Brave New World, Revisited.

[Belligerent Savant]

.
Below is an excerpt from Brave New World Revisited (from the first chapter, titled "Over-Population"), by Aldous Huxley, initially published back in 1958, some ~26 yrs after Brave New World was published.

It's amazing, the amount of foresight and prescience on display (perhaps because of some inside baseball intel Mr. Huxley was positioned to obtain, though this likely can never be corroborated, absent input from others here that may lead us more concretely in this direction), given the date this commentary was penned.

I invite all of you to assess the below excerpt and compare with current unfolding events, and ask yourselves: is this mere 'spidey sense' on the part of Aldous, or is there more going on here?

More excerpts to follow when time allows.

Brave New World Revisited

Copyright 1958

Chapter: "Over-population" -- first ~4 pages:

In 1931, when Brave New World was being written, I was convinced that there was still plenty of time. The completely organized society. the scientific caste system, the abolition of free will by methodical conditioning, the servitude made acceptable by regular doses of chemically induced happiness, the orthodoxies drummed in by nightly courses of sleep-teaching -- these things were coming all right, but not in my time, not even in the time of my grandchildren. I forget the exact date of the events recorded in Brave New World; it's somewhere in the sixth or seventh century A.F. (After Ford). We who were living in the second quarter of the twentieth century A.D. were the inhabitants, admittedly, of a gruesome kind of universe; but the nightmare of those depression years was radically different from the nightmare of the future, described in Brave New World. Ours was a nightmare of too little order; theirs, in the seventh century A.F., of too much. In the passing from one extreme to the other, there would be a long interval, so I imagined, during which the more fortunate third of the human race would make the best of both worlds -- the disorderly world of liberalism and the much too orderly Brave New World where perfect efficiency left no room for freedom or personal initiative.

Twenty-seven years later, in this third quarter of the twentieth century A.D., and long before the end of the first century A.F., I feel a good deal less optimistic than I did when I was writing Brave New World. The prophecies made in 1931 are coming true much sooner than I thought they would. The blessed interval between too little order and the nightmare of too much has not begun and shows no sign of beginning. In the West, it is true, individual men and women still enjoy a large measure of freedom. But even in those countries that have a tradition of democratic government, this freedom and even the desire for this freedom seem to be on the wane. In the rest of the world freedom for individuals has already gone, or is manifestly about to go. The nightmare of total organization, which I had situated in the seventh century After Ford, has emerged from the safe, remote future and is now awaiting us, just around the next corner.

George Orwell's 1984 was a magnified projection into the future of a present that had contained Stalinism and an immediate past that had witnessed the flowering of Nazism. Brave New World was written before the rise of Hitler to supreme power in Germany and when the Russian tyrant had not yet got into his stride. In 1931 systematic terrorism was not the obsessive contemporary fact which it had become in 1948, and the future dictatorship of my imaginary world was a good deal less brutal than the future dictatorship so brilliantly portrayed by Orwell. In the context of 1948, 1984 seemed dreadfully convincing. But tyrants, after all, are mortal and circumstances change. Recent developments in Russia and recent advances in science and technology have robbed Orwell's book of some of its gruesome verisimilitude. A nuclear war will, of course, make nonsense of everybody's predictions. But, assuming for the moment that the Great Powers can somehow refrain from destroying us, we can say that it now looks as though the odds were more in favor of something like Brave New World than of something like 1984.

In the light of what we have recently learned about animal behavior in general, and human behavior in particular, it has become clear that control through the punishment of undesirable behavior is less effective, in the long run, than control through the reinforcement of desirable behavior by rewards, and that government through terror works on the whole less well than government through the non-violent manipulation of the environment and of the thoughts and feelings of individual men, women and children. Punishment temporarily puts a stop to undesirable behavior, but does not permanently reduce the victim's tendency to indulge in it. Moreover, the psychophysical by-products of punishment may be just as undesirable as the behavior for which an individual has been punished. Psychotherapy is largely concerned with the debilitating or anti-social consequences of past punishments.

