Brave New World Post 2: The Hive of Industry

The society that Aldous Huxley creates in his Brave New World is one that focuses only on prolonging its own existence. At birth, conditioning is used to predetermine every individual's class, intelligence, job, and values. People are hatched in labs, and genetic traits are regulated to make everyone healthy and attractive. Books are taught to be feared, and individualism is frowned upon. People are taught to ignore anything old and always embrace the new. And while the people of the higher classes have a limited ability to think freely, everyone is essentially alive to only perform their daily tasks and socialize with other people. Nothing is ever created, because of the potential upset it could bring to this delicately balanced world. As Mustapha Mond, one of the World Controllers, explains it, "We don't want change. Every change is a menace to stability. That's another reason why we're so chary of applying new inventions. Every discovery in pure science is potentially subversive; even science must sometimes be treated as a possible enemy" (225). Not only science is restricted for the purpose of stability, but art as well. "You've got to choose between happiness and what people used to call art," says Mond, "We sacrificed high art" (220). Religion too, is altered to fit this new world's needs. Because "God is not compatible with machinery and scientific medicine and universal happiness," this society instead worships Henry Ford for his advancements in mass production, which ultimately enabled this world to function. But without art, science and religion, what remains of real-world humanity?

Throughout the book, Huxley uses a metaphorically compares this society to insects. The higher caste people fly around in helicopters are frequently described as wasps or hornets (61), while the lower caste, for which the trivial and simple minded tasks are saved, is described as "ant-like" (73). Much like bees in a hive or ants in a hill, the people in this world survive only for the good of the rest of the colony. Huxley's metaphor illustrates the stationary nature of civilization in this dystopia he creates. No advancements or discoveries are ever made, nobody is able to do anything meaningful. People simply live, work, and then die. "Youth unimpaired until sixty, and then crack! the end" (111). Everything is done in the name of happiness and comfort, and anything else is superfluous. Those who can't adjust to the restrictions in this society are outcast and even feared. Any individuals who prove to have overcome their conditioning and cause trouble, are sent to an island where they live together in isolation. Effectively, by abolishing art and religion restricting science, and dumbing down the species, mankind has altogether rid the world of pain, war, and suffering altogether. The question of whether or not it was worth it serves as the driving conflict for the book's main characters, and as the essential question in Huxley's argument.