FREE ESSAY ON ETHICS IN FRANKENSTEIN AND BRAVE NEW WORLD

ETHICS IN FRANKENSTEIN AND BRAVE NEW WORLD

Ethics in Frankenstein and Brave New World
For most of human history, the ethical considerations of scientific inquiry would have
been a moot point. Outside of the Bible and mythology, there was no thought of creating
life from inert matter because scientists would not have felt it was possible to do so.
In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, however, in the wake of landmark discoveries
in the fields of chemistry, biology, and genetics, the possibility of scientific
tampering with the human body and mind broached the ethical question of whether or not
humankind would actually benefit, in the long run, from such a move. This dilemma is
explored in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World.
Mary Shelley wrote in a period when the hard sciences were still considered a branch of
philosophy, but were rapidly developing into a discipline of their own, with new
discoveries occurring at a rate that foreshadows the explosion of knowledge of our own
day. Yet in Frankenstein Mary Shelley shows her concern that scientific exploration was
exceeding its ethical boundaries; her novel is a blatant warning about the results of
playing God, exemplified by the act of creating a human being without a woman. 
Mary was very cautionary about science, particularly in terms of the ethical
ramifications of scientific experimentation. She granted that while scientists had
granted man seemingly Promethean powers, they had not dealt with the moral and ethical
responsibilities generated by these powers, as the Being himself points out. Oh
Frankenstein, the Being implores, be not equitable to every other and trample upon me
alone, to whom thy justice, and even thy clemency and affection, is most due. Remember
that I am thy creature; I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel, whom
thou drivest from joy for no misdeed . This, Mary warns, is the true danger of the
unimpeded rush toward scientific progress; the scientist cannot tell where the fruits of
his experiments may fall.
But most importantly, Mary clearly feels that Frankenstein's experiment is doomed to
failure because, in a nutshell, men were never intended to make babies. 
Frankenstein had created his being with every expectation that his creature would be
fertile. In fact, he hoped that as a result of his experiments, a new species would bless
me as its creator and source; many happy and excellent natures would owe their being to
me. It is thus not terribly surprising that he agrees to create for the Being a bride; he
clearly had this at least in the back of his mind all along. However, after he has the
female half-completed, he realizes that a pair of monsters such as he has created would
bear others like them (clearly, this is before the development of the science of
genetics), and this race might exterminate mankind. Thus, he destroys the incomplete
female to prevent this. In the creation of his Monster, Victor Frankenstein got
everything wrong; but in preventing it from perpetuating itself, he finally did something
right.
Shelley's question was not whether the creation -- or at least reanimation -- of a human
being from inert matter was possible. Her tale was a reaction against what she saw as a
paternalistic attempt on the part of male scientists to usurp creative power for
themselves. Women might be shut out of politics, the sciences and to a large extent the
arts (as in her day they were), but in Mary's view they could not be shut out of the
procreation of the species. The result, as she shows, would be disaster.
However, as the nineteenth and then the twentieth centuries rolled on, people began to
become more and more enamored with scientific progress -- and less and less interested in
the ethical questions this progress raised. In 1932, when Aldous Huxley was writing Brave
New World, the civilized world had boost in scientific and technological advances. These
advances were hailed not only as evidence of man's progress but also as the basis for all
human hope. Huxley felt that the hope for mankind lay not in technology but in man
himself. He feared that unbridled research in science and technology was inherently
dangerous, and that the misuse of knowledge can have dire consequences. He also feared
that people would become so content to have all their diseases cured and their problems
eliminated that they would allow their basic freedoms eliminated as well. Brave New World
offers a picture of the world as it might become if man allows science to rule him rather
than man ruling science.
The beginning of the novel describes life in the new World State through the eyes of a
group of students, who are touring the Central London Hatching and Conditioning Centre,
to see infants and children -- something they would normally
never encounter during the normal course of their lives. In the midst of their tour, one
of the ten World Controllers happens to drop into the Hatching and Conditioning Centre.
