Brave New World

A brave new world
A Brave New World by Aldous Huxley focuses of modern humanity’s dilemma between the science and emotions, the old and the new, between individual freedom and social stability and between materialism and spiritualism. The two main characters oppose each other, John the Savage and Mustapha Mond. While John is the symbol of the new world, where emotion and individualism matter, Mond, as one of the Controllers, represents the sophisticated, scientific society of the new world order, where “conformity and stability are more valued than emotions and freedom”.
The novel depicts a new society where human being are deprived of individual freedom, programmed to certain types of behavior and conditioned to respond in scientific ways to certain stimulations. Human emotions and relationships are no longer important. Infants are created in fertilizing rooms and decanted to “perform certain tasks for the totalitarian regime”. From birth they accept their role without question. In the society where love and marriage do not exist any more, sex has become a casual experience encouraged from childhood.
But a purely scientific society is compatible with long cherished human values and ideals such as truth, love, art and emotions. There is a clear warning in the novel against contemporary tendencies – escaping reality through drugs, the growth of mindless entertainment, free sex and increasing power of mass media.
There is no solution to the problem in the book and this indicates that the two opposing forces will never be able to compromise and co-exist in peace. Though it is quite clear that the new brave world is less inviting than the old world order (or the actual future today) with all its disadvantages.