The masking of reality by playing in on our enjoyment.
While it seems like a weird statement and for most it’s terrifying to even think it’s possible in the current day and age, but nothing is further from the truth; we are slowly being indoctrinated. This indoctrination is being done by the hands of what is described as civilized infantalisation . What this entails is what Huxley describes as the following, which is also featured in his book – Brave New World – in the form of a dystopian society that is fully based on getting a high out of dopamine; in his vision, humanity was facing a future world tranquilized by pleasure and drugs and the voluntary distractions. While this might not seem like anything odd, it is incredibly dangerous and it’s already happening! There’s several situations that already show us that we’re falling to a society like this.
Considering Huxley’s main distinctive characteristics that distinguish his dystopian society, we can identify the following main points: the aforementioned blinding and binding the population with drug-induced euphoria, with the clear intent of numbing the mind; an unspoken strict behavioral guideline for everyone; the ostracization and stigmatization of whoever diverge from the normality; life-long indoctrination from childhood; cast-like society subdivision, where each class is kept at place using, instead of brute force, artificially created “fake” placebo effect.
These are only some of the many indicators of this type of future. The interesting peculiarity is that individually each one looks (and is) threatening but, at the same time, quite conspicuous as well. We may think that, before arriving to a society such as the one described by Huxley, we should be able to figure out and escape from that downward path. However, the probably scariest thing is that, while individually those are quite easily visible as they are approaching, in case they are slowly introduced all-together, they can strengthen each other, hiding respectively the real depth of their danger. Childhood indoctrination leads to blind belief of the taught ideas, while the drug-induced euphoria – or, generalizing, any other type of artificially induced state of numbness of the mind – diverges the attention, through misdirection, away from the danger of this forcefully spoon-fed propaganda. After this first indoctrination, the government does not need to forcefully proceed to keep the population under control using brute force. In fact, using a “liking based” system, in combination with deeply rooted untold “rules of behavior” created by this conditioning, the people act also as judges, juries and executioners, excluding from a highly social society the different. Finally, all these can be used in unison to create the ideal cast-like society. Here, the most easily manipulated people are “enslaved” in physical passions and senseless activities carried out with the sole objective of dulling their senses. The more vigilant and “intelligent” will compose the higher ranks of this social ladder, composing an intellectual power elite.
We can describe this structure as an intellectual dystopian, as the “smartest” are able to silently obtain the power, not by enforcing their decisions, but by slowly conditioning people by promising what everyone always longs for: happiness.
Now, do you see any resemblance with today’s society?
