Wouldn’t It Be Cool If we learned from LITERATURE?
WIBCI: You knew what you thought of the world more?
If you aren’t exactly sure what you think about the world today and where you stand in it, I recommend reading Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
It’s a dystopian novel that I find eerily similar to a state which our leaders are trying to emulate today.
In the novel infants are subjected to ‘Neo-Pavlovian conditioning’ a concept where human babies are conditioned through electroshock to shun books and flowers.
One of the students witnessing this conditioning raised his hand….:
“Although he could see quite well why you couldn’t have lower-cast people wasting the community’s time over books, and that there was always the risk of their reading something which might undesirably de-condition one of their reflexes, yet, well, he couldn’t understand about the flowers… Why go to the trouble of making it psychologically impossible for Delta’s to like flowers?
Patiently the DHC explained; if the children were made to scream at the sight of a rose that was on grounds of high economic policy. Not so very long ago, essentially or there abouts, Gamma’s, Delta’s even Epsilon’s had been conditioned to like flowers. Flowers in particular and wild nature in general. The idea was to make them want to be going out into the country at every available opportunity and so compel them to consume transport.
‘And didn’t they consume transport?’ asked the student.
‘Quite a lot.’ The DHC replied. ‘But nothing else.’ Primroses and landscapes, he pointed out, had one grave defect; they are gratuitous. The love of nature keeps no factories busy. It was decided to abolish the love of nature, any rate among the lower classes. To abolish the love of nature, but not the tendency to consume transport. For of course it was essential that they should keep on going to the country even though they hated it. The problem was to find an economically sounder reason for consuming transport than a mere affection for primroses and landscapes. It was dully found. ‘We conditioned the masses to hate the country,’ concluded the director, ‘But simultaneously we conditioned them to love all country sports. At the same time we see to it that all country sports shall entail the use of elaborate apparatus, so that they consume manufactured articles as well as transport. Hence those electric shocks.’
‘I see’ said the student, and was silent, lost in admiration.”
What do YOU think about this?
Next time you watch any sport, notice how many adds are on the field, on the walls surrounding the field, and on the players themselves. This doesn’t seem so out of the realm of possibility does it?
Last Updated on 08/13/2025 by Death of Hypatia Inc.
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