Anonymous asked:
association-of-free-people answered:
All I can say is that the post-war United Kingdom has been completely subverted by the illiberal fabian socialists of the Labour Party. This is a fundamental rejection of classical liberalism that was born there and led to the casting off of monarchy and slavery across the European continent and the Americas. I believe England’s history of monarchy and aristocracy helped make the population susceptible to this backsliding.
I bring up dystopian literary tropes quite often but this recoiling we see at the idea of an adult human being carrying simple tools or self-defense as a “fucked-up need” reminds me of the warning of Aldous Huxley with respect to human conditioning.
In Brave New World the government has developed a caste system that’s forcibly entrenched in the psyche of the general population. From the time of their mechanical birth through rounds of regimented conditioning and strictly enforced social boundaries the classes are separated and conditioned to have certain proclivities and specific unfounded but widely held fears.
This is an excerpt from the book that deals with the conditioning of the lowest caste, the Deltas. It has always stuck with me because I see it in irrational positions like those widely expressed in the UK. I also see elements of it in the university with radical feminism which often seeks to terrorize the students into becoming stunted radicals themselves;
“INFANT NURSERIES. NEO-PAVLOVIAN CONDITIONING ROOMS, announced the notice board.
The Director opened a door. They were in a large bare room, very bright and sunny; for the whole of the southern wall was a single window.
Half a dozen nurses, trousered and jacketed in the regulation white viscose-linen uniform, their hair aseptically hidden under white caps, were engaged in setting out bowls of roses in a long row across the floor. Big bowls, packed tight with blossom. Thousands of petals, ripe-blown and silkily smooth, like the cheeks of innumerable little cherubs, but of cherubs, in that bright light, not exclusively pink and Aryan, but also luminously Chinese, also Mexican, also apoplectic with too much blowing of celestial trumpets, also pale as death, pale with the posthumous whiteness of marble.
The nurses stiffened to attention as the D.H.C. came in. "Set out the books,“ he said curtly.In silence the nurses obeyed his command.
Between the rose bowls the books were duly set out–a row of nursery quartos opened invitingly each at some gaily coloured image of beast or fish or bird.
“Now bring in the children.” They hurried out of the room and returned in a minute or two, each pushing a kind of tall dumb-waiter laden, on all its four wire-netted shelves, with eight-month-old babies, all exactly alike (a Bokanovsky Group, it was evident) and all (since their caste was Delta) dressed in khaki.
“Put them down on the floor.” The infants were unloaded. "Now turn them so that they can see the flowers and books.“
Turned, the babies at once fell silent, then began to crawl towards those clusters of sleek colours, those shapes so gay and brilliant on the white pages.
As they approached, the sun came out of a momentary eclipse behind a cloud.
The roses flamed up as though with a sudden passion from within; a new and profound significance seemed to suffuse the shining pages of the books. From the ranks of the crawling babies came little squeals of excitement, gurgles and twitterings of pleasure. The Director rubbed his hands. "Excellent!” he said. "It might almost have been done on purpose.“
The swiftest crawlers were already at their goal. Small hands reached out uncertainly, touched, grasped, unpetaling the transfigured roses, crumpling the illuminated pages of the books.
The Director waited until all were happily busy. Then, "Watch carefully,” he said. And, lifting his hand, he gave the signal.
The Head Nurse, who was standing by a switchboard at the other end of the room, pressed down a little lever. There was a violent explosion. Shriller and ever shriller, a siren shrieked. Alarm bells maddeningly sounded. The children started, screamed; their faces were distorted with terror. "And now,“ the Director shouted (for the noise was deafening), "now we proceed to rub in the lesson with a mild electric shock.” He waved his hand again, and the Head Nurse pressed a second lever. The screaming of the babies suddenly changed its tone. There was something desperate, almost insane, about the sharp spasmodic yelps to which they now gave utterance. Their little bodies twitched and stiffened; their limbs moved jerkily as if to the tug of unseen wires. "We can electrify that whole strip of floor,“ bawled the Director in explanation. "But that’s enough,” he signalled to the nurse.
The explosions ceased, the bells stopped ringing, the shriek of the siren died down from tone to tone into silence. The stiffly twitching bodies relaxed, and what had become the sob and yelp of infant maniacs broadened out once more into a normal howl of ordinary terror.
“Offer them the flowers and the books again."The nurses obeyed; but at the approach of the roses, at the mere sight of those gaily-coloured images of pussy and cock-a-doodle-doo and baa-baa black sheep, the infants shrank away in horror, the volume of their howling suddenly increased.
"Observe,” said the Director triumphantly, “observe.”
____
This is what I see in these Brits who think self-defense is insane and that you’re a criminal if you carry a knife or screwdriver much less a firearm.
Humor me, but the scene was so poignant that years ago I clumsily painted one of those delta babies as it was conditioned to hate the rose.
Scary ass novel
association-of-free-people