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wingedbeastChapter two shows us a bit more of the conditioning, this time some eight-month old Delta infants. The area is prepared with bowls of flowers and bright, colorful picturebooks. All of it made to be enticing to little infants with little infant hands that like grasping bright, colorful things. The sun comes out at just the right moment to really make it all that much more enticing.
Much like for the babies, themselves, we're being set up. As all the identical babies make their way over to enjoy the colorful books and flowers, the head nurse presses a lever. Explosions, shrill sirens, alarm bells, all the things that exist to scare a baby... literally, that is their purpose. And, those are followed up with a mild electric shock to the infants.
If this disturbs you, good. That only means you are capable of empathy and compassion. The reasoning should disturb you even more.
This is also where we learn about hypnopaedic conditioning. Essentially, it's repeating the phrases over and over while a subject sleeps. This is more blatant science fiction. There's a story about how it was discovered and eventually used, but I think even that is debunked these days.
Still, within this world, hypnopaedic conditioning cannot teach facts. They can achieve a child who will repeat, word for word, what they are told, but not someone who can understad them. A child can repeat that the nile is the longest river in Africa but, when asked what is the longest river in Africa, have no clue. What it can do is more subtle and more insideous.
Via the repetition, the child will eventually repeat the slogans and phrases as though their own thoughts. "Ending is better than mending" will become engrained wisdom, down to a level of intinct. Their thoughts move to the topic of whether to repair ripped pants or throw them away in order to buy another pair and "ending is better than mending".
Again, we have to forgive the science. But, the metaphor is clear. Instead of hypnopaedic conditioning, think of all the ways we have of taking in lessons without anybody knowing. Pink is for girls is a lesson that starts early. There's absolutely no truth in it, but we hear it so often that, by the time most of us are grown, that'll be just how we think of it. Hypnopaedic conditioning is official control of the social water in which we, the social fish, swim.
Chapter two gives us the proximate reasoning for all this. An aversion to books keeps Deltas from reading and getting ideas. An aversion to flowers keeps Deltas from being comfortable lounging in nature. Neither of these are job requirements. But, they are requirements for consumption.
Basic economics has us note supply and demand. You need both for a business to work and both for an economy to work. You need people to sell stuff and you need people to buy stuff. Sitting around reading and lounging about in fields of flowers doesn't do that. So, condition an aversion to books and flowers means that they'll spend their time on other things, including conditioning to enjoy approved sports with complex equipment requirements.
That's the proximate reasoning. The purpose of torture is not to torture, but to deny the quiet, thoughtful joys to children for their entire lives.
And, that's where we get into Chapter Three. I won't handle all of chapter three here. We have to meet some of the major players in this story. But, I will get into Mustafa Mond.
Mustafa Monde is one of the ten world controllers. Everybody else was born and conditioned to be in their particular place and caste, with respect given to higher cast and disrespect given to lower cast. Well, Mustafa Monde was chosen, conditioned, and educated to be a world-controller, to outrank everybody.
There's a lot to be said about this one-world government. Some of it I just don't want to go into, here. As example, they encourage children to go about "erotic play". I choose to believe that that isn't the worst of what I could imagine that to be. Even so... I think we can all prefer not to keep thinking about that.
Mental note: If I ever do a Case regarding Brave New World I have to advise just not going there.
Anyway, a lot to be said about this government and one thing is that there's a paradox. Mustafa Mond knows history and, in this moment, chooses to impart a rare bit of it. The main thing that he imparts is a complete and utter disdain for families.
The students who are taking this tour of the hatchery and conditioning center have been properly conditioned. They regard talk of mothers and fathers as smut. Not necessarily in the sense of being pornographic, but in the sense of being crude and disgusting to talk about. But, this is Mustafa Mond talking, and they can't help but take him seriously.
He talks at length of how disgusitng it is to be a father or a mother. He talks at length at the disgusting talk of "my children", likening it to a cat as a lowly animal. And, he speaks of it all as completely incompatible with stability.
For all that it seems like Huxley is doing the standard, socially conservative critique of "society these days", this reminds me of the same rhetoric that used to be entirely for "The Family".
I put "The Family" in quotes like that, with the capitilized "the" because "The Family" in question was a very specificly generic family.
Back in the 90s and the early 00s, America was starting to discuss same-sex marriage. This wouldn't be openly backed by any major candidate for years to come, but the debate was beginning. One of the most oft-repeated talking points in opposition was that "The Family" was the foundation of America, that we couldn't remain America without it. Essentially, the argument was that stability demanded "The Family" remain only "The Family".
Today, there's a general category of philosophy of marriage and family loosely held under the label "Complementarian". This relies upon that same specifically generic family.
In that specifically generic family, there's the father who is the breadwinner and head of the household. His word is law. There's the mother, who cooks, cleans, is social, and takes on the bulk of child-rearing duties. And, there are the children, who are beaten if they do not obey swiftly and with smiles on faces.
