Aldous Huxley's Futuristic Vision
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The futuristic society envisaged by Aldous Huxley in Brave New World is a utilitarian sanctuary in which all social efforts have been coordinated to produce stability and harmony. In this world, personal liberties are quashed in the name of empty pleasures and mindless, sensory delights that, in spite of their dehumanizing effects, do nonetheless produce and perpetuate a gloss of "happiness" that sustains the citizenry. Genetically engineered and hypnopaedically conditioned to acceptùeven enjoyùone's station in life, the typical citizen in Huxley's future is free in a critical sense: free from want, from ambition, from the angst of uncertainty. When one is inexplicably melancholy or agitated by "dreadful ideas", there is always soma, the wonder drug that, upon consumption, ensures that one will "forget all about" troublesome things and be jolly (70). For all intensive purposes, Huxley's future is crime-less, placid and singularly pleasant: an endless stream of "agreeable sensations (169)." In such a world as this one, many of the problems that plague present-day society have been utterly sidestepped. Were a criminologist to visit Huxley's future, he or she would find little to examine. The social order in the Brave New World (BNW) is fixed; it is not fluid and dynamic. In this, the mechanisms for maintaining social control reside not in law but in genetics, mind-control and pleasure manipulation. Thus, it is not reasonable to assume that crime as it is understood
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s of Hirschi's Social Bonding Theory have certainly been accounted for.
At first blush, it would appear that the BNW acts against the prescriptions of the Social Bonding Theory, because individuals in the BNW are denied from birth the intimate attachments that are commonly enjoyed in the present day: parents, siblings, and monogamous relationships. It is tempting to dismiss the BNW scenario as utterly antithetical to Hirschi's theory. Yet, the BNW social structure does in fact accommodate the most basic of Hirschi's requisites for social stability. Aside from the fact that individuals in the BNW are genetically ill-disposed to question their station in life, the hierarchy in place in the BNW is designed to be a haven for those occupying each rung of the social ladder.
As is evidenced by Lenina's assessment of her contemporaries above (and Henry's response to her musings), it is a tight connection one has to one's fellow caste members in the BNW. Socializing, living and working together, the citizens of the BNW are always exactly where they belong, and have little desire to be anywhere else. They are accepted by their fellows, and are valued by the system. In this, though attachments to a parent or a sibling are horrifi
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 3051
Approximate Pages = 12 (250 words per page)
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