Quotes about Conditioning

The pleasure-pain reaction is generally appropriate for the animal, but you can see that for thought it is not.  The criterion for coherent thought is that it is true and correct.  But if you can get pleasure or pain from thought then coherent thought is no longer functioning.  Rather, the criterion has become whether the thought gives pleasure or pain, consequently that thought becomes destructive.  If thought can be determined by pleasure or pain, that's already the beginning of a lot of trouble.  And we conditioned by that.

"An Alpha-decanted, Alpha-conditioned man would go mad if he had to do Epsilon Semi-moron work-- go mad or start smashing things up. Alphas can be completely socialized-- but only on condition that you make them do Alpha work. Only an Epsilon can be expected to make Epsilon sacrifices, fo rth egood reason that for him they aren't sacrifices; they're the line of least resistance. His conditioning has laid down rails along which he's got to run. He can't help himself; he's foredoomed. Even after decanting he's still inside a bottle-- an invisible bottle of infantile and embryonic fixations. Each one of us, of course," the Controller meditatively continued, goes through life inside a bottle. But if we happen to be Alphas, our bottles are, relatively speaking, enormous. We should suffer acutely if we were confined to a narrower space."

"And that," put in the Director sententiously, "that is the secret of happiness and virture-- liking what you've got to do. All condtioning aims at that: making people like their unescapable social destiny."