Social Conditioning In Brave New World

Now, raise your hand if you think you spend too much time on social media. Just think about what you see. The endless stream of educational videos, Clips from podcasts and radical ideas. You may unknowingly be in a fight. A fight for the control over a population. States battling it out trying to socially condition the population. Yet how does this all relate to a novel published almost 90 years ago? Brave New World by Aldous Huxley continues to warn us about the state’s role in social conditioning, manipulation of thought and control of freedoms.

Hello everyone, my name is Zwe Maung a certified novel enthusiast. Welcome to TEDx’s Voices of the past, Voices of the future, a talk about if issues in 20th century novels are still relevant in

With these two ways, the state is successful in controlling their citizen’s emotions, keeping them in a constant state of euphoria. Describing soma as “delicious” and their effects as “half a gramme for a half holiday, a gramme for a weekend”. This can be compared to social media were the users emotions are manipulated. With emotions at play, governments can change how the population behaves and feels. Using this tool, government could control their populations by making their citizens feel more complacent and happier, change their emotions. This effect would condition the population into whatever the government says. Another way social media could socially condition the population is by making their citizens more addicted to the platforms, thus creating less critical thinking and freedom of thought. This relates to soma’s addictive tendencies as it helps the characters in the novel ease out. Just like the characters, social media is silently addicting users, manipulating emotions and thoughts, and creating a more condition

Just like Brave New World, our society consist of a hierarchy. While millionaires only consist of 1% of the population, they hold an astonishing 46% of all property wealth in the world. Yet how does this relate to social conditioning? If you were born poor, society conditions you to think that you would never achieve considerable wealth in your lifetime and blames you for all the world’s problems. This creates a loop in where poorer demographics keep getting poorer and powerless as societies’ rules quash their thoughts and power. However, being born rich, society recognises you with power, inflating ego and happiness. This in turn can be used by the government to bribe rich people out of doing harm to the system while the poor are punished for nothing. The effect of social conditioning is present in Brave New World as the savage tries to persuade Deltas to give up their rationed soma. However, as deltas they have been conditioned to rely on soma resulting in the deltas rioting and demand they regain their soma. While not eye to eye, this situation shows how Brave New World portrays our world with uncanny