Freedom is knowing that even the smallest person has a voice; that in a world machine still serves man. Where, then, does that leave modern day America, who calls itself freedom and hides behind a Congress who can do nothing and cares not what its people want? Moreover, where does that leave the World State, who builds people to better serve itself? When humanity begins to shed its skin and serve machines, it loses its face. It is no longer a society, but instead it becomes part of that machine. To be grinded up and spat out as if it never mattered. Neil Postman describes the movement away from leading by elite (technocracy) to leading by the machine (technopoly) in his book Technopoly. In chapter three of this book, Postman describes Fredrick Taylor’s theory of society moving toward a system in which everything is based off efficiency. “[Technopoly’s assumption] include the beliefs that the primary, if not the only, goal of human labor and thought is efficiency; that technical calculation is in all respects superior to human judgment.” Human judgment, to those who believe in this, should not an can not be trust because we are plague with laziness and imperfection; more fitting would be to surrender to the societal machine.
This is where we find Brave New World; a society who has lost its identity by merging with efficiency. The individual is lost because individuality is not efficient; instead the world state mist create copies of people so that they may fit perfectly for the slot they are needed. Efficiency should not be the sole objective of society; without individuality, society does not matter. If there is only the machine and we exist only to perpetuate the machine, we don’t matter, and therefore the machine doesn’t matter because its purpose is just to further extend itself: something that is not alive to appreciate its success. The World State holds no significance because the individual has lost the ability to self determine.
