Chapter 3 Chapter two
Mr. Foster was left in the bottle changing workshop.The director of the Incubation and Conditioning Center and the students stepped onto the nearby elevator and went up to the fifth floor.
nursery.Neo-Pavlovian Conditioning Room, the sign says.
The Director opened a door, and they entered a large empty room.The sun shone very brightly, for the south wall was entirely one window.The six nurses are all in white uniform: viscose jacket and trousers.To prevent pollution, they tuck their hair under the hat.They were busily arranging the pots of roses in long rows on the floor.The pot is huge, with dense flowers blooming, thousands of petals in full bloom, as bright as silk, like the faces of countless little angels, but not all Aryan and pink faces under the bright light, There are also cheerful Chinese faces and Mexican faces.Some are distorted like apoplexy from playing too many trumpets in the sky, and they are as pale as dead people, like marble.
As soon as the director arrived, the nurses stood at attention and straightened up.
"Put the books out," he said curtly.
Silently, the nurses obeyed and spread out the books between the rows of flower pots - a row of nursery quartos spread out to reveal some brightly colored birds, beasts and fish The image is beautiful and moving.
"Now bring the children in."
The nurses hurried out of the house, and a minute or two later each rolled in a cart with an eight-month-old baby sleeping on each of four wire mesh racks, all identical (apparently from the same batch of Pocano Kawski products), because they belong to the same Delta caste, so they all wear khaki uniforms.
"Put them on the floor."
The babies were let down.
"Now let them turn to the flowers and the books."
The babies turned silent and crawled toward clusters of bright colors and bright images on the white pages.As they approached, the sun beamed from behind the clouds that had just passed by.The rose blossomed as if by a sudden passion within.A deep newness seemed to permeate the bright pages.Excited squeals, gleeful laughter and cooing erupted from the crawling procession of babies.
The director rubbed his hands. "Excellent!" he said. "It's almost like a show."
The fastest climber has almost reached the goal.Little hands stretched out unsteadily, touched and grasped, the roses were deformed, the petals were torn off, and the illustrated pages of the book were crumpled.The director waited, and while they were all blissfully busy, said, "Watch carefully." He raised his hand at the same time in signal.
The head nurse, standing by the dashboard across the room, pressed a small lever.
There was a violent explosion, the siren was pulled up, the sound became more and more piercing, and the alarm bell rang crazily.
The children were shocked and screamed, their faces contorted in horror.
"Now," the director shouted because the noise was deafening, "now let's use soft electric shocks to reinforce the lesson of this time."
He waved again, and the matron pressed the second lever.The screams of the babies suddenly changed tune, and there was a desperate, almost frantic note in their convulsive yells.All the small bodies twitched, stiffened, and their limbs trembled, as if they were being pulled by invisible threads.
"It's still possible to electrify the whole floor," the director explained loudly, "but that's enough." He gestured to the nurse.
The explosion stopped, the bell stopped, the siren died down, and finally stopped.The stiff, twitching body relaxed, and the baby's already weak frenzied sobs and screams grew again into the usual frightened wails.
"Give them flowers and books."
The nurses complied.But at the approach of roses, brightly colored kittens, chickens, and a bleating black sheep, the babies dodged in fright.The crying suddenly became louder.
"Attention," said the director triumphantly, "attention."
In the minds of babies, the matching of books to loud noises, flowers to electric shocks has melted and bonded together.After two hundred lessons like this or something similar in succession, an inseparable relationship is established between the two.This artificial connection cannot be broken by nature.
"They will grow up with what psychologists call an 'instinct' aversion to books and flowers. The reflex is irreversibly conditioned. They will never be in danger of loving books and plants all their lives. The director turned to the nurses and said, "Take the children away."
Crying babies in khakis are stuffed back into the cart and wheeled away, leaving behind some sour milk smell and a welcome silence.
A student raised his hand: It is not advisable to let people of lower castes waste society's time on books, and there is always the possibility of reading something, which may destroy one of their conditions.He can figure out all these things, but... well, he can't figure out flowers, why bother to make the deltas psychologically loathe flowers?
