![]() Mustapha Mond further alludes after he reads a passage from Maine de Biran, saying, “There aren’t any losses for us to compensate religious sentiment is superfluous. Citizens do not grow old, so they do not have to confront their immortality and wonder what may happen after they die. People are completely fulfilled and happy they do not need to pray to a God to make their lives better. Mustapha Mond explains that in the modern world there is no need for God or the Bible, since there is youth and prosperity that provide independence. John is unknowing of The Bible because it is designated as a “pornographic” book, restricted from the eyes of common citizens. In A Brave New World, the philosophical theme of religion is alluded to through the destruction of God, and creation of “Our Ford.” In the story, John (the savage) has no idea what The Holy Bible, containing the Old and New Testaments is, when it is presented to him by The World Controller. ![]() These implications about religion, free will, ethics, and the power of the state can help one to gain a new understanding of philosophy, as well as critic the society one lives in today. ![]() Throughout his work of literature, Huxley alludes to philosophical themes through a story of a drastically different society, as a way to express the implications he wants to make. Ethics and morality become useless, as the conditioning created in people by the state determines what is right and wrong. The notion of a Christian God turns into “Our Ford”, while the thoughts and occupations of people are decided through conditioning, thus limiting their free will. In order to have happiness in Huxley’s society, religion, free will, and morality must be destroyed and remolded through the power of an authoritarian government. This statement made by Mustapha Mond, Western Europe’s world controller, presents happiness as the sole goal of the dystopian society presented by Aldous Huxley in A Brave New World. A much harder master, if one isn’t conditioned to accept it unquestioningly, than truth” (227). “Happiness is a hard master – particularly other people’s happiness. Time is even measured as A.F., or ôAfter Ford,ö just as we measure years with B.C.The Result of the Obliteration of Knowledge and Reason So the Director shouts ôOh, Ford!ö when he wakes the children (Huxley, 20) and refers to the Controller as ôhis fordship, Mustapha Mondö (Huxley, 23). The people in Brave New World use the name Ford as we today use the name God. GannonÆs reading is supported in the text by HuxleyÆs use of the ôsign of the T,ö which seems to be a reference to the Model-T Ford, the car that Gannon argues is often used to signal the opening date of a new industrial-capitalist era (Gannon 41). Paul Gannon believes that Huxley used the name Ford to reference the alienation the individual feels from his work product that the assembly-line technique fostered. Henry Ford and the Ford Motor Company revolutionized manufacturing around the turn of the 19th century by devising the assembly-line technique (Gannon 41). Huxley uses the name Ford as a reference to Henry Ford, the founder of the Ford Motor Company (Gannon 41). But rather than a religion based on a spiritual God with whom people may communicate individually, the StateÆs religion is based on the materiality of Henry Ford and his representation of a mechanical assembly-line society. Instead, the State would relieve peopleÆs anxieties because in a socialist society everyone was technically ôequal.ö For this reason, the State in Aldous HuxleyÆs Brave New World essentially has created a single religion for its people. ![]() Huxley uses BernardÆs last name to refer to Karl Marx, who is famous (infamous?) for his quote that ôReligion is the opium of the people.ö Marx was a socialist, and the quote was meant to explain his belief that religions were organized to relieve peopleÆs anxieties about their personal responsibilities for the inequities in life. It is no accident that Bernard Marx in Aldous HuxleyÆs Brave New World is tormented by his awareness of his individuality. ![]()
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