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

is the main way of life in Brave New World and without it the lives of the characters would mean nothing. In the entire book Lenina Crowne is seen as the character that is most loyal to her conditioning, by staying within her own boundaries. She is constantly repeating “A Gramme is always better than a damn” (Huxley 89). Lenina relies solely on soma for all her problems, while other characters such as Bernard Marx do not want to live the way everyone else lives, he wants to have his own thoughts and be his own person. Lenina is not different, she is like everyone else and does not wish to experience anything outside of her comfort zone. Conditioning transformed the characters, since they were babies, into slaves to the society, and its rules. There is no tolerance on thinking freely, or being smarter than you were made to be, that is strictly prohibited. Working and being in a sense the same is a large part of the community. "All men are physio-chemically equal," said Henry sententiously. "Besides, even Epsilons perform indispensable services" (Huxley 76). Henry Foster explains to Lenina on their date that everyone is useful, even though other people may be smarter everyone has a job. He is also trying to sway Lenina from thinking differently and going against the society. He says that Epsilons, the lowest and dumbest caste in the society, are useful, even though they are treated as slaves to the rest of the people.
John is the character in this book that is different from all the rest because he was not conditioned when he was born, but did somewhat receive some sort of 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

believed in, and being his own person.
Today in life our social conditioning is much different than that described in Brave New World.

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

figure. When young women see these commercials they automatically think that if they do not look like these impossible looking women then they will go nowhere in live and no one will love them. This is just one of the many examples of conditioning that is hiding in the world.
Social conditioning affects all the characters in Brave New World, though it is hard to see that John was conditioned it also affected him in ways like to does to us today. The characters in the novel do not know how to change their ways, and they also do not know that the society they live in is very corrupt. At first John thought the society was amazing since it was not the save reservation but after a while could see the corruptness in the society. He wanted nothing to do with it and he ran off to live in solitary. There is conditioning everywhere we look, but sometimes it is hard to see because it hides so discreetly in advertisements, and the words people use. In Brave New World there is no running from conditioning it is inevitable, much like today since we can not hide from it.