Throughout Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, the concepts of consumption and utopia are constantly juxtaposed and compared to determine whether or not they are genuinely compatible. Although one could state that the citizens of this world in Brave New World are genuinely happy, this is more a result of ignorance and blindness rather than a truly fulfilling sense of bliss. Because the state in Brave New World has meticulously given consumption an almost holy significance, the culture that exists around it must accordingly be conducive to it.

The culture of consumption in Brave New World by Aldous Huxley is the engine driving the success and happiness" of the state. Although to the masses it may seem as though identity is something secure and comfortable, it is rather based upon identity-obliterating principles of mass-production and consumerism. All traces of human elements of individuality and identity have been replaced by the concept of the common good and even ideas about love, family, and sex have been reduced to the maxim, which is one of the important quotes from Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, everybody belongs to everyone else" (26). Furthermore, the basis of life in Brave New World by Aldous Huxley an idea that is sacred and personal in our society, is firmly rooted in Fords famous model of productionthe assembly line. With the help of science, human beings are created according to a narrow set of specifications (which class they will eventually belong to) and their lives, once no longer useful are considered meaningless, especially since they can be easily replaced.

As Mr. Foster, who presides over the conditioning and hatching" of the new human lives says in one of many important quotes in Brave New World by Aldous Huxley Murder kills only the individual and, after all what is an individual? We can make a new one with the greatest easeas many as we like" (133). Even from the beginning of the text we are forced to question the concept of mass-production and consumption in terms of humanity. We are introduced to the process of (re)production, which describes how, a bokanovskified egg will bud, will proliferate, will divide. From eight to ninety-six buds, and every bud will grow into a perfectly formed embryo, and every embryo into a full-sized adult" (4). With the aid of technology, identity and the function of nature have been both combined and destroyed simultaneously. After the process of conditioning, the concept of the self will be even further limited to an individuals participation in the economy and his or her value or obedience as member of a caste. In other words, by obliterating the concept of the individual, all that is left is the state and its capacity to meet the relatively simple supply and demand-based needs of the citizen. This fact in turn makes the individual completely reliant on the state to provide for them and allows this state to completely control all aspects of society, including the individuals understanding of the natural world, their sense of place within the grand scheme of things, and thus by proxy, the concept of God. At the pinnacle of all concernsboth by the citizens and their stateis an almost holy reverence for consumption.

As this thesis statement for Brave New World by Aldous Huxley states, just as the state has destroyed the meaning and value of the individual in Brave New World so too has it altered the individuals understanding of the natural world. This seems only just considering that this is a culture driven by the forces of science and technology, but the conditioning against the love of nature has deeper significance for the state. Throughout the text, the state seems keenly aware of the fact that nature and consumption are essentially at odds because, in other words, A love of nature keeps no factories busy" (19). Here it is directly expressed that the enjoyment of the masses is directed toward what is economically desirable instead of what is personally enjoyable and thus, because of the mass acceptance of such a paradigm, individual fulfillment is inexorably linked to economic stability and consumerism. As the reader is told, conditioning has caused the masses to hate the countryto love all country sportsand have all country sports entail the use of elaborate apparatus" (23).

Excerpt from:

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley : An Analysis of the ...