The society described in 1984 is a society controlled almost exclusively by punishment and the fear of punishment. In the imaginary world of my own fable punishment is infrequent and generally mild. The nearly perfect control exercised by the government is achieved by systematic reinforcement of desirable behavior, by many kinds of nearly non-violent manipulation, both physical and psychological, and by genetic standardization. Babies in bottles and the centralized control of reproduction are not perhaps impossible; but it is quite clear that for a long time to come we shall remain a viviparous species breeding at random. For practical purposes genetic standardization may be ruled out. Societies will continue to be controlled post-natally -- by punishment, as in the past, and to an ever increasing extent by the more effective methods of reward and scientific manipulation.

In Russia the old-fashioned, 1984-style dictatorship of Stalin has begun to give way to a more up-to-date form of tyranny. In the upper levels of the Soviets' hierarchical society the reinforcement of desirable behavior has begun to replace the older methods of control through the punishment of undesirable behavior. Engineers and scientists, teachers and administrators, are handsomely paid for good work and so moderately taxed that they are under a constant incentive to do better and so be more highly rewarded. In certain areas they are at liberty to think and do more or less what they like. Punishment awaits them only when they stray beyond their prescribed limits into the realms of ideology and politics. It is because they have been granted a measure of professional freedom that Russian teachers, scientists and technicians have achieved such remarkable successes. Those who live near the base of the Soviet pyramid enjoy none of the privileges accorded to the lucky or specially gifted minority. Their wages are meager and they pay, in the form of high prices, a disproportionately large share of the taxes. The area in which they can do as they please is extremely restricted, and their rulers control them more by punishment and the threat of punishment than through non-violent manipulation or the reinforcement of desirable behavior by reward. The Soviet system combines elements of 1984 with elements that are prophetic of what went on among higher castes in Brave New World.

Meanwhile impersonal forces over which we have almost no control seem to be pushing us all in the direction of the Brave New Worldian nightmare; and this impersonal pushing is being consciously accelerated by representatives of commercial and political organizations who have developed a number of new techniques for manipulating, in the interest of some minority, the thoughts and feelings of the masses. The techniques of manipulation will be discussed in later chapters. For the moment let us confine our attention to those impersonal forces which are now making the world so extremely unsafe for democracy, so very inhospitable to individual freedom. What are these forces? And why has the nightmare, which I had projected into the seventh century A.F., made so swift an advance in our direction? The answer to these questions must begin where the life of even the most highly civilized society has its beginnings -- on the level of biology.

[Wombaticus Rex]

Considering the dinner table conversations that Huxley partook in, surely both, but it even in 1932, it wasn't that hard to predict where things were headed. The US Army's proto Chemical Corps research program and the National Research Council were in full swing post-WWI, Crichton-Miller was a decade into building his Tavistock empire, the IG Farben conglomerate was already assembled and Warren Weaver was furiously deploying Rockefeller Founation money to codify & subside the paradigm of "molecular biology" -- shit was very much in play.

"And why has the nightmare ... made so swift an advance in our direction?" Because a functional majority of any population are trivially easy to program, especially with the full sensory immersion force of electronic media. The expansion of state powers, regulations, bureaucracies is, more often than not, a response to popular demand for safety and peace, in response to the agitations of their electronic media diet. It will keep working until people stop participating, and they cannot stop participating: even "Media Literacy" is mere critique.

[drstrangelove]

they are trying to brute force internal controls into people while simultaneously atomizing them into socially naked individuals. it doesn't work because internal controls are built through responsibilities, which are built through people seeking to fulfill social needs through community.

despite what your best behaviorists told you, i'm afraid people are not dogs mr rockefeller.

[Belligerent Savant]

...a functional majority of any population are trivially easy to program, especially with the full sensory immersion force of electronic media. The expansion of state powers, regulations, bureaucracies is, more often than not, a response to popular demand for safety and peace, in response to the agitations of their electronic media diet. It will keep working until people stop participating, and they cannot stop participating: even "Media Literacy" is mere critique.

indeed. Perhaps one of my larger lines of inquiry here is the extent which -- generally speaking -- academics and/or the 'highly educated' in particularly seem to assess the world as if the above plays a minimal at best role in current circumstances (in a number of instances, such contextual history is blithely ignored/treated as non-existent), due in no small part to the apparent concerted effort to suppress/censor such awareness, further exacerbating ignorance as to root causes/underlying drivers.

