Is it correct to sacrifice people’s needs for the wellbeing of the society? In both Aldous Huxley’s novel Brave New World, and the article “Practice Babies” by NPR, society values their needs over the necessities of the individuals. In the novel, author Huxley shows through the dehumanising use of conditioning by the World State to override the individuality of citizens and to create their goal of consumerist society. In the article, writer NPR shows this through the inattention of universities to the infants, and long-term needs of so-called “Practice Babies.” Both texts thus show a state, where the society demands their well-being over the needs and wants of individuals.
In the novel Brave New World, the World State induces mindless obedience …show more content…
Students in the universities use the babies no different than any other study tool, since “mothering [is seen the same] way as learning cooking or learning chemistry” (NPR). For the students, babies are no different than a spoon or a spatula they use as part of their learning process. Most of the time “a mother would put the baby down for a nap, and another would be there when it wakes up” (NPR). Such instances show how casually institutions take care of the babies, and how they consider babies equal to any other inanimate object. The long-term impacts of such careless caring for the babies, for the sake of successful learning outcome for the students, are numerous. One such outcome is the attachment disorder that babies experience later in their life due to the absence of “really tight bonds in the first years of life” (NPR). The reasoning behind it is that in the universities no practice mother takes care of a child, not more than “ten days at a time.” Because of that, it is a small time-period for any practice mother to set up lasting attachment on the babies raised this way. Although the system of “Practice Babies” helps to foster the lonely orphan babies, this idea does more bad for the babies than good. In both the novel and the article, the society values their
In the novel Brave New World, the World State induces mindless obedience …show more content…
Students in the universities use the babies no different than any other study tool, since “mothering [is seen the same] way as learning cooking or learning chemistry” (NPR). For the students, babies are no different than a spoon or a spatula they use as part of their learning process. Most of the time “a mother would put the baby down for a nap, and another would be there when it wakes up” (NPR). Such instances show how casually institutions take care of the babies, and how they consider babies equal to any other inanimate object. The long-term impacts of such careless caring for the babies, for the sake of successful learning outcome for the students, are numerous. One such outcome is the attachment disorder that babies experience later in their life due to the absence of “really tight bonds in the first years of life” (NPR). The reasoning behind it is that in the universities no practice mother takes care of a child, not more than “ten days at a time.” Because of that, it is a small time-period for any practice mother to set up lasting attachment on the babies raised this way. Although the system of “Practice Babies” helps to foster the lonely orphan babies, this idea does more bad for the babies than good. In both the novel and the article, the society values their