Reflections: Brave New World, ch. 1-4
I've started reading Brave New World again. At this point I'm halfway through the fourth chapter, re-entering a projected future where human life is controlled, stable, and regulated from its very inception. Biological socialization.
Of course the complete reversal of sexual mores is meant to be a wake-up slap to the face. But this time around something else particularly struck me. Remember the early scene where they use shock treatments to inculcate Delta infants with an aversion to books and botany? Apart from the...insitutionalized violence of the scene, I found something else disturbing about it. The folks in charge were creating a hatred of flora in the infants in order to regulate consumption of transport. Taught to hate the beauty of nature, just to fulfill the specifics of the world-state's economic plan.
That's what's striking me on this second read. State-controlled consumerism. Athletics that require elaborate courts, to encourage consumption of sports equipment. The hypnopaedia maxim: "Ending is better than mending." The initial "conscription of consumption," when the world government in its nascence attempted to impose by force (p.51). Everyone owns a helicopter. Buy, take, break, throw it away! Not only are these people stripped of their free will, but the "values" that are drummed into them are vacuous and cheap, devoid of significance, devoid of Shakespeare, all instilled just to meet some government-established quotas and achieve a stable social state.
Good thing we don't have an authoritarian state controlling our purchases and consumption, right?
We don't need one. The advertisers and media do it directly. Cut out the middleman!
Think about it. Turn on your TV, but don't turn off your brain. Really think about what you're seeing on the screen, particularly during the commercials. You think the advertisers aren't trying to control you? They want to cause you to purchase things, and moreover they want you to think that you are deciding for yourself to purchase them. It's not even just the commercials. In BNW, the state drills a consumerist consciousness into its citizens all through your childhood, and in the real world, cartoons like Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh serve as little more than thirty-minute advertisements enticing kids to consume the related paraphenalia. T-shirts, figurines, video games, trading cards. Here's your Feelies for the 21st century. Here's your Centrifugal Bumble-Puppy.
Who needs a totalitarian state to control your desires and reduce you all to mere consumers, when you've got marketing?
Of course the complete reversal of sexual mores is meant to be a wake-up slap to the face. But this time around something else particularly struck me. Remember the early scene where they use shock treatments to inculcate Delta infants with an aversion to books and botany? Apart from the...insitutionalized violence of the scene, I found something else disturbing about it. The folks in charge were creating a hatred of flora in the infants in order to regulate consumption of transport. Taught to hate the beauty of nature, just to fulfill the specifics of the world-state's economic plan.
That's what's striking me on this second read. State-controlled consumerism. Athletics that require elaborate courts, to encourage consumption of sports equipment. The hypnopaedia maxim: "Ending is better than mending." The initial "conscription of consumption," when the world government in its nascence attempted to impose by force (p.51). Everyone owns a helicopter. Buy, take, break, throw it away! Not only are these people stripped of their free will, but the "values" that are drummed into them are vacuous and cheap, devoid of significance, devoid of Shakespeare, all instilled just to meet some government-established quotas and achieve a stable social state.
Good thing we don't have an authoritarian state controlling our purchases and consumption, right?
We don't need one. The advertisers and media do it directly. Cut out the middleman!
Think about it. Turn on your TV, but don't turn off your brain. Really think about what you're seeing on the screen, particularly during the commercials. You think the advertisers aren't trying to control you? They want to cause you to purchase things, and moreover they want you to think that you are deciding for yourself to purchase them. It's not even just the commercials. In BNW, the state drills a consumerist consciousness into its citizens all through your childhood, and in the real world, cartoons like Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh serve as little more than thirty-minute advertisements enticing kids to consume the related paraphenalia. T-shirts, figurines, video games, trading cards. Here's your Feelies for the 21st century. Here's your Centrifugal Bumble-Puppy.
Who needs a totalitarian state to control your desires and reduce you all to mere consumers, when you've got marketing?
posted by Jackson at 8:03 AM
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