How Does Huxley Use Subconscious Persuasion To Maintain Stability

Our civilization has chosen machinery and medicine and happiness. That's why I have to keep these books locked up in the safe. They're smut." -Mustapha Mond (234). Instead of relying on fear to control the people and letting them choose from their own perspective, the government controls them through happiness; a fake happiness which is put into their heads as they grow up. In the novel, according to the World State, happiness is combined with stability. The basic goal of the brave new world is, supreme: the "happiness" of all, even if the consequences lead to the loss of freedom and free will. We can see how important it is for the state to improve happiness upon the people when Mustapha Mond says: "The world's stable now. People are happy; they get what they want, and they never want what they can't get. They're well off; they're safe; they're never ill; they're not afraid of death; they're blissfully ignorant of passion and old age they're so conditioned that they practically can't help behaving as they ought to behave. And if anything should go wrong, there's soma." (220). The government's goal is to control people but it uses a very inhumane way. People aren't experiencing what life is really about because the state wants to keep people away form questioning. The essay Brave New World Society's Moral Decline found in www.123helpme.com, talks about Huxley's beliefs and predictions of the future when he was writing the novel. Some of these, he believed were

People believe that they make every decision themselves using their own thoughts and ideas, but this is not entirely true. Whether it is an ad on TV for a burger or a political speech talking about the future of the country, the goal of these is to persuade people one way or the other. They do this because humans are easily manipulated by ads, propaganda, and false facts. George Orwell’s Animal Farm is an allegory based on communist Soviet Union before and during Joseph Stalin’s time as leader. Orwell showed, using pigs and other animals, how easy it is to manipulate someone into believing something. The pigs manipulated the other animals on the farm by effectively using rhetoric like logos, ethos, and pathos in their speeches.

One of the literary devices used is personification, “Eternity was in our lips and eyes.”

The premature mass education of children exposes them to a predetermined ideology and imprisons them to the immoral laws of society. Huxley illustrates this by describing the Brave New World’s process of hypnopaedia, a sleep-invoked teaching method. While this meets the Central Intelligence Agency’s criteria of brainwashing, “mass education,” it goes beyond the bare minimal definition (United States 3). Hypnopaedia takes advantage of the naïve and influenceable mind of young children. By teaching children phrases such as, “I’m really awfully glad I’m a Beta” and “Gammas are stupid,” World Controllers are establishing what they consider the correct social hierarchy (Huxley 27). This restricts the individual citizen’s ability to establish their own beliefs and feelings toward other people. When combined with

Our forms of conditioning might not be exact but they still relate. Instead of electric shock and hypnopedia, we are conditioned by media. On page 34, the controller tells the students that “History is bunk”. This relates to our world because see people become famous out of nowhere and we begin to think that school is not necessary, our math classes and history classes are bunk. “We condition the masses to hate the country… But simultaneously we condition them to love all country sports” (page 23). In our world, we are so caught up in social media and what’s going on on the internet that we no longer like to go outside. Yet, we all want to be the star athlete and go pro. Huxley warns us that government control is brainwashing and blinding. We won't ever get to experience life in full if we let the government control every move we make.

Throughout Aldous Huxley’s dystopian novel, Brave New World, the reader is thrust to the forefront of a society merely based on consumerism, class loyalty, and conventional principles. The motif of brainwashing is used in an effort to abolish individualism throughout Huxley’s novel. He does so by eloquently mirroring the beliefs of the totalitarian governments of the past by establishing a government that brainwashes its own citizens to conform to their beliefs. The “World State” uses hypnopedia as a tool to accomplish this goal of conformity. They teach young children, their principles to reduce the probability of an uprising against the tyrannical power.

Having been a somewhat of an outsider in his life, physically and mentally, Aldous Huxley used what others thought as his oddities to create complex works. His large stature and creative individuality is expressed in the characters of his novel, Brave New World. In crafting such characters as Lenina, John, Linda, Bernard, and Helmholtz, not to mention the entire world he created in the text itself, Huxley incorporated some of his humanities into those of his characters. Contrastly, he removed the same humanities from the society as a whole to seem perfect. This, the essence and value of being human, is the great meaning of Brave New World. The presence and lack of human nature in the novel exemplifies the words of literary theorist Edward Said: “Exile is strangely compelling to think about but terrible to experience. It is the unhealable rift forced between a human being and a native place, between the self and its true home: its essential sadness can never be surmounted.” Huxley’s characters reflect the “rift” in their jarred reaction to new environments and lifestyles, as well as the remnant of individuality various characters maintain in a brave new world.

