Infants are tempted with books and flowers and then shocked when they go to grasp them they are electrically shocked. This is a way of showing harm to what was once a pleasure. In a way it is like the idea of a child burning his hand on a hot stove to realize that he should not touch a hot stove again. If the children are caused pain for what they desire then soon enough they will no longer find pleasure in it.
On a different note, women are able to feel all of the symptoms of a pregnancy artificially. With thoughts like “my baby… the little hands, the hunger, and that unspeakable agonizing pleasure!” Women are no longer able to experience the feelings of carrying and birthing a baby due to the new manufacturing technique, so those who desire such feelings are able to consume a “pregnancy substitute.”
Also, people are encouraged to be promiscuous and change partners regularly to keep happy. “Impulse arrested spills over, and the flood is feeling, the flood is passion, the flood is even madness.” If one is able to have whatever he wants, what is keeping him from being unhappy? Nothing.
To me the quote refers to Henry Ford’s assembly line, but by the means of the people and their lives. In Brave New World, people are birthed to do their jobs and nothing else. There sole purpose is to fulfill the job that they were embedded to do. The must be “obedient men,” men who enjoy fulfilling their duties rather than acting against them. This quote justifies Ford’s thoughts on how life should be. Life should be manufactured and synthetic, not real.
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