To contrast this, Mustafa Mond focuses on nigh the opposite of what Complementarians want. There are no mothers or fathers or brothers or sisters. There are no strong emotional connections at all. Neither is there delayed satisfaction. All efforts are made to ensure that the time between conscious desire and fulfillment is as little as possible.
This goes to the ultimate reasoning behind all the conditioning, stability. Total stability through total control of everybody in terms of both supply (labor being done to produce) and demand (people buying and consuming what is produced). And, it's maintained by never giving anybody a moment's peace.
A quick note: A feely, in this world, is a motion picture which, in addition to visual and sound, also includes simulated tactile projection. So, you could feel like you're in the water without getting wet, etc. I don't think Huxley is off by so much as a centimeter in understanding that this technology will be used for porn.
And, much like the Complementarians, on the face of it it might not sound so bad... if chosen. But, through means much like a character introduced in this chapter and to be discussed next week, I find that I enjoy the thoughtful moments alone. I'm sure there are people who would enjoy that life... or different people who would enjoy the other one.
But, both also have a side-effect, one that most people would object to upon noticing. Both make people into fungible comodities.
This Ford-worshiping society, through use a Bokanovksy Process and conditioning, makes sure that every Delta Repair-Tech can be swapped out for another. One dies due to accident and another can take their place without muss or fuss.
The Complementarian society does the same for husbands and wives. If a wife&mother dies due to some condition or another, that is the individual tragedy... somewhat. But, another wife&mother can and will do the same job because every woman does the same job. The devotion to a 1950s style of "traditional" "family" demands no less.
Huxley, like Orwell and many others, saw changes in his society and feared where they could go. In his case, he saw mechanization and the Industrial Revolution, in combination with the great many new modes of entertainment threatening to reduce us all to just interchangeable cogs in a great machine. The mistake he made was in thinking that was new, rather than the sins of all societies.
Perhaps he, like many in his time, saw the family as indellibly as some still see it today. Perhaps he thought that The Family and Christianity were some bullwark against the sins that he identifies. But, in some ways, even that thought is just another example of the same.
Still, it's worth carrying on. We may have advanced our understanding of some things, but this remains relevant.
Next week, we'll meet two of the major players in this story.
Much like for the babies, themselves, we're being set up. As all the identical babies make their way over to enjoy the colorful books and flowers, the head nurse presses a lever. Explosions, shrill sirens, alarm bells, all the things that exist to scare a baby... literally, that is their purpose. And, those are followed up with a mild electric shock to the infants.
Books and loud noises, flowers and electric shocks-already in the infant mind these couples were compromisingly linked; and after two hundred repetitions of the same or a similar lesson would be wedded indissolubly. What man has joined together, nature is powerless to put assunder.
If this disturbs you, good. That only means you are capable of empathy and compassion. The reasoning should disturb you even more.
This is also where we learn about hypnopaedic conditioning. Essentially, it's repeating the phrases over and over while a subject sleeps. This is more blatant science fiction. There's a story about how it was discovered and eventually used, but I think even that is debunked these days.
Still, within this world, hypnopaedic conditioning cannot teach facts. They can achieve a child who will repeat, word for word, what they are told, but not someone who can understad them. A child can repeat that the nile is the longest river in Africa but, when asked what is the longest river in Africa, have no clue. What it can do is more subtle and more insideous.
Via the repetition, the child will eventually repeat the slogans and phrases as though their own thoughts. "Ending is better than mending" will become engrained wisdom, down to a level of intinct. Their thoughts move to the topic of whether to repair ripped pants or throw them away in order to buy another pair and "ending is better than mending".
Again, we have to forgive the science. But, the metaphor is clear. Instead of hypnopaedic conditioning, think of all the ways we have of taking in lessons without anybody knowing. Pink is for girls is a lesson that starts early. There's absolutely no truth in it, but we hear it so often that, by the time most of us are grown, that'll be just how we think of it. Hypnopaedic conditioning is official control of the social water in which we, the social fish, swim.
Chapter two gives us the proximate reasoning for all this. An aversion to books keeps Deltas from reading and getting ideas. An aversion to flowers keeps Deltas from being comfortable lounging in nature. Neither of these are job requirements. But, they are requirements for consumption.
Basic economics has us note supply and demand. You need both for a business to work and both for an economy to work. You need people to sell stuff and you need people to buy stuff. Sitting around reading and lounging about in fields of flowers doesn't do that. So, condition an aversion to books and flowers means that they'll spend their time on other things, including conditioning to enjoy approved sports with complex equipment requirements.
That's the proximate reasoning. The purpose of torture is not to torture, but to deny the quiet, thoughtful joys to children for their entire lives.
And, that's where we get into Chapter Three. I won't handle all of chapter three here. We have to meet some of the major players in this story. But, I will get into Mustafa Mond.