The director of the incubation and condition setting center explained patiently.It is highly economical to raise children to scream at the sight of roses.Not so long ago (only about a century has passed), Gammas, Deltas, and even Epsilons were conditioned to like flowers—wild nature in general, and flowers specifically.The purpose is to make them want to go to the fields at every opportunity, forcing them to spend more on transportation.
"Did they pay for transportation?" the student asked.
"It cost a lot," replied the director, "but there is no need for other expenses."
The director points out that both Primrose and Landscape have a serious drawback: they're free.A love of nature can make workers slack at work.So it was decided to cancel the love of nature - at least the love of nature for the lower castes, but not the tendency to spend on transportation.Because they still have to go to the countryside, even if they hate it, it is necessary.The problem is finding more economically justifiable reasons to spend on transportation than liking primroses and scenery.The proper reason was found later.
"We have conditioned the crowd to dislike the country," concluded the Director, "and have conditioned them to enjoy all sports in the field. At the same time we have taken care that the sports in the field consume fine equipment and make them It costs both industrial goods and transportation, so we give babies those shocks."
"Understood." After finishing speaking, the student stopped talking, completely admiring him.
silence.The director cleared his throat. "Once upon a time," he began, "in the time of my Lord Ford, there was a child named Ruben Rabinowitch whose parents spoke Polish." The director added, "You know What is Polish, I see?"
"It's a dead language."
"Like French and German," another student chimed in, flaunting his knowledge.
"And 'parents', you know?" asked the director.
There was a short uncomfortable silence, and the children blushed.They have not yet learned to distinguish the great but subtle difference between vulgar vocabulary and pure science.But after all, one student mustered up the courage to raise his hand.
"Human beings used to be..." He hesitated, blood welling up his cheeks, "Viviparous."
"Exactly." The director nodded approvingly.
"That's when the baby changed the bottle..."
"At 'birth'." He was corrected.
"Well...they were born to parents—I mean, not babies now, of course, but back then." The poor child was incoherent.
"In a nutshell," concluded the director, "it was father and mother who gave birth." The vulgar words were actually pure scientific language, and the children were too ashamed to look up when they slammed into the silence. "Mom," he repeated aloud, leaning back in his chair, forcing the science into their heads, "these are unpleasant facts, I understand. But most historical facts are unpleasant."
The director turned back and talked about little Reuben.One night little Reuben's dad (boom!) and mom (boom!) accidentally forgot to turn off the radio in little Reuben's room.
[Because, you have to remember, in that savage viviparous era, kids were raised with dad (bang!) and mom (bang!), not in state conditioning centers. ]
While the child was asleep, the London radio program suddenly started.Much to his bang and bang the next morning (the bolder kids slyly looked at each other and giggled) little Reuben awoke to recite verbatim a queer old author's long speech.It was one of the few old writers allowed to bequeath us, George Bernard Shaw, who was speaking of his genius according to a well-established tradition.Of course the words were completely incomprehensible, and little Reuben winked and giggled as he recited them.They thought the child had gone mad, so they hurriedly called in a doctor.Fortunately, the doctor knew English, and recognized that it was the passage that Bernard Shaw had broadcast the night before.The doctor understood the significance of the matter and wrote to the medical journals to report it.
"So I discovered the sleep education method, or the principle of 'sleep education'." The director paused deliberately to attract attention.
The principle was discovered, but many, many years later it was put into beneficial practice.
"Little Reuben's case occurred only 23 years after my Lord Ford's was put on the market," said the director, who drew a letter T on his stomach, and all the students also took the picture devoutly, "But……"
The students desperately memorized. "Sleep education, officially used by Ford in 214. Why didn't it be used before? There are two reasons: (a)..."
"These early experimenters," said the director, "went down the wrong path and used sleep education as a means of intellectual cultivation..."
A dozing child beside him stretched out his right arm, which hung limply by the bed.A voice came softly from the round grill on a box:
"The Nile River is the longest river in Africa and the second longest river on Earth. Although it is not as long as the Mississippi-Missouri River, its basin length ranks first in the world, and it flows through a latitude of thirty-five degrees..."
At breakfast the next day, "Tommy," someone said, "do you know what the longest river in Africa is?" The person shook his head. "But do you remember the line from 'The Nile is...'?"
"The Nile-River-is-the-longest-river in-Africa-Africa, and is-the-second-longest-on-earth-world- - the - river..." the words blurted out, "although - but - long - length - not - as..."
