The Government’s Control in A Brave New World

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The Government’s Control in A Brave New World

A Brave New World is a seemingly prolific novel written by Aldous Huxley. The books starts off with a cloning center, which is where all people are created. All people are made to do a certain job. Their life is put into a predetermined slot into society. The amount of brain power the people have to use is limited, and breaks the people into castes. The people are to a point of not being mentally challenged for their job, and therefore making them contempt to stay doing what they do. The people of this world are given the information the government wants them to think in their sleep. They will keep to what they are taught to think unless something uncommon happens. Conditioning can only keep their mind to the government’s will if the people never run into anything contradicting to what they are taught to believe. Soma is a drug that keeps the people in a basic state of happiness. It is the back up people use when they are in a state of confusion. If anything comes along and does not go along with the beliefs that the population is taught, than they can just take soma and forget about it. Conditioning, cloning, and soma are some of the biggest forms of control the government uses to keep the population under their reign.

Conditioning is a very complex idea consistently mentioned throughout the book. Conditioning is consistently used to keep the population thinking what the government wants to think. The government controls the person after being cloned until they are at an age in which they can fulfill the job they were made to do. The masses of people are indoctrinated, and since the usage of books is limited to the higher castes of society (Alphas and Betas), so there is ...

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... controlled happiness for some, and a place of great sorrow and misery for others.

This world of dystopia is not far away from the society of today, because it is in human nature (Kass 1). The world is evolving into the world depicted by Huxley in Brave New World. The “‘conditioning aims at making people like their inescapable social destiny’” (Huxley 17). The government first started with the taking away of freedom from the people in the world. Although we are not at a point where even our social class and jobs are determined by the government, the elements are shown throughout society today. The ideas Huxley took on the future of Earth are slowly becoming a reality today. The advancements in cloning, the conditioning in advertizing, and the drug abuse of today are some of the ways that Huxley’s dystopia could happen today (Macdonald 1-2).

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