Kelsie Frazier

Honors Brit/Lit
Mr. Urban
5th Hour
May 17, 2016

What We Love Will Ruin Us

The Postmans assertion that Huxleys vision is more relevant today than Orwells is
true. Aldous Huxleys Brave New World is an example of what we love will ruin us. Brave
New World is a dystopian written in 1932 about advanced technology that was only a dream
at the time. Many of Huxleys ideas in Brave New World are farfetched, but many of his
ideas also relate to how technology and society is today. In the book people conditioned into
certain castes and certain personalities. The people start off as test tube babies, in bottles.
They are then hatched and conditioned to: not fear death, love what job they are assigned
to, and to remember what standards are to live in this society. Nobody gets impregnated, no
one gets married, and mothers and fathers are absolutely unheard of. Brave New World
carries elements that our society today carries. These elements include drugs, religion, and
consumerism.
In the book social castes were separated into: those who could and those who could
not. The higher ups brainwashed people into what kind of being they would
be and what social class they would be in. this brainwashing is conditioning. Social
classes had names, with the top and the best people being Alphas. Next
in line were the Betas, which can do the same jobs as Alphas but are more
creative. Then there are the Gammas, who are average. The Deltas, who does the

low level work that nobody else wants to, do. The last tier is the
Epsilons, who are conditioned to do the simplest jobs, such as an elevator lift
man.

In comparison, our society has a division of social classes very similar to Brave New
Worlds. Our society has divisions between people who are: educated and uneducated, rich and
poor, and skilled and unskilled. Our society has a major division between educated people and
uneducated people. Educated people tend to do better in life, make more money, and are happy
people. Uneducated people spend life struggling, unhappy, and wishing for a better life. When
someone is educated, they have more skills versus and uneducated person. An educated
individual has skills such as being able to code software. An uneducated individual may have a
skill doing simple math. The educated masses in our society today, represent the Alphas and
Betas. The uneducated masses represent the Deltas and Epsilons. It takes special skills and
certain requirements to meet the standards of an Alpha or Beta.
In Brave New World, drugs represent an escape from reality or a way to stop people from
de-conditioning. People in the book take a drug called Soma, which is a very powerful
hallucinogenic. They take Soma as recreational activity, not knowing that it could be harmful to
them and the way they function. They start taking Soma as small children, and then continue
taking it in adulthood. Soma numbs them from everything around them, and when they do not
have access to the drug they freak out. In our society drugs are very powerful
things. People take them and abuse them. Our drugs are not a controlled substance;
it can be used as a weapon against other people.
Everyone mocks religion in Brave New World. They see it as pointless and
futile. Two characters in the book, Mustapha Mond and John, had a conversation about religion.

Mustapha pointed out that God doesnt change, but men do. This statement is true in our society
and in their society too. In the books society, God is Ford. In our society God is a savior and a
messiah. Men change in accordance to their situation. When a man is in need he will turn to
God and ask for him. When a man is in good health and doing well for himself, he will forget
about God and not believe as much. Huxley is proposing that God will always be there for men
to accept and worship, but it is up to man to choose to worship him.

In Brave New World, Huxley is warning us of what our possible future could look
like. We already have traces of the society and technology used in this book. It is true that
what we love will ruin us. Technology, something we love, could turn us into unemotional
masses. It is human nature to have emotions. Without them, we all might as well be
walking, talking robots.
Orwells 1984 is too farfetched to be more relevant today than Huxleys Brave New
World. 1984 is a book about people being constantly watched and turning them into
distracted sheep. The people in power constantly change things in the past to match stories
in the present. Doing that kept people clueless.
The difference between these two books is that, 1984 is about people being captives
of their culture and Brave New World is about people embracing the captivity. Brave New
World is more relevant to todays society because people are becoming more uninterested in
knowledge and love being dumb masses. Huxleys fear is that the future will be full of
irrelevance to the truth and low thinking capacities. Society is closer to being like Brave
New World than we know it. Our society is just not as extreme as their society is described
as.