Identity

In the book the Brave New World by Aldous Huxley there are many different messages he is trying to get across to the readers. He shows everything from drugs and alcohol to society and class. When I read this book the thing that jumped out at me the most was the loss of individuality. In the book the Brave New World Huxley shows that there is a strong connection between conditioning and the loss of individuality. I am going to show how our society has loss individuality through our own present day conditioning.

In the first chapter of this book there is a lot to comprehend. There were many new ideas that I had never heard of because Huxley made them up. There was one idea though that I found very interesting and re-read over and over. This was Boanovsky’s Process, a way of mass-producing so called people to achieve “Community, Identity, Stability”. The Bokanovsky process is a process in which one egg splits and buds into numerous amounts of eggs. This way instead of just having one set of twins they can get a hundred sets of twins. This was a great form of progress that enabled them to have the same identical person working the same identical job whatever that job may be.

Although this may sound like a fantastic idea and form of progress I have a great problem with it. If these people are mass-produced to be the same and to do the same how are they people at all. These are not people they are machines or robots at best but not humans. The way that they mass-produce these people is how Huxley is trying to show our manipulated society. In our society today things are being advertised to us millions of times everyday. When one of these things becomes popular more and more people buy it. They do not buy these things because they truly like them they buy them because people are told to like them. There are many different ways to be told to like something anywhere from peer pressure to celebrities advertising. These fads that go around make people into something they are not just to try and fit in with the rest of society. When people fall to these pressures they lose a little bit of individuality each and every time. Huxley is clearly trying to show the extreme in the Brave New World but his point is still true. People in society our losing their individuality each and everyday when they throw on that polo t-shirt or get that new I-phone. I am not saying that everyone has loss their individuality; however, I am saying how easy it is for people to be manipulated into liking something when really they only like it because society approves it. Huxley is dead on with his extreme way of showing our loss of individuality through conformity and that is one way I see it in our present society.

In the second chapter the children are being showed how the babies are conditioned. The DHC shows how the babies are conditioned to hate books and flowers. The reason for hating books is so no one will read something and have it decondition them by there knew knowledge. The reason for hating flowers is a little more complicated than that. The DHC explains that at one point they were conditioned to like flowers and nature so they would consume transportation to go see the nature. The flaw of this was that this was all they would do. They would only consume transportation, which wasn’t enough. They decided to start conditioning so they would hate the country but love all of the country sports. This way they would have to consume transportation and everything they needed for the sports.

The word conditioning may seem like a long stretch for our society now but in reality it is closer than we think. We are conditioned to like certain things and to hate other things our entire life. Electric shock might not be the way our society does it but that is the way Huxley goes to the extreme. In our society kids are being conditioned from the day they are born. They are conditioned by their parents and by their peers. When children grow up their parents pressure them to do certain things and to not do other things. Although some parents may be better than others they all pressure their kids somehow. Parents pressure their kids by using the way they have been pressured in their lives. As kids grow up they rebel but where does that rebellion come from? That rebellion stems from other pressures they feel from society. These can be pressures from their friends from T.V or just the society as a whole. These pressures that people face in their lives are their form of conditioning. The difference between Huxley’s conditioning and our society’s conditioning is that not everyone is conditioned the exact same way. Even though most people believe in God they did not all believe in God by being pressured in the same way. In our society people have different experiences and different lives but our society is still conditioned as a whole. It may not be to the extreme that Huxley has show in the Brave New World but it is clear that these pressures that everyone faces in life serve just like conditioning in the book. For our society they may be different pressures but because of them we lose a little bit of who we are by conforming to them.

The loss of individuality is clear in the Brave New World but I think people over look it in our present day society. It doesn’t really matter if we are losing individuality from pressure or advertising or anything else that deals with conformity. All that matters is that we see that the people in our society are losing their identity. Aldus Huxley goes to the extreme in his book through conditioning and mass-producing but his point is clear. When the extreme is pointed out it is easier to see and then relate it to the real world. Huxley is making us see clearer and helping us see what is happening in our society.