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Joshua Garcia

Ms. Sanchez

ERWC, Period 3

28 April 2017

A Mere Reflection

In modern times, we have become a society that is run off of media, technology, and

freedom; maybe a little too much freedom. Neil Postman, author of Amusing Ourselves to Death,

has made observations of Huxleys Brave New world and came with the conclusion that our

society is becoming more like the environment of the New World in Huxleys book. I believe

that Postman is correct with his statement. Our social media, our technology, and our other guilty

pleasures have led us to a similar environment to the New World, from our use of entertainment,

to their philosophy of life.

In a Brave New World, the population is segregated into classes. In the book, it explains

that ... the Alphas and Betas remained until definitely bottled; while the Gammas, Deltas, and

Epsilons were brought out again (6). This description classifies each group and their rank. In

our world, we passively make classes in our society. Similar to the New World, our society needs

poor and rich people/groups for our economy to be stable. In addition to the class structures, a

character says, Oh no, I dont want to play with Delta children. And Epsilons are still worse.

They're too stupid to be able to read/write (27). This scenario shows the action of stereotyping

and using representative heuristics to their knowledge and judgement. Along the same lines, we

stereotype many people today. From our social media, terrible events/news can influence our

thoughts and judgements. For example, ever since 9/11, we use the muslims as our escape goat
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and blame them for every terrorist attack, whether its true or false. Despite the fact that we have

similarity on class structures with the New World, we also have similarity in our education.

In their system, children were taught to throw old clothes out because they shouldnt like

old things (49). As human beings, some, if not most people have the same feelings about old

things. Everyone always wants to keep up with the Joneses, and buy things that are most

relevant at the time. Whether its clothes, phones, or cars. In fact, the people in the New World

preferred to avoid emotions, strong emotions (45). With our technology, we too have avoided

our emotions. In the past, we used to confront people by talking to them face-to-face, which

helped us communicate better by seeing facial expressions or hearing the tone of their voice.

Consequently, we depend on our phones for communication instead. In texting, we lack emotions

because the people on the other side cannot see our expressions from in front of their screen.

This causes it to be difficult to understand what the other person is trying to say. We depend too

much on our technology that it makes us look like zombies, just roaming the earth with no

purpose. Besides technology, The New World has similar pleasures for entertainment.

The New World depicts a scene of the Director and his student standing for a short time

to watch a game of Centrifugal Bumble-puppy (30). This small entertainment is like our video

games that kids or adults play today. Centrifugal Bumble-puppy was designed to help the

economy and claiming to help the students coordination. Likewise, we use video games as

propaganda for enhancing our motor coordination while having fun. From playing video games

constantly, we are being controlled and conditioned by pleasure. In more extreme terms, drugs

were the main source for entertainment in the New World. If you were feeling down/abnormal,

the society of the New World would encourage you to have a gramme of soma, a relieving,

sensual, stimulating drug (54). Similarly, we have many drugs, such as marijuana, that we use to
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entertain ourselves or to be in a consolingly state. The philosophy from the New World is most

directly influenced by the quote, Never put of till to-morrow the fun you can have today (93).

Surely, our society has the same philosophy as the New Worlds.

Lastly, the idea of death and aging is similar to our world to the New World. In the book,

they state that, [they] preserve them from diseases. We keep their internal secretions artificially

balanced at a youthful equilibrium (111). In other words, looking younger is a major key to

surviving/living in this World. In comparison, our society mimics this idea. Many people spend

so much money on cosmetic surgeries or cosmetics just to look younger. Although it may feel

good to look young, its still a waste of money because growing old is inevitable.

In conclusion, our standards and the New Worlds standards are similar in this generation.

We depend too much in social media, technology, and most importantly ourselves. Obviously,

not everyone is following this norm, but the constant barrage of entertainment leads us closer and

closer to the same concept of a Brave New World. All of the examples/conflicts are avoidable.

People can see how we, as a society, are a mere reflection, like a mirror, to Huxleys New World,

but we can always shatter this image and become our own society and independent.