Mustafa Monde is one of the ten world controllers. Everybody else was born and conditioned to be in their particular place and caste, with respect given to higher cast and disrespect given to lower cast. Well, Mustafa Monde was chosen, conditioned, and educated to be a world-controller, to outrank everybody.
There's a lot to be said about this one-world government. Some of it I just don't want to go into, here. As example, they encourage children to go about "erotic play". I choose to believe that that isn't the worst of what I could imagine that to be. Even so... I think we can all prefer not to keep thinking about that.
Mental note: If I ever do a Case regarding Brave New World I have to advise just not going there.
Anyway, a lot to be said about this government and one thing is that there's a paradox. Mustafa Mond knows history and, in this moment, chooses to impart a rare bit of it. The main thing that he imparts is a complete and utter disdain for families.
The students who are taking this tour of the hatchery and conditioning center have been properly conditioned. They regard talk of mothers and fathers as smut. Not necessarily in the sense of being pornographic, but in the sense of being crude and disgusting to talk about. But, this is Mustafa Mond talking, and they can't help but take him seriously.
He talks at length of how disgusitng it is to be a father or a mother. He talks at length at the disgusting talk of "my children", likening it to a cat as a lowly animal. And, he speaks of it all as completely incompatible with stability.
For all that it seems like Huxley is doing the standard, socially conservative critique of "society these days", this reminds me of the same rhetoric that used to be entirely for "The Family".
I put "The Family" in quotes like that, with the capitilized "the" because "The Family" in question was a very specificly generic family.
Back in the 90s and the early 00s, America was starting to discuss same-sex marriage. This wouldn't be openly backed by any major candidate for years to come, but the debate was beginning. One of the most oft-repeated talking points in opposition was that "The Family" was the foundation of America, that we couldn't remain America without it. Essentially, the argument was that stability demanded "The Family" remain only "The Family".
Today, there's a general category of philosophy of marriage and family loosely held under the label "Complementarian". This relies upon that same specifically generic family.
In that specifically generic family, there's the father who is the breadwinner and head of the household. His word is law. There's the mother, who cooks, cleans, is social, and takes on the bulk of child-rearing duties. And, there are the children, who are beaten if they do not obey swiftly and with smiles on faces.
To contrast this, Mustafa Mond focuses on nigh the opposite of what Complementarians want. There are no mothers or fathers or brothers or sisters. There are no strong emotional connections at all. Neither is there delayed satisfaction. All efforts are made to ensure that the time between conscious desire and fulfillment is as little as possible.
This goes to the ultimate reasoning behind all the conditioning, stability. Total stability through total control of everybody in terms of both supply (labor being done to produce) and demand (people buying and consuming what is produced). And, it's maintained by never giving anybody a moment's peace.
Now-such is progress-the old men work, the old men copulate, the old men have no time, no leisure from pleasure, not a moment to sit down and think-or if ever by some unlucky chance a crevice of time should yawn in the solid substance of their distractions, there is always soma, delicious soma, half a gramme for a half-holiday, a gramme for a week-end, two grammes for a trip to the gorgeous East, three for a dark eternity on the moon; returning whence they find themselves on the other side of the crevice, safe on the solid ground of daily labour and distraction, scampering from feely to feely, from girl to pneumatic girl...
A quick note: A feely, in this world, is a motion picture which, in addition to visual and sound, also includes simulated tactile projection. So, you could feel like you're in the water without getting wet, etc. I don't think Huxley is off by so much as a centimeter in understanding that this technology will be used for porn.
And, much like the Complementarians, on the face of it it might not sound so bad... if chosen. But, through means much like a character introduced in this chapter and to be discussed next week, I find that I enjoy the thoughtful moments alone. I'm sure there are people who would enjoy that life... or different people who would enjoy the other one.
But, both also have a side-effect, one that most people would object to upon noticing. Both make people into fungible comodities.
This Ford-worshiping society, through use a Bokanovksy Process and conditioning, makes sure that every Delta Repair-Tech can be swapped out for another. One dies due to accident and another can take their place without muss or fuss.
The Complementarian society does the same for husbands and wives. If a wife&mother dies due to some condition or another, that is the individual tragedy... somewhat. But, another wife&mother can and will do the same job because every woman does the same job. The devotion to a 1950s style of "traditional" "family" demands no less.
Huxley, like Orwell and many others, saw changes in his society and feared where they could go. In his case, he saw mechanization and the Industrial Revolution, in combination with the great many new modes of entertainment threatening to reduce us all to just interchangeable cogs in a great machine. The mistake he made was in thinking that was new, rather than the sins of all societies.
Perhaps he, like many in his time, saw the family as indellibly as some still see it today. Perhaps he thought that The Family and Christianity were some bullwark against the sins that he identifies. But, in some ways, even that thought is just another example of the same.
Still, it's worth carrying on. We may have advanced our understanding of some things, but this remains relevant.
Next week, we'll meet two of the major players in this story.
