Huxley Response

A Brave New World is an extreme. Huxley is however correct in saying that we aren't far from it. There are more parallels between A Brave New World and today's society than most people would care to admit. From drugs, to social classes, to control of the many by the few; today's society is not far from the totalitarian utopia of A Brave New World. 

There are at least 80 drug commercials on television every hour of every day. American society is bombarded with pharmaceutical related advertisements developing societal dependencies on drugs. You have a headache? Take a pill. You can't get it up? Take a pill. You can't sleep? Take a pill. Feeling down? Take a pill. Runny nose? Take a pill. While all these reasons may be medical, and all these pills and drugs are different for each symptom, there is still the reliance on them for comfort just like the society of A Brave New World's reliance on soma. In A Brave New World, people use soma to cure all their ailments. While A Brave New World may use one futuristic drug and America uses endless other drugs there is still a strong connection between A Brave New World and today's society around the basis of drug usage. 

In America today, the probability of a child born into the poorest quintile has around a 10% chance (depending on where he or she lives) of becoming part of the top quintile. While this is still 10% higher than the probability of an Epsilon becoming an Alpha in A Brave New World (0%), it shows a great parallel between A Brave New World and society today. Low social class mobility leads to strict castes correlating to the type of employment, housing, and education much like in A Brave New World, with Epsilons correlating to the poor and Alphas correlating to the rich. A Brave New World also demonstrates the population to wealth ratio we have in today's society with the top 1% controlling more wealth than the bottom 90% put together. There are very few rich people and a massive amount of poor. Much like the small amount of Alphas versus the enormous amounts of Epsilons. 

While today's society may not be as extreme as the society in A Brave New World, America defiantly had a lot of parallels to the totalitarian utopian society of Huxley's vision.