We’re living in a 1930s Dystopia dominated by technological advancements and mindless consumerism

“If one’s different, one’s bound to be lonely”, wrote Aldous Huxley in a Brave New World. Huxley’s novel, published in 1932, portrays a dystopian vision dominated by technological advancements and mindless consumerism, where pleasure is pursued at all costs. Most importantly however, a future is presented where individuality isn’t just discouraged – it’s systematically erased. Looking back almost a hundred years on, with the development of today’s society, the future Huxley presents seems eerily prophetic. 

Enter the World State. A totalitarian regime backed by the seemingly straightforward motto: “Community, Identity, Stability”. Traditional reproduction is replaced with mass manufacture, growing foetuses in bottles, treating a select few with alcohol and other toxins to stunt growth and intelligence, resulting in a five-tier caste system. Alphas are intellectual and influential, while Epsilons contribute to simple labour and menial tasks.  The citizens are uniformly promiscuous and avoid unhappiness at all costs, as a result of conditioning by genetic engineering, electric shocks and hypnopaedia (sleep teaching), until their identities are polished down to complacency and simple desire. Any deviation from perpetual sunshine and rainbows, and the miracle drug soma is taken to confer instant bliss, without any nasty side-effects. Pain, sickness and disease are non-existent. 

Upon hearing how ‘Brave New World’ functions as a dystopia, it can be hard to deny seeing reflections of this fictional world in our current society. We too pursue forms of instant gratification, through social media, endless streams of entertainment and online binge-shopping, providing us with an escape from reality. Social media in particular breeds the desire to ‘fit in’, prioritising homogenised versions of our lives over our own unique identities.  Huxley may have even underestimated the importance of mass consumerism in our world today. In the World State, individuals must be conditioned to accept the motto of “Ending is better than mending”. The yearly frenzy for another (nearly indistinguishable) iPhone every year tells a different story. 

Advances in modern neuroscience can also enable us to assess the potential of the altered psychology in ‘Brave New World’. It is this after all, that churns out the mindless clones of the novel. The conditioning used to maintain social peace is modelled on the classical conditioning designed by none other than Ivan Pavlov. Today, computing models are used by psychologists to better understand the effect of classical conditioning on the learning process of the biological brain. Different forms and scenarios of conditioning can be modelled, and improved, making Huxley’s nightmarish brainwashing seem ever more viable. 

In Huxley’s future, the genetics of individuals are manipulated, ensuring conformity to the system by being born into predefined roles. While we haven’t quite birthed babies from bottles, today’s developments in gene editing raise moral and ethical issues. Prenatal screening has become commonplace in modern pregnancies, with parents being able to ascertain risk of a congenital disease in a foetus. This can be beneficial in allowing parents to form long-term plans, for example to physically or mentally prepare for caring for a child with a serious disorder, or to inform a decision regarding termination.  

However, this technology raises significant ethical dilemmas. One consequence has been the near eradication of new cases of Down’s Syndrome in Iceland, with close to 100% of women terminating pregnancy following positive tests (Quinones and Lajka, 2017). Persistent beliefs about “good” and “bad” genetics could result in negative stigmas for individuals with conditions such as Down’s Syndrome. Global debates surrounding this data argued that widespread termination is a form of discrimination against those with disabilities. This led to debates sparked regarding the impacts for those with similar disabilities in society, with such widespread termination being argued as a form of discrimination. It’s hard to predict the social implications for this in the future, whether we will ever reach pre-defined ‘caste’ systems, but differentiating the population based on genetics could be the beginning of a moral crisis. 

To take our obsession with the science of what makes us, truly us, one step further, the advent of CRISPR-Cas9 technology has already given us the ability to edit embryos at the genetic level. This offers us the potential to eradicate hereditary disease, but how far will we go in our pursuit of genetic ‘perfection’? Selecting for characteristics, such as intelligence, strength and physical attributes could facilitate the creation of ‘designer babies’ – a fundamental allusion to the theory of eugenics, something Huxley himself was inspired by. Françoise Baylis, a bioethicist at Dalhousie University frames it perfectly: “There’s a difference between making people better and making better people”. 

While we may not live in such a hedonistic and materialistic society as the World State, ethical challenges posed by modern technology and trends suggest we are treading a fine line. Huxley was uncannily prophetic in his satirical, groundbreaking representation of the future.  Perhaps ‘Brave New World’ was a blueprint for today’s society.