Tuesday, February 20, 2018

How does the society in Brave New World compare to modern society?

There are certainly parallels between the world of Huxley's Brave New World and that of our current world. Eugenics and genetic engineering absolutely exist in our world, such as prison programs that either forcibly sterilize prisoners without consent or coercively encourage prisoners to be sterilized by offering them reduced sentences. Companies exist that will test genes of fetuses to determine possible conditions or neuro-divergent brain development, and the outcomes of these tests can result in abortions of fetuses deemed "unfit" to become a human. Certainly, these companies and program mirror the dystopic reality found throughout the pages of Brave New World.
Additionally, in Brave New World, the public are constantly under state surveillance. One only has to consider the ever increasing amount of state and private surveillance in our world to see the connection between the two. For instance, Amazon is currently working on facial recognition technology that can supposedly detect "fear" on the faces of people in order to attempt to determine who may be thinking about committing a crime.
Police departments and ICE have been partnering with Amazon on projects such as this to develop horrifying software that includes facial recognition, emotion detection, class/race assumption, and more to attempt to determine who may be thinking about committing a crime, and to broaden the scope and scale of policing and surveillance. Massively dystopic programs such as Palantir (a client of Amazon) and Ring (software of Amazon) are examples of this.
https://talkpoverty.org/2017/08/23/u-s-still-forcibly-sterilizing-prisoners/


Modern society is very similar to the society of the World State in Brave New World in a few ways: through its consumerism, its sexual liberality, and widespread drug-use that is catalyzed by government institutions.
The consumption patterns described in Brave New World, written circa 1930, were so over-the-top as to be hilarious: they're a joke. Who would throw out clothing over a rip or a broken zipper? Today, who would bother to put in a new zipper? It would probably cost more in labor than replacing the item. We consume at very high levels, levels that would be considered stunning by Huxley's audience—but not by citizens of the World State.
Similarly, Huxley was writing to an audience in which sex was assumed to follow marriage (except in more progressive circles like the Bloomsbury Group). Today, with birth control and family planning (which allowed a sexual liberation from the threat of unwanted pregnancy), sex outside of marriage became a norm.
Finally, in Brave New World, soma is a widely-used recreational drug that is rationed to the populace. Today, the United States is experiencing an opioid epidemic due to opioid drugs' over-prescription from medical professionals. Opioids are highly addictive in nature and are in themselves very like soma in their ability to produce euphoria. Though soma is never explicitly called "addictive," the fact that the population of the World State defer to using it in their free time implies that they are heavily reliant on its use.


There are various ways in which modern society mimics that of Brave New World.
Medical Science
While there is nothing to parallel the activities of the CENTRAL LONDON HATCHERY AND CONDITIONING CENTRE of Huxley's novel, there has been cloning of animals. Genetic engineering, such as producing human insulin, and genome therapy are also realities. Certain genes have been isolated as well.
Conditioning
In the New World children are conditioned to think in certain ways and to feel that "everyone belongs to everyone." The children play naked so that as adults they will think nothing of many sexual partners.
People in modern times are conditioned by exposure to movies, television, news media, social media, current trends, and peer and social pressures. There is little or no independent thought among many who follow certain trends of thought.
Desensitization
In Brave New World, the children play near the dying so that death will be of little meaning to them. This activity is called death conditioning. But everyone looks young, even the dying. So, when the children see John's mother, they are shocked because she looks old.

They had never seen a face like hers before-had never seen a face that was not youthful and taut-skinned, a body that had ceased to be slim and upright.... At forty-four, Linda seemed, by contrast, a monster of flaccid and distorted senility

People in modern times are so exposed to violence that they have become desensitized to it. With movies and other media, people are desensitized to death and others' misery.
Drugs
People of the New World take an entertainment drug called soma. Real emotions are purged because any time that people feel the least bit unsatisfied, they merely take soma.
In modern society drug use is prevalent as a reliever of stress or pain because people have trouble dealing with reality.
Sex as Recreation
Children of the New World play with one another naked. In this way, they are conditioned to pay little attention to sexual differences. "Everyone belongs to everyone" is a slogan taught to them. In this way they do not experience erotic love or feel any personal attachments.
Likewise, in the real world, people have become more desensitized to sexual relations. They engage in these relationships on casual levels as they often see recreational and casual sex in movies.
An All-Powerful Elite
The New World has people who are bred to be leaders; these are the Alphas, and they are the ones in control of the others.
In modern society, the wealthy owners of certain companies such as media companies exert a power over citizens because they control what information goes out. They have the opportunity to alter this information, as well.

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