Essay, Research Paper: Brave New World

Brave new world Essay
The novel Brave New World describes in detail the lives, customs, and social standards of a society based in the future. This future society is an extension of Henry Ford's concept of the production line. The so-called "perfect society" depicted in Brave New World presents many different yet alarmingly similar cultural ideas when compared to today's society. Life in America today and cultural ideals in contrast to the time depicted in Brave New World can be compared and contrasted using three major elements the use of mind altering drugs, the social acceptability of sexual intercourse, and the loss of all family unity.
In America today and the futures "New World", human beings use mind altering drugs for many of the same purposes primarily to try to escape the reality of the world. In America drugs are used everyday to stimulate the mind and to escape the real world. In Brave New World ,drugs are particularly some used as an everyday relaxant to control hostility and to make people feel better. In Brave New World ,the entire society revolves around the use of soma and its use is encouraged due to the belief that society would not function correctly without the drug.
The differences in the Brave New World and America on the use of mind altering drugs is also very distinguished. In American culture today nearly everyone that is on drugs becomes addicted, addiction is a serious problem because the people that are on the drugs don't help society and hurt themselves as well. As a result, drug usage is discouraged. Today it is illegal to use or have any drug of this type in your possession. The consequences can also be as severe as jail time and costly fines, depending on the type and amount of drug involved. The type of drug and the amount depend on the severity of the punishment. In Brave New World, it is a completely opposite situation. In the novel, Bernard states to the Savage:
"The days Soma ration," Bernard answered rather indistinctly;
For he was masticating a piece of Benito Hoover's
chewing-gum. "They get it after their work's over.
Four half-gramme tablets. Six on Saturdays."
(Huxley 164)
This passage states how they give it to the workers to help them have an easy night, to keep them occupied, and to help keep them satisfied. The drug Soma is somewhat of a antidepressant that alters how your brain views the state of your body and the world around you.
The social acceptability of sexual intercourse in both worlds is the same in some aspects and inverse in some entities. They both have the same general feelings toward sex because both civilizations find sexual intercourse very enjoyable. Both worlds used birth control. In Brave New World, they used a Malthusian Belt and drills for birth control while in America, we use many different kinds of contraceptives such as condoms and the birth control pill.
Brave New Worlds sexual habits are to be very promiscuous, because the more partners have the more you enjoy it. In America The main form of sexual intercourse is heterosexual activity and family where one person commits to one person to have children to start the process over again. Brave New World uses their birth control as a complete control and make the children on a production line so that the promiscuity taking place will not effect the population, the leaders control the population. America also has homosexuals which the Brave New World society eliminated when they started the process of making their society.
Brave New World takes family structure to a different level by basing their societies levels around it. The society's structure is set up as a family with older and younger brothers and sisters together acting out their separate roles in society just as you would in a family. However, the leaders are considered the parental units by governing over their so called children. American culture calls for families to discipline their children just as the leaders would in Brave New World. Both societies use a strong guiding hand to teach the "children". Americans use parental power while the leaders use hypnotic sleep poetry.
The systems however have completely opposing views. The Brave New World system takes away all emotional support of someone being there for you and knowing your particular wants and needs. American society emphasis emotional support by raising children in families. Hopefully aware of our children's needs, our families give us our different social levels, they give us emotional and financial support because we are their own children. The way our government governs gives the parents the right to discipline and raise children in America and to make the children eligible to decide their own rights at the age of eighteen. In Brave New World, the government gives those rights to the children at around thirteen years old when they have gone through all of the sleep learning and different tools the government uses to teach them.
The ways in which drugs, sex, and loss of family unity affect both our societies is one of the main reasons that our society is our own particular society. American society is not a perfect society and almost no society ever will be just in the fact that people strive to be different. The society in Brave new world thought they benefited from the changes they made from Americas society. They did not realize that the changes would take away nearly all individuality, decision making, emotion, and the right to choose the path in life in which you would like to take.