His name is Mustapha Mond, and he is regarded with some alarm by the Director of Hatching
and Conditioning because he has read all the forbidden books; he assures the D.H.C. that
I won't corrupt them by telling the students the history of what life was like in the
unenlightened past -- the times in which Huxley's readers actually live. This allows us,
the readers, to see how far science has taken the citizens of the World State from our
own values, hopes and dreams.
Mustapha Mond is an intelligent, competent, nice man, like many recently seen a
tremendous people we meet in our own lives. He tells the young students about many
barbaric practices of the past: actually living in a squalid home with one's birth
parents and their other offspring; suckling milk from a mother's breast like a cat;
lifetime monogamy. The torturous emotional rollercoasters such lifestyles involve! The
students shudder; none of these dreadful concepts are even imaginable to them, and
fortunately, Mond assures them, they need never know such traumas. No pains have been
spared to make your lives emotionally easy, he tells them, -- to preserve you, so far as
that is possible, from having any emotions at all. The greatest good in the Brave New
World is not to be virtuous but happy. 
Why is happiness so important? Because, Mond explains, it produces stability. People are
happy; they get what they want, and they never want what they can't get. they're well
off; they're safe; they're never ill; they're not afraid of death; they're blissfully
ignorant of passion and old age; they're plagued with no mothers or fathers; they've got
no wives, or children, or lovers to feel strongly about; they're so conditioned that they
practically can't help behaving as they ought to behave. And in the new World State,
stability is everything. 
Mond explains further that religion and ethics had to be eliminated because God isn't
compatible with machinery and scientific medicine and universal happiness. The metaphor
for the World State is the assembly line, where everything is automated, and science and
technology have replaced God as a source of value and meaning in life. 
The only way it is possible to produce a system like that is to eliminate free will
entirely. In Brave New W several levels. Humanity has been genetically engineered to
produce a variety of different castes -- from Alphas, who are capable of abstract
thought, all the way down to Epsilons, who can do nothing but the most repetitive factory
work. After decanting (birth), each individual is conditioned to respond appropriately at
his level but to desire nothing more. And each individual is encouraged to take soma
(apparently a relaxing, hallucinogenic drug) to fill up his leisure hours and prevent him
from undertaking any independent thought whatsoever. The result is a happy population
that works its factories like a well-oiled machine.
To some extent Huxley's disillusionment with society is understandable; people of his
time were very carried away with scientific theory and technological innovation. And yet
many things have happened in the sixty-five years since this book was written that might
give him cause for hope. Yes, we are closer than ever to the genetic engineering he so
feared. Certainly we have abdicated much of the human touch in favor of low cost and
convenience; there can be no other excuse for such annoyances as the replacement of a
human receptionist at the telephone company with voice mail. 
But whereas in the thirties science was considered the sure road to salvation, we now
regard it with the caution it deserves. Genetic testing goes on, but the cloning of a
human being -- for now, at any rate -- is forbidden. Atomic power plants are regarded
with grave caution. And every schoolchild is taught to recognize the seduction in the
advertising messages heard on TV. Science is at least somewhat tempered by public
perceptions of ethics, as it should be. 
But in other respects, Huxley's warning is as timely as it was in 1932, and this is
largely in the area of happiness versus the authentic world, this has been done on life.
We are still far too concerned with being happy at all costs. Of course this is
understandable; any thinking person would rather have things go well than badly. Mustapha
Mond presents a number of strong arguments in favor of a happy population. Happy citizens
do not rebel; they do not dissent; they do not lust after power; and hence they do not go
to war and die under horrifying conditions. Consequently, the World Controllers have done
their best -- through genetic engineering, psychological conditioning, and drugs, all
proper scientific approaches still used today -- to ensure that no chink appears in the
armor of the citizen's contentment. But at what cost? Can one really be said to be happy
if one has never been sad? Can life be said to have any purpose at all if it has no
meaning? And is not the authentic life always better than the life anaesthetized against
itself? 
Both Frankenstein and Brave New World demonstrate that ethics are simply not negotiable.
Science and technology should serve man, not the other way around, and ethics and
morality should always present a higher priority than the on-going quest of scientific
discovery. Just because one can do something, Shelley and Huxley warn, doesn't mean one
should.