Social Conditioning In Brave New World By Aldous Huxley

The Life of Conditioning In the novel Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, there is a concept called social conditioning. Social conditioning is basically training individuals to act a certain way in which society will approve of. In the case of “Brave New World” a person is conditioned as a baby to like a dislike certain things based on their status and job in the community. All throughout the novel there are examples of conditioning in every way. Even as adults the characters are expected to act a certain way, and never stray from the ways of the society. The roles of social conditioning play a huge part in the lives of all the characters, even John the savage is conditioned but he handles it differently, much like we would.

Social conditioning

His mother Linda was conditioned and tried to somewhat condition him, but being born in the Savage Reservation was not an easy life. When Bernard took John back to where he lived John was amazed at first, but slowly became disgusted with the life that these people lived. He refused to take soma, or do any of the activities that everyone else did because no one was their own person. John marched to the beat of his own drum and wanted to have his own thoughts, not the thoughts of the society as a whole. He did not think that living this way was right and he explained to Mustapha Mond: “But I don’t want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness, I want sin.” (Huxley 215). He is telling Mond that everyone that lives in this society is the same, and no one faces any real trials in life, no one has the option to be different and express themselves. Though John was in a sense conditioned, he has completely different ideas than everyone else about being your own person and living through religion since he had lived in the savage reservation for all of his life. Having lived in the reservation made John independent, and made him feel different thing that people from the “new world” could never feel. He prides himself on being an individual, standing up for what he

We do not look at the process in which we are conditioned as conditioning. Ways in which we are conditioned are the way our parents raised us, stores advertising that boys and girls should play with much different toys, and just the way we see everyday people living normal lives. We are taught from a young age that girls play with dolls and kitchen sets, and boys play with action figures and dump trucks. Society is still teaching us that, for example, if a girl would like to play with a dump truck then there is something wrong with her and she needs help. All who are in control are conditioned creatures. “Since we have stated that to be in control, one must be human, and must have been conditioned by a previous human being or beings…” This quote from an article on the literary analysis of conditioning in Brave New World talks about people being in control. Conditioning was not just made on a random day, it was formed by people who are in control to restrict people who think outside the box, or go against society. Sometimes it is hard for people to have their own thoughts because society keeps pushing thoughts of being the way that they want them to be. For example, many young girls struggle with body confidence and seeing themselves as beautiful. This is the outcome of small, skinny, beautiful women on T.V. commercials being praised for their size, or being posed as a sex