And this, along similar lines:

they are trying to brute force internal controls into people while simultaneously atomizing them into socially naked individuals. it doesn't work because internal controls are built through responsibilities, which are built through people seeking to fulfill social needs through community.

despite what your best behaviorists told you, i'm afraid people are not dogs mr rockefeller.

yes.

[Joe Hillshoist]

they are trying to brute force internal controls into people while simultaneously atomizing them into socially naked individuals. it doesn't work because internal controls are built through responsibilities, which are built through people seeking to fulfill social needs through community.

despite what your best behaviorists told you, i'm afraid people are not dogs mr rockefeller.

Even semi enlightened people behave like dogs most of the time. (In the pavlovian sense.) Part of the process of enlightenment is the realisation of that.

There is a story attributed to Ouspensky. He says he never understood what Gurdjieff meant about humans being sleepwalkers and humanity being asleep, until he saw a truckload of artificial limbs on the way to the front in ww1 and realised those limbs were for people who hadn't been injured yet, but would be. It was a mathematical certainty. The process of limbs being sent in advance of the carnage that would require them meant there was a process at play here where people behaved like pavlovian dogs.

Operant conditioning is a real thing and at some point being "vulnerable"* it became an evolutionary advantage, probably a long time before the frontal part of the brain (where you think your self awareness resides) even began to evolve into what it is now.

*Even using the word "vulnerable" here programs you to think about the topic in a particular way, based on your conditioned responses to the word "vulnerable" and its use in this particular context.

[Joe Hillshoist]

Considering the dinner table conversations that Huxley partook in, surely both, but it even in 1932, it wasn't that hard to predict where things were headed. The US Army's proto Chemical Corps research program and the National Research Council were in full swing post-WWI, Crichton-Miller was a decade into building his Tavistock empire, the IG Farben conglomerate was already assembled and Warren Weaver was furiously deploying Rockefeller Founation money to codify & subside the paradigm of "molecular biology" -- shit was very much in play.

"And why has the nightmare ... made so swift an advance in our direction?" Because a functional majority of any population are trivially easy to program, especially with the full sensory immersion force of electronic media. The expansion of state powers, regulations, bureaucracies is, more often than not, a response to popular demand for safety and peace, in response to the agitations of their electronic media diet. It will keep working until people stop participating, and they cannot stop participating: even "Media Literacy" is mere critique.

1984 was about 1948 in the uk, England in particular. From a particular perspective. The proles are basically people who aren't that into politics. The party is the ruling class. IE Everyone who wants to be involved in politics in some way for whatever reason (its post war Britain not an aristocracy anymore.) Its not all it was about but its got a bit to do with it. The idea of the US being that sort of socialist nation seems as far away as ever even when so much of the rest of his story is almost old hat. Surveillance capitalism is completely not London in 1984.

The outer party is the shitkicking lower rungs of the Party itself - ie Smith is just some public servant doing some shit office job. 1984 is just how British culture fits into that situation of totalitarianism. It isn't a vision of the future where technology drives change. Its a post apocalyptic story, probably influenced by living thru ww2 as much as anything.

Brave New World is a vision of the future where technology drives change. Its not particularly English.

That is why they are different.

[drstrangelove]

Operant conditioning is a real thing and at some point being "vulnerable"* it became an evolutionary advantage, probably a long time before the frontal part of the brain (where you think your self awareness resides) even began to evolve into what it is now.

requires round the clock servicing in humans, or reinforcement of the link between stimulus/response, because the human personality is complex and people have purposeful behavior. This means, that between the stimulus and the response is the human personality, something behaviorists can't account for empirically because it is transcendent of the body. the body is a projector which projects the human personality externally onto their environment. this cannot be measured empirically, however hard they try with their personality tests, and why behaviorists hate memories and dreams, and make drugs that suppress that noise. b.f skinner made a sensory deprivation crib for his child, who i do believe ended up committing suicide as an adult.

the problem they have, like rex pointed out, is they need to service 24-hour machine of propaganda to perpetually reinforce their 'operant conditioning'. this is an external control, not internal. as if they were to remove it, as they so often do when switching from topic to topic, people quickly forget all about the things they'd been 'conditioned' to think, for at times decades.

[Grizzly]

[Belligerent Savant]

.

