“One believes things because one
has been conditioned to believe them.”
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
reminds me of a more disturbing and extreme version of 1984. The 20th
Century novel is set in London in 2540 (in the book, known as 632 after Ford). The world is stable; nobody ever suffers, the
world is united, the people are happy and everyone is in a job that is
satisfactory to them. However, this means controlling everything; the world has
a stable population of 2 billion, children are ‘manufactured’ in labs,
genetically modified to fit a caste and then educated – almost traumatized/terrorized
– to fit into society. The lower castes (the majority of the population) are bred
through a process in which one single egg produces up to 96 identical children.
When Bernard and Lenina travel to the “Savage Reservation”, they are shocked at
the difference between the two worlds. They end up encountering, John, a young
man that was born from World State parents but born and raised in the Savage
World. John is an outsider due to his appearance in the primitive village, and
finds comfort in reading Shakespeare. Bernard decides to take John and his
mother back to London. However, John finds the ‘civilized’ society appalling
and is still feels as the outsider...