![]() While such conditioning is undeniably effective for keeping the World State running, the presence of figures like Bernard and Helmholtz-both of whom resist aspects of their conditioning and long for something more than what the World State says is permissible-shows that it’s not foolproof. That is, the use of conditioning like hypnopaedia falsely suggests that a human being can be reduced to the ethical maxims he or she is force-fed. ![]() Yet, at the same time, such technological control is inherently reductive. But all these suggestions are our suggestions!’ The Director almost shouted in his triumph.” Such a process is chilling, because the whispered suggestions actually give shape to a developing child’s thought processes and his or her perception of the world. The mind that judges and desires and decides-made up of these suggestions. During a student tour, the Director of the London Hatchery explains the process of hypnopaedia, when recordings asserting World State morality are played for sleeping children to subconsciously absorb: “‘Till at last the child’s mind is these suggestions, and the sum of the suggestions is the child’s mind. World State technology is undoubtedly effective in creating complacent citizens. Huxley argues that the more human beings harness technology to guarantee human happiness, the more they will end up enslaved by technology, to the neglect of higher human aspirations. ![]() Once this happens, the novel suggests, the totalitarian government will cease to allow the pursuit of actual science, and the truth that science reveals will be restricted and controlled. Brave New World raises the terrifying prospect that advances in the sciences of biology and psychology could be transformed by a totalitarian government into technologies that will change the way that human beings think and act.
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