The structure of society in Brave New World (BNW)

Creation and education of human beings:

People in BNW undergo prenatal methods, which were not invented but popular to Huxley and his contemporaries in order to predestine their development.

So they are produced in Bokanovsky's Process (Gamma – Epsilon) in which the ovaries bod and proliferate from 8 to 96. This technique is the basis of the society for it delivers the workers for the World State.
Furthermore the future members of lower castes are treated with alcohol and insufficient oxygen so their intelligence level is kept only as high as necessary.

On the opposite future Alphas and Betas originate from undivided ovaries and thus are the only non cloned persons in the World State.

Regardless of their predestination the embryos are also vaccinated against every disease that comes into consideration so that diseases in general are extincted in the BNW.

When the so created humans finally are decanted they still have to be educated properly and to incarnate the society's rule and to incorporate with their future work.

There are two methods to achieve that goal:

In the so called Pavlovian conditioning (reference to famous behaviour research experiment by Ivan Pavlov) the individual is trained by being rewarded or punished to hate nearly everything that nowadays would be considered beautiful (e.g. flowers, poetry...). The reason for this is the danger that comes with strong feelings (topic of the movie Equilibrium) and for there is no need for them anyway because the society has consumable replacements for strong feelings like free copulation, the feelies (cinema that attracts all five human senses)

The second educational method is sleep teaching: hypnopaedia. At this the children are exposed -whilst sleeping- to repeated messages, which are brief society axioms that are the source for the often mentioned maxims of World State's citizens.


Hierarchy in BNW:

The society A.Huxley created in his novel has a strict and stable hierarchy, which is totally planned in advance.
By mass production in reproduction facilities people are bred and according to their further function predestined by special embryonical treatments so that in the end the humans are subdivided into five castes: (From top to bottom) Alphas, Betas, Gammas, Deltas and Epsilons.

The Alphas and Betas are the only people who have enough intelligence left to work out things on their own, even though they are still kept within a limit to not compromise the society.

p.191 - 192

Each one of us, of course, […] goes through life inside a bottle. But if we happen to be Alphas, our bottles are, relatively speaking, enormous.

So the Alpha caste people will execute jobs that would do a graduate nowadays – with limited thinking capability due to hypnopaedia – and the Betas to Epsilons will be employed as high -and low-grade workers.

Principles:

Even if a hierarchy is created, which normally implies class struggles, BNW's society lives in total peace ever since. This is only possible because of the basic principles the World Controllers of BNW once invented and now drum into the people's heads:


1. Everybody's happy now! (also see: Soma)

p.192 – 193

'Seven and a half hours of mild, unexhausting labour, and then the soma ration and games and unrestricted copulation and the feelies.
What more can they ask for?'


2. Love what you have got to do!

p.16

'And that, […] that is the secret of happiness and virtue – liking what you've got to do. All conditioning aims at that: making people like their unescapable social destiny.'

p.192

'The optimum population [...] is modelled on the iceberg – eight-ninths below the water line, one-ninth above.'
'And they're happy below the water line?'
'Happier than above it. […]'
'In spite of that awful work?'
'Awful? They don't find it so. On the contrary they like it.'

3. Consume!

p.45

'Ending is better than mending'

p.103 – 104

'Besides, it never used to be right to mend clothes. Throw them away when they've got holes in them and buy new.
'The more stitches, the less riches.'

4.Everybody is indispensable for the stability of the society!

p.6

'Not philosophers but fretsawyers and stamp collectors compose the backbone of society.'

p.63

'Fine to think we can go on being socially useful even after we're dead.'

5.History is Bunk

p.32 & 36

'That's why you're taught no history […]
The world was full of fathers – was therefore full of misery; full of mothers – therefore of every kind of perversion from sadism to chastity; […] full of madness and suicide.'


Soma

After the world's leaders decided to create the World State they abolished real emotions but 'two thousand pharmacologists and bio -chemists were subsidized in A.F. 178. Six years later it was being produced commercially. The perfect Drug.' (p.47)
Soma! A legal drug with no site effects that helps not only to overcome struggles (normally there aren't any) but to go on so called Soma-holidays and emphasize the joy experienced in the community.

Conclusion

Hierarchy and caste system maybe evoke an image of a totalitarian, cruel rule but this is not what huxley depicts. On the contrary the society in BNW seems to be in a continuing state of happiness.

With conditioned people who love their work, the communal activities and Soma the structure of BNW's World State is secure and deep-seated in every citizen. Whatever might occur that shows the inhumanity of this state, noone would notice it and if, would not be understood and in the end sent to an Island. Same with the savages: They are kept behind a fence and treated like animals (which they already do by themselves according to World State citizens behaviour). But in their reservation they cannot do harm neither to a modern citizen nor to the modern society on the whole, which could be the only true reason why they are still allowed to live.

So both the Savages and these Islands citizens have to be intelligent enough to see the cracks in society and - to follow Huxley's dystopian vision -
have to be intelligent enough to stay where they are.
But - to follow my mind – have to be dumb enough to tolerate this

Brave New World




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'So long as there are men, there will be wars.'
-Albert Einstein