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Essays on brave new world
Introduction of a brave new world
Analysis of the brave new world
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Behavioral conditioning is the process in which a subject is trained to follow certain patterns following a trigger. By training the people to disregard morality, ethics, and individualism, they are able to subtly control their actions. With no reason to question their authority the people fall victim to the conditioning under which
Continuing on with Brave New World, we know that the perception of their life is very different to them, than to us. When we read about their world, it is easy to understand all the problems within it. They themselves do not see these problems, because their society is “perfect”. This is what makes perception so difficult. From the outside world's point of view, government control is very odd.
Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World depicts a society where efficiency is the primary concern. The world leaders use horrifying repetitive conditioning to shape individuals into acquiescent, infantilized citizens, stupefied into an artificial sense of happiness. The majority of citizens willingly follow the tide that infinitely crashed over them with wave after wave of parties, casual sexual relations, and the perfectly engineered drug, soma. However, the readers may find themselves disturbed, and possibly intrigued, at the lack of morality in this “brave new world”.
Brain Wash Seduction by screens. Everywhere, every turn there’s screens, electronics, video games, and even glasses to wear that have screens inside of them. What has society come to? Addictions to games and social media. Today it’s normal to feed off of the media.
From eight to ninety-six buds, and every bud will grow into a perfectly formed embryo, and every embryo into a full-sized adult. Making ninety-six human beings grow where only one grew before.” (Director 7). Another attempt to make a stable society is implementing a caste system where “everyone belongs to everyone”. The caste system in Brave New World worked so effectively that the different castes rarely interacted with each other, and when they did there was a palpable animosity towards the persons of another caste.
As I am sure you know, classical conditioning was first demonstrated by a Russian physiologist named Ivan Pavlov in the 1890s with his experiment involving dogs. According to the Oxford Dictionary, classical conditioning is a learning process that occurs when two stimuli are repeatedly paired, usually a response that is at first elicited by the second stimulus is eventually elicited by the first stimulus alone. Following in Pavlov's footsteps behaviorist John B. Watson broadened Pavlov's work and tested his theory on an nine-month old infant he called Little Albert. Watson wanted to bring psychology back to a focus on scientific inquiry. He felt it necessary to focus only on observable behavior.
In the novel The Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley, the residents of the World State no longer live in the human condition. The negative emotions of fear and embarrassment have been suppressed by their lifelong conditioning and the perfect drug, soma. This could at first seem appealing, however in reality, it can have serious drawbacks. All of the residents of the World State believe they are happy, however, they have never experienced anything of a negative nature happen to them so they can compare. The importance of our negative emotions cannot be overlooked; these emotions, especially fear and embarrassment, help us to learn from our or others experiences, provide a counterbalance to the happiness in our lives, and bring us together as people.
In A Brave New World before the children are born they are told in their dreams “Every one belongs to every one else”. This brainwashes everybody to feel no freedom, unlike John. The reader can see that in A Brave New World nobody has any freedom to do what they want or have any individuality at all. The lower class (the Gammas, Deltas and Epsilons) are given alcohol before they are born so they get dulled down and the upper class (the Alphas and Betas) can make them complete tasks that may be harmful or just boring. This makes a large amount of their population unable to have new ideas.
Adolf Hitler was an individual who was able to get into the minds of people and cause them to change, “To be a leader means to be able to move the masses” (Huxley, 41). He did this through the use of propaganda in the form of devices such as the radio, books, and the press. Hitler stripped their identities and brainwashed them into thinking Jew, homosexuals and other groups of people were to be eradicated from society. One can also see this in the novel Brave New World their society also uses brainwashing as a form of establishing a “community” they use the practice of Hypnopedia to engrave the message of the world state in its people's brains while they sleep. Propaganda and mind control are two main tactics used in the manipulation of people
Books often depict characters caught between colliding cultures, because of national, regional, ethnic, religious and institutional differences. In Brave New World author Aldous Huxley, an often critical writer of social norms and ideals, introduces the reader to both a utopian society and an uncivilized one rooted with indian customs. John, a habitant of the indian society, is caught between the culture of a progressive civilization and his savage customs, which cause him to become desperate and eventually commit suicide. Progress always makes things simpler. This is something that John despises from civilization where he arrives, because things are too simple for everyone.
Unlike Brave New World, social classes or groups occur naturally in today’s society. For example, in a school, students are put into different social groups for numerous reasons: intelligence, level of creativity or artistic ability, physical appearance, athleticism, or the outsiders who are not a part of the idealistic society. Once someone is categorized into a group or multiple groups, he or she will likely remain there for the rest of a school career. These groups, while not as uniform as those in Brave New World, are still able to prolong stability. Stability is maintained because of the stereotypes created about divergent groups.
In such a disjointed and impersonal society, even medical professionals rebuke suggestions of parental figures. In the place of children being nurtured by parents, the state conditions children and brainwashes them how to think and act through hypnopaedia, or sleep-teaching. While children do not really have to be taught how to survive because the totalitarian government does everything for them, they are taught subjects such as Class Consciousness and Sex. Children of different castes are taught how to fulfill their role in society and dislike other castes to maintain the status quo; Beta children are taught phrases such as “oh no, I don’t want to play with Delta children” and “I’m really awfully glad I’m a beta” (Huxley, 27). The seclusion of children from their parents shows how evolution has been completely rebuked in Brave New World’s
Even during the creation, their job, career, and social status have been defined for them. They don’t get the chance to decide what they want to do in life. Even worse, at a young age, they get exposed to various factors that will surround them in their work field and learn to despise factors that might influence their way of thinking such as the delta class babies who were electro-shocked when touching books and flower and eventually becoming afraid of them. Similar to their jobs, their emotions are influenced and controlled by other substances. As a new world society, they don't understand the concept of emotions, they only understand being pleasant and everything going accurately.
Hey Brandy I agree I think the environment we are in or the people who we surround ourselves around has major impact on our behavior. But like said there are some people who don't always turn out that way. For example my younger brother my parent have always raised us to be very respectful kids and not to hand around bad company. But as he has gotten older he tends to hang out with a group of people of who have a bad influence on him and he can sometimes be disrespectful. Don't get me wrong he's a very good kid but make bad decisions when it comes to friends.
This school of thought suggests that only observable behaviors should be studied, since internal states such as cognitions, emotions and moods are too subjective. There are two major types of conditioning: 1. Classical conditioning is a technique used in behavioral training in which a naturally occurring stimulus is paired with a response. Next, a previously neutral stimulus is paired with the naturally occurring stimulus.