AHC: PoD for a "Brave New World" type of society?

[baltur2]

Not sure if this is a pre-, or post- 1900 divergence, but what do you think is the point where a society with an ideology similar to Huxley's "Brave New World" could realistically become reality?

The main ideological difference would be that in OTL modern society, we are trying to modify laws, and increase tolerance, so that society will be more inclusive towards people from diverse ethnic, cultural, and sexual backgrounds.

What if instead, the dominant ideology would be, that people should be re-educated, through mind-altering drugs, brain surgery, and re-education camps to conform to society's default schemes?

In OTL, "Society should be adapted to People."
In this TL "People should be adapted to Society."

 

[GeographyDude]

. . . in OTL modern society, we are trying to modify laws, and increase tolerance, so that society will be more inclusive towards people from diverse ethnic, cultural, and sexual backgrounds. . .

Yes, the important aspects of what cultural background and what sexuality path,

but . . .

also “leadership” in extracurriculars of course, but how many people would really do it for its own sake even if they tell themselves they would! [all my quotes]

The “one true path” more narrow than ever.

A greater tyranny of the “well rounded” student and employee than ever. Where are the open paths for people with patchy skills, good in some areas but not others?

gated communities

“perfect” lives [all my quotes]

huge emphasis on sports, even denying the brain damage from football.

————————

Not quite the picture Aldous Huxley painted, but not that far removed.

 

[GeographyDude]

And fellow citizens of my U.S. are often not that engaged at all with the larger world, even with things done in our name, for example,

• in the Fall of 2004, we didn’t let young men (maybe by themselves) leave the city of Fallujah, Iraq, and then we dropped a shitload of bombs on the place,

• throughout the war on terror, we use “extraordinary rendition,” that is using torture as a tool and a weapon, just not on U.S. soil. At the end of the day, I suspect the majority of my fellow citizens probably don’t want to entirely take torture off the table, but neither I suspect are entirely at peace with how relatively broad a scale we used it.

 

[overoceans]

In the book itself, one of the sleep-teaching lessons contains the information that there was initially a lot of opposition to sleep-teaching, because "There was something called liberalism."

So, going by that, you'd probably need a pretty different ideological history for the World State to come into existence.