Dangers of Technologically Advanced Society in Brave New World

Our society as a whole is composed of various different, and even contradicting ideologies. Within our source we explore whether leading a life alongside personal freedoms and choices as being the path to happiness, or if having security, control over you and less freedoms for the greater good of the group as being more beneficial. The film Brave New World (1998) provides an excellent view into how a more communistic society could run and operate in the future, providing evidence on both ends of the spectrum on whether the system is advantageous or destructive to the wellbeing of humanity. We should embrace the perspective presented to a negligible extent; The premise behind Brave New World is an interesting one, and because of how society is structured it is highly efficient and stable, with nobody experiencing hunger or thirst or even pain, people are brainwashed from birth deterring acts of violence and war throughout society, civilization has become utopian. However, people in this society are lacking so much of what a human and their soul require, people are robotic, lacking individuality, motivation, and true happiness, with many presumably being drug and/or sex addicts.

The film Brave New World presents ideas that perfectly link back to our source, our source depicts a utopian set future with the caption “There is no civilization without social stability. No social stability without individual stability”, a clear link between our two sources as the film is centered around the idea of making you the individual “happy” in efforts of making the society as a whole function happily in unison. Within the film we get to see both sides of humanity, where one is set in a utopian civilization, and those less fortunate deemed “savages” lie on the outskirts of society, where society is divided into clear groups of hierarchy. As a collective group with every individual fed from birth to believe only in certain ideas, the society as a whole is greatly more stable, the element of individuality in people is gone, there are no differences between people ‘everyone belongs to everyone’, so there is simply no war, no violence, no reasoning behind any of that to occur. In our reality everyone is divided into different countries, races, religions, and so on, and these differences between people are the driving force behind the bloodshed and violence that is littered throughout history. Within the alternate reality of Brave New World, the people’s lives are far less worrisome as all of their needs are met, they don't have to worry about being robbed in the middle of the night, they always have a roof over their head, they aren't afraid the soviets will launch a nuclear bomb into their backyard one day, always having food in tummies, and are guaranteed a job dependent on the social class born to. In our lives many of us suffer living through poverty, illness, etc, and the system presented in Brave New World could be very promising in the long term success and health of humanity, where today in western civilization it is based around consumerism, how much you own, and that cannot last forever.

We explore an alternate utopian future where all your basic needs are met, where life is not hectic and chaotic its predictable, where society is constructed entirely different than the rules of our own, while this may seem captivating at first there are several downsides people must face, compromises people must take to develop a society such as this. People no longer feel love and intimacy towards one another, the population is restricted and limited as people are no longer procreating themselves, instead you are born in a test tube. Their lives aren't about aiming to change the world for the better, it isn't about having personal freedoms or choices, it is not about the procreation our society centers itself around where you grow up and have a child to one day succeed you, their lives are completely and utterly about feeling pleasure.

These people stand in lines for hours to receive “SOMA’, a compound created by the government to give everyone artificial happiness, a way to escape from life under the influence of a drug, and not only that but it is clearly addictive and harmful to the end user, in the film we see Lenina with a full stash of these pills in her position to which when a problem arises, or she feels sad it is as simple as popping a pill and being done with it. In a more extreme case we see John's mother suffer from a strong enough addiction to put her in the hospital, and later she just caves in taking more and more ‘SOMA’ until her death. Society is constructed with only pleasure in mind, with taking drugs being socially accepted, where there is no stigma around having several sexual partners as ‘everyone belongs to everyone”. And all of what's wrong in society gets pointed out to the viewer through john as he is the most human of them all, having grown up a more regular childhood, being curious, intelligent reading books to gain the power and knowledge no other “savage’ capable like him.

The utopian society of Brave New World lives by the motto of “Community, identity, and stability”, where they are all fully invested, believing that their way of life is the best it has ever been though this simply is not true. In our alternate reality people are born in test tubes in a similar manner to cloning, where the more intelligent are deemed the “Alpha’s and Beta’s”, and the lesser intelligent beings are deemed “Gammas, Deltas and Epsilons” these people carry out all the work requiring less intellect like manual labour jobs. You are simply born this way and there is nothing you can do about it, there are no opportunities in this society to grow, and work your way up the chain in something you chose to do, instead you are given and commanded to do various most likely meaningless tasks to you and your life. From this lack of personal freedoms and the restrictions of their lives it is no wonder scientists had to produce SOMA just to keep people “happy’, people's lives aren’t driven by their desires but instead are forced upon them without choice, and this is why the people are depressed and unmotivated, and why those in control are seeking out a new “program” to brainwash people into “better” lives. This is not a way to live having such limited personal freedoms, and is the largest fault behind the society presented within the source/film, a society taking elements from Brave New World while still keeping the humanity in it would be idealistic.

The ideas presented within the source/film of a utopian society in the distant future should be pursued to a negligible extent. On one side this society would be excellent in maintaining balance in humanity as the population is set at a limit providing all those living with all the necessities needed to live a full life allowing no one to suffer, however this society is so distant from where it came from they no longer have true values, people are like robots designed to do basic jobs, with drugs being normalized in society as just the way to feel happy. This society is so heavily constructed by so few people with no ability to move up and down in class/status, this entrapment they face is the source of their depression and their drug use, this way of sorting people is what is taking the humanity out of humanity. Science is a gift to humanity to understand the universe, but when out of control in the context of our film the human aspect of humanity becomes distorted.