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Modern Society in Brave New World by Aldous Huxley Essay

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Brave New World by Aldous Huxley illustrates what is actually happening in modern society. The novel is a satire of a totalitarian government and although it is fantasy, there are early traces of it occurring in modern day. It is hard to imagine a government that is solely based on the ideals of the people when there is an elected government body who makes decisions. The government’s goal is to have stability and prosperity and that, at times, is accomplished at the expense of the individuals who are governed. Accordingly, there is danger in having an all-powerful state because personal freedoms are lost. More so, there is power in having knowledge that others do not possess because it is a gateway for the government to control the public …show more content…

As it is seen in Brave New World, the World State has controlled so much of their lives that they have lost their consciousness through conditioning. In other words, the World State has controlled their minds so much that the people are unaware that they have lost their person freedom but since conditioning has failed on Bernard, he is able to recognize the loss of individuality in the World State. The government controls because they would rather have others lose their personal identity than have them be a threat to society. Therefore, if the country progresses to being all-powerful and invading the lives of individuals, there would be conformity and a loss of individuality. Additionally, a way the government controls is through their power of knowledge. Power and knowledge are two forces that work together. They are so linked that they could be considered the same thing. Having knowledge allows the government to teach or in a stronger sense, indoctrinate with what they are aware of or with their interpretations of certain matters in the world but conversely, they can obscure what they know to the public which further adds to the government’s power by having more knowledge. In the United States, there is a conspiracy theory that the pharmaceutical industry has found the cure to cancer but it is in their interest to keep it away from the public.

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