World peace, a cure to cancer, eternal youth, continual happiness, free drugs, a purpose for living, instant satisfaction, sexual gratification, a perfect world, constant vacations, comfort, without worries, without pain, blissful ignorance, heaven, it is the year of Our Ford 632. Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World is the Utopian society of the 26th Century called the World State. A world based on consumerism and conformity, the populace machine is controlled by the central political power of a few individuals, the controllers. The leaders, the world controllers, are the individuals who hold the knowledge of everything outside the World State, past and present. These controllers are entrusted with this knowledge because they have the capacity of understanding, outside of the conditioned view of the masses, that people are better off knowing only what they need to know in order to function as productive members of the World State. The control of the populace machine starts with the science of Ford, the assembly line production method. Society is controlled by this production method, each class of society developed to fulfill a certain function for the collective. Once the science of technology is used to create a member of the World State the religion of Ford is used to condition and maintain the optimum potential of that unit in society.

Mustapha Mond represents the political power of the World State, he is the World Controller for Western Europe. Mond holds knowledge of religion, history, and science, and is in charge of controlling the knowledge and truth presented to the World State. Mond suggests “the optimum population is modeled on the iceberg–eight-ninths below the water line, one-ninth above” (152). Only the segment of the population above the “water line” is made to lead, they are the Alphas. The subsequent classes are made to follow, the masses perform their tasks as they are directed and conditioned to do, without question. This social structure is created by methods of control.

The first method of control of the Bokanovsky Process where the citizens are cloned into the five social groups. From conception each individual’s destiny and purpose is predetermined, an Epsilon can never become an Alpha. Each citizen is born with a predestined potential and they are programmed not to exceed this potential both physically and mentally.

The second method of control known as conditioning. Conditioning is the science of mental programming, essentially brainwashing, citizens to act as unit in a collective harmony. Huxley calls this conditioning “Neo-Pavlovian Conditioning” (12). Pavlovian behavioralism is characteristic of acting without thinking as a result of being conditioned to respond to situations mindlessly and only as one is instructed to do. Hypnopaedia is one form of conditioning that occurs during sleep where ideas are repeated to the point of indoctrination.

The science of decanting and conditioning is the primary control developed to ensure a uniform society. Mustapha Mond believes in universal happiness achieved by a conditioned world, where “people are happy; they get what they want, and they never want what they can’t get…they’re well off; they’re safe; they’re never ill…they’re so conditioned that they practically can’t help behaving as they ought to behave. And if anything should go wrong, there’s soma” (149). Ultimately, the World State revolves around the idea that people can be satisfied with what they are told to believe, and people are told to believe in Ford. Science is controlled in the state as it must be limited to only the advances in technology that benefit the state. Experimental science and the search for truth threatens the World State and its control of knowledge and truth.

The manipulation of religion is utilized by the political power, the Controllers, to create dedication and firm belief in the science of the World State. The dogmatic principles of the state are never questioned, they are absolute certainties beyond the contemplation of the people.

Consumerism is a component of religion in that is provides purpose to those who produce the products and satisfaction to those who buy the product. To maintain stability, on of the three tenants of the World State, there must be economic prosperity and growth assisted by consumer ideals. The religion created by the world state facilitates only the superficial purposes of religion by establishing a religion based on mechanization.

Religious impulses can not be eliminated so the state must create religion and God in order to control the masses. Mustapha Mond points out that “God isn’t compatible with machinery and scientific medicine and universal happiness…civilization has chosen machinery and medicine and happiness” (159). For this reason the World Controller keeps the knowledge of God from society by providing the alternative of Ford. Ford is God because the state is founded upon the idea of Ford’s assembly line. The purpose of religion, in the understanding of the controllers, is to provide blissful comfort. Soma is the opiate of the masses and fulfills the function of religion by subduing and creating euphoria. If anything unpleasant should happen then there is always “the warm, the richly coloured, the infinitely friendly world of soma-holiday” (51). Soma creates the illusion of a safe and secure World State by raising an “impenetrable wall between the actual universe and their minds” (52). In the past religion took years to master but now “you swallow two or three half-gramme tablets, and there you are. Anybody can be virtuous now. You can carry at least half your mortality about in a bottle. Christianity without tears–that’s what soma is” (161). All the rewards of religion without the trails and tribulations of faith, soma makes life easy for the people. The political power of the state provides a religion based on happiness and comfort and in return society is complaisant.

However, for characters like Bernard Marx and Helmholtz Watson the limitations placed on knowledge and truth become realized when the characters begin to question the reason for control, and this is when citizens like Marx and Watson become dangerous to the collective. When the Pavlovian conditioning and the universal happiness of soma has been superseded by the curiosity in human nature then the citizen has digressed from his intended purpose and is no longer a productive unit of society, rather he is detriment to the social order. The state must maintain orthodoxy as “unorthodoxy” threatens society. These dysfunctional products are cast out of the World State to facilitate conformity.

The appeal of a society like the utopia of a World State is universal, every individual can relate to some aspect of the state and its perfection of society. This utopia comes at the cost of humanity and basic human nature by creating machines rather than people. Control is the primary purpose the state. Through each stage of development the citizens are programmed to become a child of the state, each unit dependent upon the collective. Instead of religion, art, and true science the civilization of the Brave New World has chosen to limit these facets of humanity by the demands of mass production. The World State is maintained by the control of science, the manipulation of religion, and the power of the leadership to provide direction and purpose to the masses.

Works Cited

  • Huxley, Aldous. Brave New World. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc., 1969.