The fact that the human being needs the approval of his fellows to act or think has created a movement that has made his way through all the ages: the mass movement. In the novel Brave New World and the short story The Lottery, we see that masses follow currents that are not based on real needs or a good logic, but ones that are based on traditions. The authors of both stories wanted to show us the consequences of blindly following blind people without doubting one second of the result. In BNW, this is brought to us by a reflected image of our reality through an utopia world. In The Lottery, blindness is shown at its darkest with the image of a stupid village killing innocents without knowing why.
This lack of real questioning about their own actions that can come out from the majority is found in both stories. Every individual is relying on someone else who is also probably relying on the first individual. That endless circle dazes everyone and brings him or her in the wrong path or in one less constructive than it could be. In The Lottery, every villager, except maybe the younger kids, knows what price you win at the lottery: death. Even though nobody or no supernatural force obligates those villagers to kill each other, no one among them seems to oppose this tradition. It's always been that way. It is quite the same in Brave New World. Every living being issued from any social class thinks he knows why he is living and acting in the way he does. From the mass' point of view, the purely brainwashed individuals of this utopia world, the questions raised by the social disturbers are fool questions because they are not answerable by the so "obvious" answers they possess and that everybody else does. Furthermore, you don't need answers to your existence because you can forget you're living with soma. .
Repeating religious actions destroys their real meaning and purpose and brings to a point where the one uttering the action is acting like a zombie.
