“Designing a Brave New World: Eugenics, Politics, and Fiction”. Modernism and the Culture of Efficiency: Ideology and Fiction, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2016, pp.

Efficiency and the Perfect Society: Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World: “. What matters more, the one or the many?Ĭobley, Evelyn. The only question that remains is whether social progress and stability is worth the loss of individual freedom. Ultimately, Brave New World is a text rich with meaning and symbolism and is open to many different readings. The human design eliminating uncertainty and ensuring predictability, efficiency and order. A way of resolving social issues through conformity, homogeneity and stability. So again was Huxley providing schematics from which we should be designing our future societies? Or was he exploring the ways in which science and technology could combine to improve the overall well being of the population? Another argument suggests that BNW described a society of social and economical order after the chaos of a post war society. Social order is maintained by the entanglement of science and society. The social divisions and hierarchy of Huxley’s time are exaggerated to improve the overall well being of the population. With eugenics and dysgenics, all individuals are not only designed to their social role but also to be content with this. BNW can therefore be read as a projection of this ideology in literary form. Eugenics then presented an opportunity for a better world of a reformed society. Huxley clearly linked intelligence, eugenics and politics by encouraging higher birthrates in those more intelligent and sterilization of those in lower or ‘unfit’ individuals.

Some have suggested that Huxley’s public support for the eugenics movement makes the answer to these questions, yes. But did Huxley present aspects of the BNW society not as warning or critique but rather as possibility for future design? are there things we should be noting down and admiring? Yes there is a satirical look at the ideas of scientist of his own time too. Yes, there is social critique of Fordism and a consumeristic culture. In Brave New World (BNW), Aldous Huxley satirizes, critiques and warns about the future of scientific and technological advancement.

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