Deemonayyz Blog

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Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Brave New World- Chapter 3: an examination of collectivism and inverse morality

"Wheels must turn steadily, but can not turn untended. There must be men to tend them, men as sturdy as the wheels upon their axles, sane men, obedient men, stable in contentment."
this quote encompassed the industrial and economic systems in Brave New World. The lower castes of this society are simple workers; multitudes of drones and one-task thinkers. the mass production of human life is key to the economic structure of this society. but there is another factor that goes along with the workers. not only are the workers created for the purpose of a simple life of servitude, they are also conditioned to enjoy such a meager life. they are content with this lifestyle in every sense, and therefore, they are stable. like biological machinery. constantly working working working and satisfied with every minute of their day.


family, monogamy, impulse, feeling, desire? 
these are concepts that are no longer established in the Brave New World. family is an extinct concept replaced with the communistic principle that "everyone belongs to everyone else." humans are grown not birthed and the exclusive nature of family has been expanded to a society of free love. the morals of this society are not that one person belongs with one partner (as it is today) but instead the morality of the culture lies in multiple partners. the idea is that if a person only has one emotional outlet that they become unstable. by introducing multiple partners a person has multiple outlets and therefore is more stable. in the novel the character Mustapha Mons makes an analogy of a person being like a pipe. if one hole is punctured then it would spray out a jet stream of water. however with many holes, the pipe would merely leak from them all. Thus, stability is reached.


impulse and desire is extinguished from the culture. these are dangerous, unstable emotions which threaten the structure of the society. by conditioning the ideology of collective love and property into the minds of the people, they lose the opportunity for emotions such as jealousy or envy or desire which can inspire or be inspired by impulse and desire.


"'stability,' said the Controller, 'stability. No civilization without social stability. No social stability without individual stability.'"
As can be seen in the quote the goal of the society is to create a world where the peoples are emotionally stable and ultimately happy with their lives. by doing this a utopia-esque social structure can be created where the industrial and economic aspects of the society reach a state of near-perfection. which incidentally can be related to the previous quote, and the efficiency of "sane men, obedient men, stable in contentment."

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