Brave New World Paper.

Ignoring, for the purposes of this discussion, the obvious evil of the endeavor, controlling an entire society is a complicated problem to solve. Millions of people need to be coordinated in a unified motion, rebellions squelched or prevented all together, yet with all the needed productivity and wealth of a free society. Countless variables need to be carefully massaged to keep things flowing smoothly, or else total collapse.
There are various methods to achieve this goal of molding an entire society like clay. Abject fear is one. But, like a cornered animal, fear of a man with a big stick will only get you so far before one of the animals lashes out in self defense. Most people will fall victim to rule by an iron fist; they just don’t have the cast-iron moral fortitude to know they have the right to fight back. But a handful of individuals with cunning means and a little luck can catalyze a total societal shift. However, opportunity for a rapid collapse of this kind has to already be in place for this sort of revolution to work.
Another, and more successful, option for controlling an entire people is propaganda. Once you can rally people on their own “terms” around a few infectious ideas, the inevitable rebellion of the handful of naysayers is scolded, not by a higher power with a threat, but from their peers. Fear of punishment and alienation from friends, family and loved ones is vastly superior to fear of a punishment from above. If one respects the opinion of those they love more than they respect themselves, they will smoothly fall in line and do their part. Those that are true individuals, with a fully independent vision are quickly rationalized and alienated at the local level. The real challenge is planting the correct ideas into the memetic landscape to get – and keep - the engine running.
The fictional society in A Brave New World demonstrates several feasible, overlapping strategies to keep society in line and “stable.” One of the most powerful strategies employed is the manufactured obsolescence of the nuclear family.
Family relationships are among the closest humans can have, and are generally built upon the emotional bonds resulting from the raising of children. With technological advances, the “family” is obsolete. Carefully tuned machines raise children from a fetus, using audio recordings during incubation and sleep, and brutal conditioning as young children. Because children are mass-produced like cars, on a literal assembly line, the particular fears implanted put their minds enforce a steep philosophical and emotional landscape. Their worldview becomes impossible to escape, especially without the support of the tight knit societal microcosm of a family.
Because it is assured that the entire society is on the same wavelength, the helpfully redundant self-correcting mechanism of pervasive taboo keeps people in line if they manage to climb out of the mental sand trap. It’s important to note again that, once these societal mechanisms are set in place, they take care of themselves. Only tweaking from a higher authority is needed.
A subtler, and more perilous mechanism in place is the taboo against working or living alone. It’s seen as unproductive and at best frowned upon, in the book’s society, to be without the company of others. One can privately and honestly desire to spend time alone in this society, but despite the strong desire to confide in others, it’s a great risk. One has social standing to lose, the last true value in a society where all productivity is completely controlled and moderated.
But social standing isn’t the “goal” of this self-reinforcing meme. People are most likely to be themselves, to think creatively, independently and without fear, while alone. Immunity to independent, self-righteous thought is the keystone for all of the aforementioned mechanisms, the one wedge that could drive the system. As independent thought is private by nature, a publicly run society is eaten away at from the inside once isolated sects can bud a revolution. With a variety of overlapping and self-regulating mechanisms at the local, personal scale, people stay in line and do their part to maintain social stability.
It’s important to note the true strength of the nuclear family, and the myriad phenotypic effects of its absence. A tight knit family dynamic is far more robust than the individual with no intellectual leanings, if only because a family has it’s own social self correcting mechanisms tucked into it’s own steep valley. A close family is all but impenetrable once established. The taboo against exclusive relationships and friendships, promiscuity encouraged, prevents “families” budding up in the society. A family can move as one, brutally strong entity and act as a strong root for outside individuals to seek solace and hope in, if they privately share an independent philosophy. It’s for this reason that destruction and prevention of family in a controlled, self-stable society is an absolute necessity.

Self-reinforcing taboos can moderate and reconfirm themselves without much outside influence. Evidence for this phenomenon exists everywhere in any society, and can be cultivated into a mechanism of macro-societal control if the right technologies are employed. Warning signs of this are taboos against independent, self-confirmed thought, and acidic decay and prevention of closed, tight knit family and friend units. One might observe these phenomena happening around us in the modern age, mostly escalating on their own. With a knowledge of how memes take root and continually confirm and fight for their existence, societal change for the better is possible.