Conditioning

“Turned, the babies at once fell silent, then began to crawl towards those clusters of sleek colours, those shapes so gay and brilliant on the white pages. As they approached, the sun came out of a momentary eclipse behind a cloud. The roses flamed up as though with a sudden passion from within; a new and profound significance seemed to suffuse the shining pages of the books. From the ranks of the crawling babies came little squeals of excitement, gurgles and twitterings of pleasure.

“The director rubbed his hands. 'Excellent!' he said. 'It might almost have been done on purpose.'

“The swiftest crawlers were already at their goal. Small hands reached out uncertainly, touched, grasped, unpetaling the transfigured roses, crumpling the illuminated pages of the books. The Director waited until all were happily busy. Then, 'Watch carefully,' he said. And, lifting his hand, he gave the signal.(BNW 20)

“The Head Nurse, who was standing by a switchboard at the other end of the room, pressed down a little lever.

“There was a violent explosion, Shriller and ever shriller, a siren shrieked. Alarm bells maddeningly sounded.

“The children started, screamed; their faces were distorted with terror.

“'And now,' the Director shouted (for the noise was deafening), 'now we proceed to rub in the lesson with a mild electric shock.'

“He waved his hand again, and the Head Nurse pressed a second lever. The screaming of the babies suddenly changed its tone. There was something desperate, almost insane, about the sharp spasmodic yelps to which they now gave utterance. Their little bodies twitched and stiffened; their limbs moved jerkily as if to the tug of unseen wires.”(BNW 21)

This long passage from Brave New World by Aldous Huxley is a clear portayal of the conditioning throughout the book. In this passage the Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning explains the process of conditioning. The infants are drawn to books and roses and are aloud to chuckle. They appear genuinely happy. Then the Director signals the Head Nurse to send a shock wave and eventually these infants are crying. They do this a number of time until it is programed in their head that reading and flowers are bad.

This process, though we'd like to think not, is very much practiced in the real world. This practice called conditioning is not the same for everybody; it is nurture rather than nature that conditions us. Let's start off with a not-so-harsh example. When running with your shoes untied and you laces hanging out, odds are that you will fall. After falling, scraping your knees, and crying your guts out several times you learn that running with untied shoe laces is a bad combination. Not convincing enough? Let's go upscale to a more obvious form of conditioning.

A more obvious form of conditioning is from your friends or posse. Let's say you just moved to a new school and friends with a group of people you don't know much. They had a grudge with another group of kids at the school even before you came into the picture. Your new posse is expecting you to have this a grudge against the other posse even though you know nothing about them. Similarly, the other posse will view you as an enemy and have a grudge against you. Eventually, you realize that if you want to remain in the posse you are in you must have a grudge against the "enemy" as well.

Of course, both of these examples seem to be as different from one another as possible. That is why I will conclude that there are different forms of conditioning: self-subconscious conditioning(learning from your own mistakes(1st example)) and environmental conditioning(being trained by environmental factors that, for example, tell you what to like or dislike(2nd example)).

Did you think life as we live it is very different than that of Brave New World? Think again!