One may think that the society in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World is a gross representation of the future, but perhaps our society isn’t that much different. In his foreword to the novel Brave New World, Aldous Huxley envisioned this statement when he wrote: "To make them love it is the task assigned, in present-day totalitarian states, to ministries of propaganda...." Thus, through hypnopaedic teaching (brainwashing), mandatory attendance to community gatherings, and the use of drugs to control emotions, Huxley bitterly satirized the society in which we live.

People in power rely on psychological manipulation to suppress others and control them. Propaganda is the centerpiece to controlling the citizens of Oceania. This propaganda raises morale of the citizens and brainwashes them into the party’s ideals. The party uses doublethink to change the truth and alter history to control the perception their citizens have. A good example of doublethink is the party slogan “WAR IS PEACE.

In Huxley’s well renowned novel, Brave New World, in an attempt to alter society, the government uses various techniques of psychological manipulation to control the way citizens think, behave, form their personalities, and live their lives. A huge theme in this novel is control and power. The leaders of the World State use various forms of manipulation to create an ideal utopia. Psychological manipulation is a type of social behavior that pursues to alter the actions of an individual through violent or devious undertakings. Manipulative behavior is not something that is easily identifiable because these individuals are usually good liars, are deviating, and only target vulnerable people. During every crisis such as World War I, the Great

George Orwell and Aldous Huxley both penned novels about their prophecies of a future ruled by totalitarianism. Neil Postman juxtaposes these prophecies in an excerpt from his book, Amusing Ourselves to Death. Orwell’s vision proclaims the oppression of an external source, while Huxley’s states that the greatest oppression comes from within a society. Postman argues that Huxley’s vision pertains to today’s society more than Orwell’s. His assertion correctly expresses the fears about society’s future, identifying the power of internal passivity over external captivity.

Mustafa uses multiple technologies to make the citizen’s of the World State happy and content regardless of the situation. The first technology he uses is hypnopaedia, implanting of ideas during sleep using subliminal messages. One of such messages eases tensions between the different castes of the society. In the World State there are five castes: Alpha, Betas, Gammas, Deltas, and Epsilons. Each caste has different levels of intelligence and jobs to perform. In order to quell these differences, citizens are given these messages at an early age to make them glad for their current position. For instance a Betas are told, “Oh no, I don't want to play with Delta children. And Epsilons are still worse… I’m so glad I’m a Beta … Alpha children wear grey. They work so much harder than we do… I’m really awfully glad I’m a Beta” (Huxley 27). These messages play hundreds of times a day and constitute one of the methods Mustafa uses to maintain content. Forcing people to dissociate from others of their society prevents them from meeting others of different backgrounds and limits their view of the world. Additionally, content in their current situation prevents people from looking up to a higher goal or standard that they

Huxley argues against a totally controlling government with his attacks on sleep conditioning the people to believe what the government decides: “One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them” (Huxley 234-235). In contrast Golding argues some form of government must exist to preserve order and protect, Golding suggests that society is comparable to a “squatting child” in need of the “protection of parents and schools and policemen and the law” (Golding 62). Unlike Huxley’s imagined society, Golding’s has no government structure which leads the society into savagery. However Huxley’s all-powerful government also leads society into

The Party implements “doublethink” as its mind- control technique to ensure that the people lose the ability to form their own independent thoughts. “Doublethink” allows the Party to convince the people of anything, even if it's the opposite of what they already know to be true. A good example of “doublethink” is shown in part two, chapter 9 when the party announces that Oceania was not at war with Eurasia, but was an ally to Oceania. Oceania was at war with Eastasia. Although everybody remembers that Eurasia was the enemy for years, they accept this thought through

Humankind has always had a thirst for power; over its peers, environment and spiritual beliefs. To quench this thirst it has gone as far as genocide; but has often employed more subtle techniques, such as mind control. In today’s socio-economical and political worlds, mind control plays a key role in dictating tastes and lifestyles; as well as controlling political thoughts, views, and people’s understanding of the world. It is accomplished using various channels to condition people’s thinking. Publicity and advertisement campaigns saturate people with products, broadcasting over radio, and television which in itself is a prime example. Many religions employ mind control, conditioning their followers to obey without