We continue our reading with Chapter III:

III. Over-Organization

...democracy can hardly be expected to flourish in societies where political and economic power is being progressively concentrated and centralized. But the progress of technology has led and is still leading to just such a concentration and centralization of power. As the machinery of mass production is made more efficient it tends to become more complex and more expensive -- and so less available to the enterpriser of limited means. Moreover, mass production cannot work without mass distribution; but mass distribution raises problems which only the largest producers can satisfactorily solve. In a world of mass production and mass distribution the Little Man, with his inadequate stock of working capital, is at a grave disadvantage. In competition with the Big Man, he loses his money and finally his very existence as an independent pro­ducer; the Big Man has gobbled him up. As the Little Men disappear, more and more economic power comes to be wielded by fewer and fewer people. Under a dic­tatorship the Big Business, made possible by advanc­ing technology and the consequent ruin of Little Busi­ness, is controlled by the State -- that is to say, by a small group of party leaders and the soldiers, police­men and civil servants who carry out their orders. In a capitalist democracy, such as the United States, it is controlled by what Professor C. Wright Mills has called the Power Elite. This Power Elite directly employs several millions of the country's working force in its factories, offices and stores, controls many millions more by lending them the money to buy its products, and, through its ownership of the media of mass communication, influences the thoughts, the feel­ings and the actions of virtually everybody. To parody the words of Winston Churchill, never have so many been manipulated so much by so few. We are far in­deed from Jefferson's ideal of a genuinely free society composed of a hierarchy of self-governing units -- "the elementary republics of the wards, the county repub­lics, the State republics and the Republic of the Union, forming a gradation of authorities."

We see, then, that modern technology has led to the concentration of economic and political power, and to the development of a society controlled (ruthlessly in the totalitarian states, politely and inconspicuously in the democracies) by Big Business and Big Govern­ment. But societies are composed of individuals and are good only insofar as they help individuals to real­ize their potentialities and to lead a happy and creative life. How have individuals been affected by the tech­nological advances of recent years? Here is the answer to this question given by a philosopher-psychiatrist, Dr. Erich Fromm:

Our contemporary Western society, in spite of its material, intellectual and political progress, is in­creasingly less conducive to mental health, and tends to undermine the inner security, happiness, reason and the capacity for love in the individual; it tends to turn him into an automaton who pays for his human failure with increasing mental sickness, and with despair hidden under a frantic drive for work and so-called pleasure.

Our "increasing mental sickness" may find expres­sion in neurotic symptoms. These symptoms are con­spicuous and extremely distressing. But "let us beware," says Dr. Fromm, "of defining mental hygiene as the prevention of symptoms. Symptoms as such are not our enemy, but our friend; where there are symp­toms there is conflict, and conflict always indicates that the forces of life which strive for integration and happiness are still fighting." The really hopeless victims of mental illness are to be found among those who appear to be most normal. "Many of them are normal because they are so well adjusted to our mode of existence, because their human voice has been si­lenced so early in their lives, that they do not even struggle or suffer or develop symptoms as the neurotic does." They are normal not in what may be called the absolute sense of the word; they are normal only in relation to a profoundly abnormal society. Their per­fect adjustment to that abnormal society is a measure of their mental sickness. These millions of abnormally normal people, living without fuss in a society to which, if they were fully human beings, they ought not to be adjusted, still cherish "the illusion of indi­viduality," but in fact they have been to a great extent deindividualized. Their conformity is developing into something like uniformity. But "uniformity and free­dom are incompatible. Uniformity and mental health are incompatible too. . . . Man is not made to be an automaton, and if he becomes one, the basis for mental health is destroyed."

In the course of evolution nature has gone to endless trouble to see that every individual is unlike every other individual. We reproduce our kind by bringing the father's genes into contact with the mother's. These hereditary factors may be combined in an al­most infinite number of ways. Physically and mentally, each one of us is unique. Any culture which, in the interests of efficiency or in the name of some political or religious dogma, seeks to standardize the human individual, commits an outrage against man's biological nature.

