In the reader's first glimpse of the dystopia, Huxley drives home the significance of his futuristic world with the motto "Community. Identity. Stability." All the technology, planning, and conditioning of this World State exist solely to support and maintain these ends.
The Fordian world does not seem so menacing and sinister as Orwell's 1984, but the reader can see even in the first chapter that the cheeriness masks a dark reality. Personal identity — perhaps even humanity itself — is strangled by the demands of community and stability.
On the tour, the D.H.C. briskly explains the technology of fertilization — the most intimate human activity — as the carefully calculated, sterile procedure to produce identical people. In a brilliant adaptation of Ford's assembly line, the Central London Hatchery turns out (nearly) interchangeable human beings, who, like the D.H.C. and Henry Foster, can complement one another effortlessly, even to the point of completing each other's sentences.
Stability requires both the elimination of differences (except with regard to caste) and the end of dissatisfaction. The eugenics lab answers the identity challenge; conditioning manages satisfaction. The D.H.C. announces piously that virtue and goodness spring from the work of the social predestinators, whose job is "making people like their inescapable social destiny." With this statement, Huxley introduces a major theme — the role of choice and even pain in becoming a full human being. The D.H.C.'s dogma will meet a challenge with John, the "uncivilized" character (introduced in Chapter 7).
