Hello future AP students! Before I begin with this post I
want to say it will contain SPOLIERS of Adolous Huxley's Brave New World , so
if you have not finished yet and want to know the ending on your own i suggest
you scroll past this.
In Brave New World we see that the society is dominated by
technology. Hypnopaedic conditioning eliminates the society's human nature. They don’t know the feeling of
love, pain, or passion. Anything related to art and nature is illegal because it makes people think therefore making them unhappy. Towards the end
of the book during an argument between John the Savage and Mustapha Mond, the Controller
argues that religion is only there for comfort. People choose to believe in it
because they are going through pain or simply wish for something to await them
after they die. But there is no need for
comfort when there is no pain, just technology.
After their argument, John chooses to free himself from the World State thinking that he is sticking
to what he believes in and rejecting the conditioned lifestyle. When he moves out to Puttenham, we see that
he is happy being alone. While he is
singing, he begins to think about Lenina instead of his mother and he realizes
that he did not isolate himself to be happy but to show that he is not being a “victim”
of the conditioned society. Due to his guilt, he whips himself continuously until
he is sick. He does this again and
again, and when his actions become televised he is visited by a crowd of
civilized people. He finds Lenina in the
crowd and begins to whip her and himself, because he thinks it’s sinful that he
desires her as a woman. In the end we
see, that he in fact had sex with her, meaning that he gave in to the
conditioned life style of the civilized world, breaking his own religious beliefs; leading to his suicide.
John truly believed that he wasn't conditioned but he was wrong. Although not through hypnopaedic conditioning, no matter where one is we are
still conditioned to believe certain things based on where or what
culture/religion we were born into.
Hi Maria! After I finished reading Brave New World I was completely against everything the government did to its citizens, including conditioning. I never really thought about our society being conditioned until I read your post. I understand and partially agree with what your are saying because we are basically conditioned to believe in certain things, but not necessarily. For example, we're taught about religion, morality, education, politics etc., and then we are expected to form our own views about it. We have the right to choose what we want to believe, whereas the World State doesn't allow their people to form their own views. Their conditioning controls them, ours does not.
ReplyDeleteHey Maria, I agree with your thoughts on conditioning. As Mustapha Mond talked about religion and explained why it isn't necessary to John, I thought that we are all conditioned to believe certain things as well. No one is born being a Christian, nor are they born being a Muslim. Parents impose their beliefs on their children, and I believe this is the same as conditioning that is done in the book. Some children are raised going to church every Sunday and they don't question what they are told. As the children get older, parents don't ask their children what religion they want to be a part of. They simply assume that their children should believe whatever they believe. Children are not encouraged to think for themselves like in the book, and it's not correct. I'm not opposed to teaching children about religion and culture; I just want children to know that they can believe whatever they want and that they shouldn't be afraid of voicing their thoughts.
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