Science may be defined as the reduction of multiplic­ity to unity. It seeks to explain the endlessly diverse phenomena of nature by ignoring the uniqueness of particular events, concentrating on what they have in common and finally abstracting some kind of "law," in terms of which they make sense and can be effectively dealt with. For examples, apples fall from the tree and the moon moves across the sky. People had been observ­ing these facts from time immemorial. With Gertrude Stein they were convinced that an apple is an apple is an apple, whereas the moon is the moon is the moon. It remained for Isaac Newton to perceive what these very dissimilar phenomena had in common, and to formu­late a theory of gravitation in terms of which certain aspects of the behavior of apples, of the heavenly bod­ies and indeed of everything else in the physical uni­verse could be explained and dealt with in terms of a single system of ideas. In the same spirit the artist takes the innumerable diversities and uniquenesses of the outer world and his own imagination and gives them meaning within an orderly system of plastic, lit­erary or musical patterns. The wish to impose order upon confusion, to bring harmony out of dissonance and unity out of multiplicity is a kind of intellectual instinct, a primary and fundamental urge of the mind. Within the realms of science, art and philosophy the workings of what I may call this "Will to Order" are mainly beneficent. True, the Will to Order has pro­duced many premature syntheses based upon in­sufficient evidence, many absurd systems of metaphys­ics and theology, much pedantic mistaking of notions for realities, of symbols and abstractions for the data of immediate experience. But these errors, however re­grettable, do not do much harm, at any rate directly -- though it sometimes happens that a bad philosophical system may do harm indirectly, by being used as a justification for senseless and inhuman actions. It is in the social sphere, in the realm of politics and eco­nomics, that the Will to Order becomes really dan­gerous.

Here the theoretical reduction of unmanageable multiplicity to comprehensible unity becomes the practi­cal reduction of human diversity to subhuman uniformity, of freedom to servitude. In politics the equivalent of a fully developed scientific theory or phi­losophical system is a totalitarian dictatorship. In eco­nomics, the equivalent of a beautifully composed work of art is the smoothly running factory in which the workers are perfectly adjusted to the machines. The Will to Order can make tyrants out of those who merely aspire to clear up a mess. The beauty of tidi­ness is used as a justification for despotism.

Organization is indispensable; for liberty arises and has meaning only within a self-regulating community of freely cooperating individuals. But, though indispensable, organization can also be fatal. Too much or­ganization transforms men and women into automata, suffocates the creative spirit and abolishes the very possibility of freedom. As usual, the only safe course is in the middle, between the extremes of laissez-faire at one end of the scale and of total control at the other.

During the past century the successive advances in technology have been accompanied by corresponding advances in organization. Complicated machinery has had to be matched by complicated social arrangements, designed to work as smoothly and efficiently as the new instruments of production. In order to fit into these organizations, individuals have had to de-individualize themselves, have had to deny their native diver­sity and conform to a standard pattern, have had to do their best to become automata.

The dehumanizing effects of over-organization are reinforced by the dehumanizing effects of over-popula­tion. Industry, as it expands, draws an ever greater proportion of humanity's increasing numbers into large cities. But life in large cities is not conducive to mental health (the highest incidence of schizophrenia, we are told, occurs among the swarming inhabitants of industrial slums); nor does it foster the kind of responsible freedom within small self-governing groups, which is the first condition of a genuine democ­racy. City life is anonymous and, as it were, abstract. People are related to one another, not as total person­alities, but as the embodiments of economic functions or, when they are not at work, as irresponsible seekers of entertainment. Subjected to this kind of life, indi­viduals tend to feel lonely and insignificant. Their ex­istence ceases to have any point or meaning.

Biologically speaking, man is a moderately gregar­ious, not a completely social animal -- a creature more like a wolf, let us say, or an elephant, than like a bee or an ant. In their original form human societies bore no resemblance to the hive or the ant heap; they were merely packs. Civilization is, among other things, the process by which primitive packs are transformed into an analogue, crude and mechanical, of the social in­sects' organic communities. At the present time the pressures of over-population and technological change are accelerating this process. The termitary has come to seem a realizable and even, in some eyes, a desirable ideal. Needless to say, the ideal will never in fact be realized. A great gulf separates the social insect from the not too gregarious, big-brained mammal; and even though the mammal should do his best to imitate the insect, the gulf would remain. However hard they try, men cannot create a social organism, they can only create an organization. In the process of trying to create an organism they will merely create a totali­tarian despotism.

...

