A Response to Brave New World

Birth: the act of creation. This procedure is the act of producing the next generation of our kind. Producing one who may change the world, whether it is good or bad. But what if this basic human instinct was placed on to machines? What if humans were grown and harvested as though vegetation on a rural farm or garden? Though these horrific and unthinkable events may be just thoughts, Brave New World by Aldous Huxley shows the strange dystopian world it would be like if humans were born by machines.

The story is set in a London six hundred years in the future. People all around the world are part of a state run by a dictator, free from war, hatred, poverty, disease, and pain. They enjoy leisure time and material wealth. However, though this town seems to be a utopian world, all is not well. In order to maintain such a smoothly running society, the ten people in charge of the world, the Controllers, eliminate most forms of freedom while also twisting around many of the traditional human values. A realistic form of the Controllers may have been Adolf Hitler because of how he treated Germany and of its people. These rulers of this dystopia also believe that the process of Standardization is a value worth allowing. Though this way of life may be less problematic what these dreadful dictators are missing is the creativity stand point. But, with all that aside, how these tyrants keep this rule of standards across. These Controllers create human beings in factories, using technology to make ninety-six perfectly “normal” babies from the same fertilized egg and to condition them for their future lives. After the birthing process and the infant stage these test tube children are raised together and subjected to mind control through sleep teaching to further condition them. All the children spend their free time indulging in harmless and mindless entertainment and sports activities. As adults, people are content to fulfill their destinies as part of five social classes, from the intelligent Alphas, who run the factories, to the mentally challenged Epsilons, who do the most menial jobs. Teaching the lower groups such as the Epsilons is a very abusive task. So the child learns to hate books and more specifically reading, the spray them with high-powered jets of water. This technique might work for calming a riot down, but for these teachers to use it a kids is just crude and psychotic at the very least. Having these social classes though improving the overall standard of the workday, the rulers of this “chimerical” country are turning the citizens into workaholic, brain-dead, robots.

From making toast to making Toyotas, machines make our lives a lot easier. But though the act of childbirth can have many dangers and can be quite painful, is doesn’t mean we have to have machines carry out the procedure and let us go off and do something else. Even though there are afflictions, without them there would be no love for it for that pain can make love and relationships grow. Though Huxley was writing a satirical piece of fiction, not scientific prophecy, it is a sure sign of what may become of the human race if we let robots take care of everything.