Monday, November 26, 2012

In Brave New World, what is the meaning of the following quote?"And that," put in the Director sententiously, "that is the secret of happiness and...

This quote comes as the Director is explaining how certain classes of humans are conditioned and engineered to perform certain tasks, regardless of what their own experiences might allow if they had developed normally. They observe a special embryo unit that conditions the developing fetuses to hate cold weather; when adult, these people will find themselves drawn to tropical weather and the jobs that go along with that weather. After the physical conditioning, the psychology workers indoctrinate those conditioned people to love their work and believe that they enjoy it because it is specifically their destiny.



Later on their minds would be made to endorse the judgment of their bodies. "We condition them to thrive on heat," concluded Mr. Foster. "Our colleagues upstairs will teach them to love it."


"And that," put in the Director sententiously, "that is the secret of happiness and virtue -- liking what you've got to do. All conditioning aims at that: making people like their unescapable social destiny."
(Huxley, Brave New World, huxley.net)



This future society values conformity above all else. Every person must conform to a specific societal role, and since it is easier to control a happy populace, the government uses physical and mental conditioning to force people to enjoy their work. That way, there are no dissatisfied citizens, and everyone is happy at their indicated job and class-level. By making people love their assigned roles even if those roles would not be chosen by free will, the government can easily enforce its own laws and practices, while allowing government officials to break the rules without consequence.

No comments:

Post a Comment