"So tell me now, what is the longest river in Africa?"
Tommy's eyes were dull. "I have no idea."
"It's the Nile, Tommy."
"The Nile River is the longest-longest-river in Africa, and it is the second-longest-longest-on-earth-global... ..."
"So, which river is the longest, Tommy?"
Tommy was in tears. "I don't know." He cried.
The director pointed out that it was his crying that discouraged the original investigators from abandoning the experiment.No attempt was made to teach children the length of the Nile during sleep.That's right.You cannot learn science without understanding what science is about.
"However, if they have carried out moral education, it will be different." The director said and led the way to the door.The students desperately wrote as they walked towards the elevator: "In any case, moral education cannot appeal to reason."
"Silence, silence," a loudspeaker whispered as they stepped out of the elevator on the fourteenth floor, "Silence, silence." They heard the tireless blare from the trumpet every time they descended a long corridor. sound.The students, even the director, unconsciously stood on tiptoe.Of course they are all alphas, but even alphas have been fully conditioned. "Silence, silence", this decisive order filled the air on the fourteenth floor with the hoarse voice of Su, Su, Su.
They tiptoed fifty yards to a door which the Director opened cautiously.They stepped over the threshold into the gloom of a dormitory with the shutters drawn.There are eighty small beds in a row against the wall.A soft, regular breathing sound and continuous murmurs sounded like faint whispers in the distance.
As soon as they entered the room, a nurse stood up and came to attention before the director.
"What class is this afternoon?" he asked.
"Introductory Sexology for the first forty minutes," she replied, "and now I'm in Introductory Class Consciousness."
The director walked slowly along the long row of small beds.Eighty boys, girls and boys lay comfortably, breathing softly, with rosy faces, calm and serene.There are soft voices coming from under each pillow.The director stopped, bent over a small bed, and listened carefully.
"You mean "Introduction to Class Consciousness"? Let's try a little louder."
At the far end of the room was a loudspeaker protruding from the wall.The director walked up to it and pressed the button.
"...all wear green," a soft, clear voice begins mid-sentence, "and the Delta kids wear khaki. Oh no, I don't want to play with the Delta kids. Epsilon is worse, Too stupid to learn to read and write; they wear black, which is a wild color. I'm so glad I'm a beta."
After a pause, the voice started again.
"Alpha kids wear grey. They work a lot harder than us because they're frighteningly smart. I'm glad I'm a beta because I don't have to work as hard. And we're way harder than the Gammas and Del The towers are much better. The gamma kids are stupid and they all wear green and the delta kids wear khaki. Oh no I don't want to play with the delta kids. Epsilon is even worse, too stupid , can't learn..."
The director pressed the button back, and the sound was gone, only its thin ghost continued to babble under the eighty pillows.
"Before they wake up, these words will be repeated forty to fifty times for them; Thursday and Saturday will be repeated. Thirty months, three times a week, one hundred and twenty times each time. Then accept the higher level courses."
Roses and electric shocks, the deltas wearing khakis and the scent of asafoetida—these things were inseparably fused together before the children could talk.But silent conditioning is crude and general, unable to instill subtle distinctions and complex behaviors.There must also be discourse, and it must be unreasonable discourse.In a nutshell: sleep education.
"This is the greatest moral education and the power of social education that ever existed."
The students wrote it all down in small notebooks, and the big shots dictated it directly.
The director honked the horn again.Said the soft, suggestive, indefatigable voice:
"...frighteningly smart. I'm so happy to be a beta because..."
It is not quite like a drop of water, though it is true that water can drip through the hardest granite; rather, it is like a drop of sealing wax, which falls drop by drop, sticks, crusts, joins where it drops, and finally puts The rock turned into a red bump.
"The result is that only these hints are in the minds of children, and these hints form the minds of children. And not only the minds of children, but also the minds of adults -- minds for life, which generate judgments and desires and make decisions The mind is made up of these hints. And all these hints are our hints!" The director almost shouted in victory. "Hints from the state," he thumped the table closest to him, "and with that comes..."
A noise made him turn his head.
"Ah, Ford!" he said in a different tone, "I was so busy talking that I woke up the children."
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