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 …show more content…
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 …show more content…
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