The current Social Ethic, it is obvious, is merely a justification after the fact of the less desirable conse­quences of over-organization. It represents a pathetic attempt to make a virtue of necessity, to extract a positive value from an unpleasant datum. It is a very unrealistic, and therefore very dangerous, system of morality. The social whole, whose value is assumed to be greater than that of its component parts, is not an organism in the sense that a hive or a termitary may be thought of as an organism. It is merely an organiza­tion, a piece of social machinery. There can be no value except in relation to life and awareness. An organiza­tion is neither conscious nor alive. Its value is instru­mental and derivative. It is not good in itself; it is good only to the extent that it promotes the good of the individuals who are the parts of the collective whole. To give organizations precedence over persons is to subordinate ends to means. What happens when ends are subordinated to means was clearly demonstrated by Hitler and Stalin. Under their hideous rule personal ends were subordinated to organizational means by a mixture of violence and propaganda, systematic terror and the systematic manipulation of minds. In the more efficient dictatorships of tomorrow there will probably be much less violence than under Hitler and Stalin. The future dictator's subjects will be painlessly regimented by a corps of highly trained social engineers. "The challenge of social engineering in our time," writes an enthusiastic advocate of this new science, "is like the challenge of technical engi­neering fifty years ago. If the first half of the twen­tieth century was the era of the technical engineers, the second half may well be the era of the social engi­neers" -- and the twenty-first century, I suppose, will be the era of World Controllers, the scientific caste system and Brave New World. To the question quis custodiet custodes -- Who will mount guard over our guardians, who will engineer the engineers? -- the an­swer is a bland denial that they need any supervision. There seems to be a touching belief among certain Ph.D.'s in sociology that Ph.D.'s in sociology will never be corrupted by power. Like Sir Galahad's, their strength is as the strength of ten because their heart is pure -- and their heart is pure because they are scien­tists and have taken six thousand hours of social studies.

Alas, higher education is not necessarily a guaran­tee of higher virtue, or higher political wisdom. And to these misgivings on ethical and psychological grounds must be added misgivings of a purely scientific charac­ter. Can we accept the theories on which the social engineers base their practice, and in terms of which they justify their manipulations of human beings? For example, Professor Elton Mayo tells us categori­cally that "man's desire to be continuously associated in work with his fellows is a strong, if not the strong­est human characteristic." This, I would say, is mani­festly untrue. Some people have the kind of desire de­scribed by Mayo; others do not. It is a matter of tem­perament and inherited constitution. Any social organ­ization based upon the assumption that "man" (who­ever "man" may be) desires to be continuously asso­ciated with his fellows would be, for many individual men and women, a bed of Procrustes. Only by being amputated or stretched upon the rack could they be adjusted to it.

Again, how romantically misleading are the lyrical accounts of the Middle Ages with which many contem­porary theorists of social relations adorn their works! "Membership in a guild, manorial estate or village pro­tected medieval man throughout his life and gave him peace and serenity." Protected him from what, we may ask. Certainly not from remorseless bullying at the hands of his superiors. And along with all that "peace and serenity" there was, throughout the Middle Ages, an enormous amount of chronic frustration, acute unhappiness and a passionate resentment against the rigid, hierarchical system that permitted no vertical movement up the social ladder and, for those who were bound to the land, very little horizontal movement in space. The impersonal forces of over-population and over-organization, and the social engineers who are trying to direct these forces, are pushing us in the direction of a new medieval system. This revival will be made more acceptable than the original by such Brave-New-Worldian amenities as infant conditioning, sleep-teaching and drug-induced euphoria; but, for the majority of men and women, it will still be a kind of servitude.

[Grizzly]

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture. In 1984, Huxley added, "people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us". ~Neil Postman

(Book: Amusing Ourselves to Death)

[Joe Hillshoist]

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture. In 1984, Huxley added, "people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us". ~Neil Postman

(Book: Amusing Ourselves to Death)

That pretty much sums it up i reckon.

Where are we now?

