In "Brave New World," the World State creates community by segregating the population into different social groups. At birth, for instance, children are already categorized into their chosen social group, like Alphas and Epsilons.
Similarly, this strict social hierarchy helps to create a sense of identity. The Alphas, for example, know that they are attractive and highly intelligent, and this contributes to their sense of self. This is also achieved through conditioning, the process by which individuals learn how to behave and what is expected of them.
Stability is created in the World State through the widespread use of soma. By keeping the population in a permanent drugged state, the Controllers ensure that social problems, like rebellion, will never happen.
Through these processes, Huxley warns us that when he focuses on community and a shared sense of identity, we neglect the importance of the self and the individual. Instead of fostering social harmony, all the Controllers have done is create class conflict, create drug dependency, and eradicate social connections that occur through institutions like the family. We see this clearly through the struggles of John the Savage who is unable to integrate into this society and eventually takes his own life.
For Huxley, then, a society should not be structured in a way that ignores the self, the family, and the natural differences which occur between us.
All of these pillars, community, identity, and stability, are achieved and maintained in similar ways. The main process by which these are achieved is conditioning. As the Director explains:
All conditioning aims at ... making people like their unescapable social destiny.
Babies produced by test tube are genetically engineered to be of one of five social castes. Members of each caste are then conditioned to embrace their role in society. For example, we are shown Delta babies, part of a worker caste, given electric shocks to condition them to hate books and flowers. Betas, who are meant to be major consumers, hear tapes all through their childhood as they sleep encouraging them to shop and buy. Betas, like the other castes, are also conditioned to fear solitude, which reinforces community.
A strict central control of society is another major way community, identity, and stability are achieved. Economic output is strictly planned in a centralized way. The Director runs the state as a benign dictatorship, banning Christianity, great literature, great art, philosophy, and anything else he fears will disrupt the stable community. He states that after the Nine Years' war people opted for security above all else:
What’s the point of truth or beauty or knowledge when the anthrax bombs are popping all around you? That was when science first began to be controlled-after the Nine Years’ War. People were ready to have even their appetites controlled then. Anything for a quiet life. We’ve gone on controlling ever since.
A third way the society achieves the three pillars is through the use of soma, a drug that keeps people sedated.
This smoothly ordered society runs by encouraging superficial relationships, regulating all aspects of life to avoid any unpleasant surprises or suffering, and encouraging mindless consumption rather than engaged thought.
The paradox of all this is that the Director achieves his vision of a perfectly ordered human society by robbing people of core essentials of their humanity: their ability to suffer, to love deeply, and to fully experience the best that art, literature, and philosophy have to offer. Stability is achieved by conditioning people to accept a superficial life and keeping them drugged. The Director claims this brings "happiness." A reader might argue that this society makes them less than human.
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