How lost is mankind, that nurtures itself so much on mindlessness, that it no longer functions properly enough to recognize its own demise? “Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business” written by Neil Postman and “Brave New World” written by Aldous Huxley. Never have I considered the society that we live in to be a dystopia before those books. I had always been politically-inclined enough to revel in the importance of society and the understanding of the intricacies of our government, the need for its perpetual criticism by the common man, and the value of young intellectuals, satiating themselves with the constant need to lead and play a role in government. However, in all I thought that I have grown to know, never had I truly known the pervasiveness of ignorance more than with each turn of the page from these books. Never freer from my own delusions had I ever been either. What worse a feeling, however, to wake from …show more content…
After all, what population would knowingly subject itself to the terrors of absolute authoritarianism? In a society free of the chains that bind populations to ignorance, dystopias are easily recognizable by the common characteristics of which they are always portrayed: perpetual war, a highly endeared leader, endless propaganda, government intervention in every facet of life, and constant surveillance. The ability of a government to so stealthily enslave its population would require the use of tactics so meticulously devised, one would not recognize their own enslavement, not even the ones administering or enforcing it. Many would dispute this claim by stating that because we exist in a democratic society and exercise our freedoms daily, this cannot be the case and our situation could never be as dire as the oppressed of the world. Comparisons should not be drawn between one man’s prison cell and the next, as if either is truly better