Keenan McKenna
LeBeau- Liver
25 October 2014
Advancement
Carl Sagan once said, “We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology”. In Aldous Huxley’s novel Brave New World, society is completely influenced by science, technology, and religion in a way that leaves members of society programmed or conditioned to live their lives according to the government. In a world where people are controlled down to their impulses, emotions and thoughts; science has the ability to both imprison and set free. “It isn’t only art that’s incompatible with happiness; it’s also science. Science is dangerous, we have to keep it most carefully chained and muzzled” (Huxley 231). Mustapha Mond, one of the World State’s (the government) Controllers is speaking to John about why society is the way it is. They are going back and forth and Mond refutes everything John says, while offering insight into how the World State utilizes each measure. Although they rely heavily on science and incorporate it into their everyday lives, the people are kept in the dark on how the scientific processes were created or how they work. All the people know is to do as the World State says and they will be happy. In the novel, religion isn’t necessary in a world full of science and machines. Comfort comes in the form of a pill, mortality is taught through hypnopaedia and god is considered obsolete. When Mond was speaking with John about why the World State is the way it is, he mentions that, “God isn’t compatible with machinery and scientific medicine and universal happiness” (Huxley 232). In a world where science and technology dictate what people do, and keep them preoccupied, there is no room for religion and analysis of self-worth, only happiness. “Christianity without tears - that is what soma is” (Huxley 232). Soma is a universal pill that people take on a regular basis to feel happy, or to compensate for feeling at all. When they are uncomfortable or stressed they dose up on soma to make their pain go away and feel nothing; no worries, no strife. The citizens of the World State are not concerned with themselves as they have been conditioned to view the world as technologically oriented. They rely on technology in