Brave New World Revisited

While writing Brave New World, Huxley recalls, he assumed the totalitarian society he was predicting would become a reality far in the future. In 1931, at the nadir of the Great Depression, society suffered from chaos and a lack of order. Now, in 1958, Huxley believes that the dystopian nightmare of Brave New World is fast arriving. The problem now is the opposite one he predicted: too much order is in place, leaving no room for personal freedom.

Huxley contrasts Brave New World with George Orwell’s 1984, a futuristic novel written in the wake of World War II and during the tyranny of Soviet leader Josef Stalin. The world of 1984 is characterized by brutal government repression. In Brave New World, the tyranny comes in the quieter and seemingly benign form of state-enforced pleasure and conditioning. Huxley argues that, in light of recent events, his novel has turned out to be more prescient than Orwell’s. The Cold War has proved to be a mostly non-violent conflict, and the Soviet Union is abandoning repressive force in favor of “non-violent manipulation of the environment and the thoughts and feelings” of individuals (3). This new policy concentrates on systematically rewarding good behavior instead of punishing bad behavior, and this approach to positive reinforcement is a more effective method in the long run than punishment.