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The High Cost of Stability in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World

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The High Cost of Stability in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World

Conditioning the citizens to like what they have and reject what they do not have is an authoritative government’s ideal way of maximizing efficiency. The citizens will consume what they are told to, there will be no brawls or disagreements and the state will retain high profits from the earnings. People can be conditioned chemically and physically prior to birth and psychologically afterwards.

The novel, Brave New World, takes place in the future, 632 A. F. (After Ford), where biological engineering reaches new heights. Babies are no longer born viviparously, they are now decanted in bottles passed through a 2136 metre assembly line. Pre-natal conditioning of embryos …show more content…

Babies receive electric shocks in the presence of flowers and books so that they will "grow up with what the psychologists … call an ‘instinctive’ hatred of books and flowers … they’ll be safe from books and botany all their lives" (Huxley, 18). The conditioning of the children forms a barrier in their minds, so that they are never free to decide for themselves, but are always bounded by the instructions of the state. Hypnopaedia is another form of psychological conditioning. It is used to teach moral education. While they sleep, the children of the new world are drilled with moral education such as "when the individual feels, the community reels, [and] …cleanliness is next to fordliness" (Huxley, 98). These phrases are repeated thousands of times throughout childhood "till at last the child’s mind is these suggestions … the mind that judges and desires and decides…" (Huxley, 25).
Psychological conditioning in the new world is much like the television programs of today. The programs repeatedly tell their obedient worshippers to consume name brand material and to follow the lifestyles of the characters in the programs while the true masterminds slowly take away their devoted members’ hard-earned wealth. The psychological conditioning limits the mental freedom of the citizens so that they are never at liberty to decide what they want

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