Mental Conditioning In Brave New World

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Both Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and George Orwell’s 1984 are haunting dystopias, but each display a different outlook on the future. Huxley believes that the use of mental conditioning and drugs will bring about a dystopia and Orwell thinks that manipulation of media and tight surveillance will do the same. Although they are both compelling prophecies, the ways of controlling the masses in Brave New World are more pertinent to society today. In Brave New World, mental conditioning or “hypnopaedia” is used as a means of promoting groupthink in the community, much like how religious groups try to influence people’s minds today. Straight out of the bottle, babies are influenced to think the same way as the community does. Through audio osmosis the children learn societal standards, group mottos, and the importance of conformity of thought. Bernard, who is an expert …show more content…

Every citizen of Brave New World is completely dependent on soma to provide them with emotional stability. They are taught to not feel anything real because “a gramme is better than a damn” (Huxley 54). The government hands out pills for them to take whenever they are feeling down so they do not have to confront their emotions. This leads the citizens to be reliant on instant gratification to address their needs. Also, the eradication of human emotional highs and lows ushers in an extreme societal stability that the government strives for. In our world, nurses were discovered giving their elderly patients unneeded drugs just to shut them up. The nurses represent the government in Huxley’s novel with their unrestrained use of drugs on others to make them easier to control and use as they please. The patients relate to the citizens in the way that they are both the objects of control and manipulation by a higher

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