily reminiscent of things that we say in real life. Consider the hypnopedia fed to Betas, “Alpha children wear grey. They work much harder than we do, because they’re so frightfully clever. I’m really awfully glad I’m a Beta, because I don’t work so hard. And then we are much better than the Gammas and Deltas. Gammas are stupid.” This initially sounds ridiculous, but it is not difficult to think of examples of people saying things such as this in our own society. Often times these are things that we don’t say ourselves but that we here someone else say. We sometimes internalize them, and when we do, we too are …show more content…
The requirement of social norms, such as infinite consumption of goods, sports, social activities, promiscuity, and soma keep the machinery of society running. The consumption of goods requires the production of goods, which in turn keeps most people busy throughout the day. The remaining distractions are there to keep them from behaving out of line when they’re not working. These distractions become especially important with the higher castes such as the Alphas. Needing to be less conditioned than their peers in order to perform their work, Alphas are at the highest risk of having deviating thoughts or behavior and as such are required to be kept the most distracted. Huxley chooses to focus on the Alphas since they are the closest in terms of human nature to ourselves. Seeing how the Alphas are distracted from real issues causes the reader to think about their own distractions. The inclusion of the word community in the planetary motto is meant to constantly remind the citizens that their function is completely subordinate to the community, and that they must conform to its