[Joe Hillshoist]

Operant conditioning is a real thing and at some point being "vulnerable"* it became an evolutionary advantage, probably a long time before the frontal part of the brain (where you think your self awareness resides) even began to evolve into what it is now.

requires round the clock servicing in humans, or reinforcement of the link between stimulus/response, because the human personality is complex and people have purposeful behavior. This means, that between the stimulus and the response is the human personality, something behaviorists can't account for empirically because it is transcendent of the body. the body is a projector which projects the human personality externally onto their environment. this cannot be measured empirically, however hard they try with their personality tests, and why behaviorists hate memories and dreams, and make drugs that suppress that noise. b.f skinner made a sensory deprivation crib for his child, who i do believe ended up committing suicide as an adult.

the problem they have, like rex pointed out, is they need to service 24-hour machine of propaganda to perpetually reinforce their 'operant conditioning'. this is an external control, not internal. as if they were to remove it, as they so often do when switching from topic to topic, people quickly forget all about the things they'd been 'conditioned' to think, for at times decades.

Conditioning (classical and operant) is pretty important to learning. Some things might require round the clock servicing, but its more a biological clock that last a year than a 24 hr clock. All this shit is manipulating learning so it becomes you do unconsciously. Mind control is learning control. they are the same basic processes. Socialisation and brainwashing are almost the same thing. Socialisation brainwashes you into your birth culture most of the time.

But memory is more important than that alone. Your ancestors, stretching back millions of years before humanity, learned stuff that isn't always related to social interactions. Fight or flight reactions for example. Your first "instinct" to fight or flee is imprinted and reinforced by conditioning. It may be reimprinted under certain circumstances theoretically but I honestly couldn't say for sure. It can also be moderated by conditioning. IE You can train your instinctive reactions but its not easy.

The basis of these processes is myelinisation, which changes the electrical conductivity of nerve cells and makes neural pathways that are used frequently more likely to conduct action potentials that activate them than neural pathways that aren't. This drives habitual thinking, instinctive responses, trained responses and other learning.

Practice meditating and do those exercises Grizz posted (or Yoga, Tai Chi Chaun or some complicated martial arts kata) and you'll begin to see what I mean eventually.

re the bolded bit of your quote:


Nobody is lookin' up to care about a drone
All too busy lookin' down at our phone
Our ego's begging for a food like a dog from our feed
Refreshing obsessively until our eyes start to bleed
They serve up distractions and we eat them with fries
Until the bombs fall out of our fucking skies

- Sturgill Simpson.

[drstrangelove]

operant conditioning is based on the false belief people avoid pain and seek pleasure. this is not true because pain and pleasure are subjective. some people find pleasure in pain, others pain in pleasure. people self-harm, kill themselves. dogs do not do this.

human's have purposive behavior which is determined by human psychology, a byproduct of conscious thought and the human personality.

now, if they managed to reduce the human personality to a uniform state, then they could use universal stimuli in operant conditioning to control societal behavior. which has been the totalitarian tradition from sparta on through nazi germany. the standardisation of culture to place society into a state of stais, freezing the power structure in place and suppressing the human personality. luckily it doesn't work because these cultures always lack human ingenuity.

[Joe Hillshoist]

operant conditioning is based on the false belief people avoid pain and seek pleasure. this is not true because pain and pleasure are subjective. some people find pleasure in pain, others pain in pleasure. people self-harm, kill themselves. dogs do not do this.

human's have purposive behavior which is determined by human psychology, a byproduct of conscious thought and the human personality.

now, if they managed to reduce the human personality to a uniform state, then they could use universal stimuli in operant conditioning to control societal behavior. which has been the totalitarian tradition from sparta on through nazi germany. the standardisation of culture to place society into a state of stais, freezing the power structure in place and suppressing the human personality. luckily it doesn't work because these cultures always lack human ingenuity.

That's not how operant conditioning works. Its about the reinforcement of a response to a stimulus with a reward to strengthen the uptake of that response. Not providing pain or pleasure to manage something or someone's behaviour.

Its not about pain or pleasure. Masochists would view pain as the reward for example.

(Like the old joke:

Masochist: Whip me! Whip me!

Sadist: NO!)

So theoretically pain could reinforce a masochists behaviour but this is very theoretical and what not.

People try the opposite approach as well but it works better with dogs than humans.

There are so many unconscious processes happening with humans. That's why people should meditate etc. It makes them more familiar with that stuff.

[drstrangelove]

whats the difference between a reward and pleasure?