The Green caldron - University Library

March, 1958
MAN
Brave New World
Rae Lesser
Rhetoric loi. Book Report
CALLS HIMSELF THE HIGHEST OF ANIMALS. AND
because his superior intelligence has enabled him to accumulate
a creative and cultural heritage, he calls himself a human being.
Thus the "humanity" of man has elevated him above the beasts. This
humanity that has driven him to strive for goals beyond mere personal
well-being has sprung from a power unique to man. For he alone has
been endowed with the mental capacity to think, reason, dream, and act
as an individual. Through the ages, his basic power of individuality has
led man to great struggles—with himself, his fellows, his environment,
and his destiny. Human existence on earth has ever been hard, despite
the comforts gained through the advancements of culture and applied
science. But man has clung to his birthright of humanity.
Would he ever willingly forsake his heritage as a human being in
return for the elimination of all struggle and hardships? To explain the
existence of the Utopian society depicted in his book Brave Nezv IVorId,
Aldous Huxley created a situation in which man was forced to answer
that question.
The choice was made in A. F. 150 (150 years after the introduction
of Henry Ford's first T-model). The Nine Years' War had ended but
the world was left in a state of complete economic collapse and social
chaos. When the leaders of the earth's surviving population met in an
attempt to prevent total disaster, they were forced to decide between
"World Control" and uneasy co-existence among national militarized
totalitarianisms. The former system meant efficiency and stability in an
age of advanced technology, under a Utopian welfare-tyranny. The
latter alternative signified militarism, oppression, and social upheaval.
For what they undoubtedly considered human reasons, the leaders
chose to create the world-wide Eden. As science became the end and
human beings became the means, individualism and all records of the
past were thoroughly suppressed. The World State that was formed
adopted "Community, Identity, Stability" as its motto and technology,
symbolized by an almost-legendary Ford, as its god. Thus man sur-
rendered not only his inherent liberty as an individual but much of his
soul as well.
Into his novel about the "brave new world" of universal well-being.