

Essay by eterniteeA+, December 2003

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In our world there is much pain and suffering, especially in the poorest countries. Infectious diseases, like the ones that plague the Savage Reservation in New Mexico, are killing thousands of people nowadays. Then, the treatment that citizens of the Brave New World receive to avoid illnesses and their cleanliness would be useful in an ideal society so as to improve and even save many people's lives. Bernard explains how it works in Chapter VII: " That's because we don't allow them to be like that. We preserve them from diseases. We keep their internal secretions balanced at a youthful equilibrium. We don't permit their magnesium-calcium ratio to fall below what it was at thirty. We give them transfusions of young blood. We keep their metabolism permanently stimulated (...)". Therefore, citizens of the Brave New World are forever young as concerns health. Furthermore, hypnopaedic lessons in elementary hygiene warn the Brave New World citizens against dirt: "Cleanliness is next to fordliness" and " Civilization is next to sterilization".

Germs could definitely not proliferate in a society like that. This is much preferable to thousands of people dying from diseases like in the Third World or Malpais, where filth piles.

However, other methods used in the Brave New World to avoid pain, such as soma and conditioning, are not desirable for an ideal society. If passions and self-conscience are abolished, human beings are mere puppets who do not have an identity and who cannot cope with the slightest pain. Then, they have to be happy because they are conditioned to since they were foetuses, but they will never know what love, truth and beauty mean. On the contrary, the Savage people in New Mexico know because they are exposed to them. They still marry and children are born, which is...