Luke answers “What does Henry Ford has to do with it?”

Briar Rose asked this question about Brave New World:

What does Henry Ford has to do with it?

Luke If you're asking his role in the society functionally, Ford is (to put it simply), The World State's God. They invoke his name very commonly when refe…moreIf you're asking his role in the society functionally, Ford is (to put it simply), The World State's God. They invoke his name very commonly when referencing social values. If you've read the book, you probably figured that out.

If you're asking why Huxley chose Ford as The World State's God, the answer lies in what Henry Ford represents, to both our society today and the one Huxley lived in 80 years ago. Henry Ford is often credited with the creation of the assembly line, or at least using it in a way that was very effective and produced a revolutionary product, thus popularizing it. What the assembly line represents, and what Ford therefore represents, is efficiency, which was a value produced by the industrial revolution, a value which we still uphold today in modern society. Henry Ford's Model T wasn't the sole cause for the industrial revolution and everything that followed from it, not by a long shot. But he was certainly a key enough player that it's plausible that a highly industrialized society that greatly values efficiency (ie Huxley's World State) would venerate him as a God.(less)

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