Brave New World, Postmodernism, and You

Brave New World is not, in my opinion, a direct criticism of postmodernism. It might be however an assault on a "perfectly rational" society that brave new world is and isn't. The era of reason is no longer a valid meta-narrative as humanity has proved too corruptible and all too willing to torture, murder, loot, destroy and jaywalk. Milligram's famous obedience experiment lends credence to the modernist ideas about the weaknesses of humanity. take for example the way the "savages" are treated like disobedient children with the line "They'll never learn." This shows how the modernist world view of the weaknesses of humanity can ultimately play out if a society follows that. If we are to define postmodernism in part as a "incredulity toward Meta Narratives " As Lyotard did then Brave New World is only following Modernist thought on the weakness of a previous meta-narrative, the idea of progress taken to an illogical extreme. Additionally there is an interesting criticism of Lyotard with his decentering creating a new center. it is similar to mathematics the graph for tangent has no maximum height so it has no amplitude or it could be said that the amplitude is infinitently large. That is something a post modernist would argue is both, a concept that is a paradox*. Something that is elaborated on later during the discussion on the AT&T building(pgs:88-90). Another interesting point is on Page 31,"We do what we do because that's the way we do it." in essence stating why science cannot justify itself. Although it reminds some of another quote, "We do what we must because we can" Finally there is the idea about the failure of the meta-narrative of progress. Progress itself still continues as does romanticism, realism and all other ideologies some of which should have been forgotten. And some have. However people are free to choose what meta-narrative, or combination of meta-narratives they believe in. Both of these are gone in Brave New World, as the people are conditioned to believe in stabilty above everything else. and with the Hypno-platitud that "science is everything" even when it isn't the society is now established.