Conscription Of Consumption By Aldous Huxley Essay

Conscription of Consumption Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World describes a supposedly utopian society, however, citizens sacrifice basic freedoms to obtain an artificial happiness. This â€Å"artificial happiness† is one achieved by consuming material objects, meaningless sex, or soma, a pleasure-inducing drug. This parallels modern America in a multitude of ways, including our â€Å"pill-popping†, consumer driven society, in which obtaining an infinite supply of finite objects is deemed as success. In both societies, citizens turn to drugs, sex, and other distractions from the harsh realities of life including pain, death, and old age. Despite their numerous similarities, Brave New World and America also have several key differences. For example, the extremity of government control in Brave New World is not found in modern America. However, one could argue that social pressure is equally influential in choosing material objects, sex, and drugs over mental pursuits. This social pressure takes the form of advice, media, and the constant stress of remaining â€Å" equal† to one’s peers. Modern American society parallels that of Brave New World with a consumer driven culture and nonsensical moral conditioning, causing a flawed value system. One of the major similarities between Brave New World and modern America is the consumer driven culture, a society which runs off of using and creating more goods. In Brave New World, the value â€Å"ending is better than mending† isShow MoreRelatedGovernment Censorship and Control in Brave New World1747 Words   |  7 PagesImagine a society in which its citizens have forfeited all personal liberties for government protection and stability; Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, explores a civilization in which this hypothetical has become reality. The inevitable trade-off of citizens’ freedoms for government protection traditionally follows periods of war and terror. The voluntary degradation of the citizens’ rights begins with small, benign steps to full, totalitarian control. Major methods for government control and censorshipRead MoreBrave New World: Utopia or Dystopia2448 Words   |  10 Pagesplagued with no mothers or fathers; theyve got no wives, or children, or lovers to feel strongly about; theyre so conditioned that they practically cant help behaving as they ought to behave. And if anything should go wrong, theres soma. (Huxley, 2002: 151) Enjoying themselves in feelies, electromagnetic golf and in soma they are never worried, sad, nor solitary. The most frequent sentence pronounced in the novel which describes the peoples emotional state of mind is „Everybodys happy