We have been reading the very famous dystopia "Brave new world" by Adous Huxley in english class, our teacher told us to think how it could be related to our society, she asked us to write an essay obout it... I wrote this:
We automatically tend to reject the idea that conditioning is widespread throughout the
world, believing that this only happens in totalitarian systems and in literary or
cinematographic dystopias. However, much to our regret, there is evidence showing the
opposite stand. We have been conditioned not to stand over others, to achieve impossible
beauty ideals and to contribute to excessive consumption, among others.
Being different is something that, in our society, is not considered to be positive nor valuable
but something to be ashamed of or to feel guilty about. I am convinced that cultural
enrichment lies in the differences between all kinds of people, being unique is what makes us
valuable. In the book, this is taken to extreme measures, such as plenty of identical twins who
are created in order to satisfy society´s needs.
Impossible aims can always be seen in social media, encouraging all types of people to look
and act in a certain way. But… Who establishes those aims? Generation after generation this
still exists and frustrates every person that tries to resemble those fake versions of
happiness.
“Ending is better than mending” (a hypnopaedia Conditioning sentence) is constantly being
repeated by Lenina in the book. Excessive consumption fires economy figures. In a capitalist
society where money is more important than humanity, this predominates over everything
else.
It is curious (in my opinion, scary) to see these close similarities between the book and real life.
The main difference I have found, according to conditioning, is that the characters do not mind
being conditioned with hypnopaedia, for example. They know they are being conditioned to
think in a certain way and they seem to be okay with it… Do we ignore we are also being
conditioned? If we do not, do we disregard it?
PD: I got a 9,5/10 btw hahahha, hope you like it:)