Sleep Teaching Techniques In Brave New World

How many of us living in the United States manage to find ourselves at the latest holiday sales in order to get those “must-have” deals of the century? Thanksgiving day is about one month from today. A few hours after the family turkey eating night, people would go to department stores and line up to purchase new clothes, jewelry, and electronics which are heavily discounted. About one month after that day, Christmas and New Year’s Day come. People would, then again, go to departments stores and line up to purchase heavily discounted Christmas sales. Being with the family is no longer the only factor to look forward to on these holidays. The discounts that are associated with these holidays has made shopping a tradition that we simply cannot
miss. This is a similar situation that occurs in a novel by Aldous Huxley written in 1931, Brave New World, which tells a story about a dystopian future where technology is used to control people - from the way they are born or decanted to the way they live their lives as consumers to establish stability in the society. Just like the society in the novel Brave New World, our society is indoctrinated to become consumer. To make matters worse, we are forced to believe that we need to buy goods that we do not really need! We have to start limiting our desire to consume if we do not want to end up living in an unfairly controlled world the novel describes. We have to reduce our impulse to always consume because consuming goods that we do not need only grants short term gratification rather than long term satisfaction, we could also end up with large amount of junks (i.e. electronic waste, used clothes, etc.), and doing so only benefit the companies which produce the goods.
We have to limit our desire to buy goods that we do not need because doing so only give us short-term satisfaction and distract us from achieving our goals that would grant us long-term satisfaction. Preference of short-term satisfaction over long-term satisfaction is one trait similarity that both our society and the society in the novel Brave New World has. In the novel, Huxley explains how the people of the civilized society would always intoxicate themselves with soma every time they feel uncomfortable or upset. This shows how these people prefer to just have the illusion of not having a problem at all rather than actually solve their problem and gain closure from it. According to an article written by Edwin Mansfield, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, the time between release of new innovations increases based on the size of a firm or business. However, now we can see that due to businesses becoming much larger and more spread-out, the time between releases of new technology has been decreasing at a steady rate. New versions of technology comes up less than one year after the current version is released, giving consumers really short time to enjoy having the latest technology. By purchasing every new version of technology, we are giving in to the temptation of having that short-term gratification. The Brave New World’s society preference to have short-term satisfaction by taking soma is similar to our society’s preference to keep buying the latest trendy clothes or inventions. If we do not want to end up living the same way Bernard Marx live in the society of Brave New World, then we should not be discouraged to settle for older version of technology or older design of clothes. This is not the only reason why we should limit our desire to consume. When we buy new version of technology, what do we do to the old one that we had? Throw it away? Maybe.
Junk is another reason why we should limit our desire to consume.
Buying goods that we do not need would leave us with a large amount of waste, whether it is electronic waste (cell phone, tablet, computer or television set), textile waste, or other waste. Our habit of throwing unused goods away is similar to the habit of the people in the novel Brave New World. In the novel, a technique called sleep teaching is used to indoctrinate the people. One of the phrases of the sleep teaching is “Ending is better than mending. The more stitches, the less riches” (Huxley, 35). This phrase of the sleep teaching technique implement the idea that fixing broken goods is uncivilized. Although the novel does not show the reader what the people in the novel do to their waste, readers can infer that the thrown away broken goods are piling up somewhere in their world. In our world, trash is a major problem. In modern day, aside from regular trash (plastic, textile, etc.), Electronic waste has become a major problem in our world. The materials used to produce electronics take significantly long time to decompose, thus making it really difficult to dispose. Some states in the United States, including California, has implemented the Electronic Waste Recycling Act of 2003, allowing people to cash in their no-longer-used electronic devices when they recycle their no-longer-used technology. The implemented law may be effective in reducing the problem in this country, however, United States is not
the only place with the problem of electronic waste. Other states and countries have similar problem. In an article for the Review Of European Community & International Environmental Law journal, Wanhua Yang explains that “China generated more than 100 million units of waste [electronic] products. It generated 1.7 million tonnes of e-waste in 2006 ... By 2015, the figure is expected to increase to approximately 400 million units, or 5.4 million tonnes.” Based on this, we can see how much excessive technology can lead to massive buildup of waste. This could inadvertently lead to worse effects like radiation or pollution. The fact that the number of electronic waste in China is expected to quadruple in nine years shows how fast this problem is growing. If this rate continues, there would be more electronic waste count than the amount of people living in this planet in less than forty years. The frequent disposal of our unused or broken goods is another factor our society and the Brave New World society have in common. Keeping and fixing our unused or broken goods is another step we can take to make sure that the nightmare of living in a society similar to the one described in the novel will not come to reality. Short-term satisfaction and piling junk is not so bad, right? It is not as if we are going to praise Ford as our god. How can you be so sure about that?
We may not be worshipping Ford as our god.
However, we are on our way to do something worse. Our habit of buying goods that we do not need is not benefitting us at all, it is benefitting the companies that produce the goods greatly however. The more unnecessary goods we buy, the more money we give to those companies. With enough money, companies can lobby for a law to be passed. By giving these companies this power, as stated by Matt Hampton in his article, “Money as Social Power”, we allow money to act on its own as use its “autonomous existence… [to manifest] at a less abstract level in the social institution of the state,” which ultimately leads to corruption of the government. Hampton writes this in order to convey to the readers how much power money can truly have. In addition, it shows that money can control man due to the convenience and meaning it has. The more money, we spend for these production companies the more power we are giving them. With enough power, companies can alter the laws to their their favor, controlling the government and us as the governed. With enough of this power, they can even use law to force us to abandon our religious beliefs and worship them or a person of their choice. Huxley actively uses Ford as the society’s god in the novel to show what could happen if we keep up our habit of consuming goods that we do not need. He shows how industrial corporations truly is the root of all evil and how it uses men in power as puppets and people
following them as slaves to consumerism. Limiting our consumption can help us prevent giving this god-like power to the companies. In conclusion, we can see how spending money on luxuries rather than necessities can indirectly impact our settings. By putting a cap on our desires, we can focus on what is needed rather than items and luxuries we can afford to live without. More money for technology and toys could mean less money for food. It could also mean less money for education or even gas for you car. On top of that, by advancing technology at such a fast rate, the “old” technology of yesterday will soon become the huge pile of trash of tomorrow. Finally, giving these corporations our money means that they dictate what could happen in our society today. By cutting out unnecessary spending, we can better the economy and make budgets stretch to fit all that we need. If what we need is all accounted for, then maybe spending on a few luxuries could be in question. However, we must have a limit to our spending so what we need could be accounted for over what we want. In the novel Brave New World Huxley uses consumption of soma, habit of throwing away, and worshipping of Ford to make the ultimate point of how our consuming habit is destroying our society. We should use this novel as a map for what could possibly happen in the future. We may not be aware of it, but our world is slowly going towards the direction of the world described in the novel. What is worse is that we are closer become that society than we think we are. Limiting our consumption is a big step to keep Brave New World nothing but a fiction.