“LOOK HERE!” “This is SHOCKING!!” “YOU WON’T BELIEVE IT!!!”

Look, yes, indeed. Look at reality TV and social media. Look at someone’s life falling apart or falling together. Look there because that is where your attention must be. Look everywhere except the places where your eyes could find discrepancies in society, in government. This is how the powers of the world keep 7.5 billion people under control.

Aldous Huxley’s masterpiece Brave New World, first published in 1932, carries multiple different motifs which are the basis of the novel. Huxley wrote about a dystopian society in which child birth is an oddity because children are manufactured, genetically modified, and incubated in specially designed bottles to fit society’s new order.

Humans, in the novel, are divided into various castes: alphas, betas, gammas, deltas, epilsons. Alphas are physically fit, attractive and intelligent, in contrast to the lowest Epsilsons, who are unintelligent, weak, and unattractive. Living outside society’s reach in New Mexico, which was formerly part of the United States, the Savage Reservation isn’t contaminated by the media. The novel is set in a society in which narcotics and social media influence peoples’ perspective and leave them as unwitting accomplices in the destruction of the world around them.

Bernard Marx and John the Savage are the driving forces of the novel, the two main characters who seem most affected by society’s influence. Bernard Marx is left as an outsider when he does not fit the description of his caste, an alpha. Although he is intelligent, something in his growth development went wrong, and he is neither as physically fit or attractive as his counter-parts. Unsatisfied by this, he wants a deeper connection than just sexual relations with the woman he fancies, Lenina Crowne.

Bernard asks for permission from his boss, The Director, to take a leave of absence and take Lenina to visit the Savage Reservation, which The Director denies and threatens to exile Marx to Iceland. The Director tells Marx about his experience when he himself went to the Savage Reservation with a woman, only to have physically misplaced her. Bernard goes any way, and on his trip with Lenina finds the only white-skinned savage who has been alienated from his village on the New Mexico Savage Reservation.

Bernard later finds out that John, the white savage, is son of the Director and his mother Linda, who is the  misplaced woman the Director described earlier. When Bernard returns with Lenina, John, and Linda, he encounters new fame when peoples’ curiosity gets the better of the them. The oddity of John, who was conceived as a child by the natural processes’ gains media attention. Soon after, Bernard finds himself consumed by the media and his new-found popularity, while John is unable to fit into the world state society.

This eventually leads John to isolation and to punishing himself regularly because of his inappropriate thoughts of Lenina. The novel ends with people speculating about John’s actions and later participating in self-punishment and sexual rituals, which John also takes part in. John takes his life in shame of his actions and the story ends.

In Brave New World, Huxley depicts a society in which people are manipulated by the government through the media and the need to know artificial facts about their counter-parts. Media plays a key role in the story as it is one massive way the powers control the masses. This is much like today, in which almost everyone has established themselves in different forms of media. It seems almost impossible to live without staying connected.

So, how important is the media currently? According to Lazaro Diaz, a junior, the media shouldn’t be as important as it, people use it most often than not to waste time. Math teacher Mr.BrBorich said, “A lot of people are overly consumed by a lot of fake news; certain media can be helpful but not all media is good for you.”

If it is true that the people are distracted, how exactly are they distracted from the problems of the world? Carl Rodriguez, a senior, said, “We live in a capitalist society, and the media can be bought off.” Angie Morales, a senior, said, “The media distracts people from reality and from what is actually going on.”

Are government doctrines affecting the people today like they did in Brave New World? “Personally, government doctrines don’t affect me, but as a whole they affect the people of the world,” said Jonathan Yong, a senior. Junior counselor Ms. Dayma Echeverria, concluded that “Doctrines affect all of us in different ways; everyone lives under different circumstances. No two people are exactly alike.”

Could our world ever turn to the dystopian society which Huxley wrote about in Brave New World? “The world is constantly changing, and it will continue to change. It is not going to stop, so we must stay on top of things,” said principal Mr. Valdes. Cecile Chacon, a junior, added, “You never know what is going to happen tomorrow.”

If Huxley’s warnings are valid, how does one go about life knowing that we could be manipulated through the media at any time? Rocio Rodriguez offered a solution to the arm-lock the media has over the people, a solution to a problem Aldous Huxley noted in the novel. She said that government issues would be taken seriously if they were implemented in other ways that could draw attention, such as through publicized discussions that could solve problems instead of people drawing conclusions from the media.

On the other hand, Nataly Cancio, a senior, believes there is no one way to improve the distracted state of the people.” The people will remain as they are and will continue to head in their current direct of oblivion,” she said.
It is clear the Huxley was right in some ways.  The world is more than the media controlled by the major players in society. We must not submit ourselves to such scrutiny when the people are the many and the power holders, the few. Stay informed, stay alive, and don’t let entertainment distraction or media diminish the light of singularity.