The Shurley Method

"Books and loud noises, flowers and electric shocks-- already in the infant mind these couples were compromisingly linked; and after two hundred repetitions of the same or a similar lesson would be wedded indissolubly." - p. 21/22

That's called Neo-Pavlovian Conditioning, apparently. It's alluding to the Pavlov's Dogs experiment, which Ms. Schembra pounded into our brains day after day in health class; it also comes up when I'm at the library, and the sound of books thundering (and sometimes tumbling unpredictably in crazy-making individual doses) onto the conveyor belt calls me immediately to retrieve the asparagus key to unlock the door so I don't have to WAIT for the conveyor, because that would be ridiculous. Usually. Tangents are great. *broad hand gesture*

Huxley also alludes to Henry Ford, who is apparently a Godlike figure in the lives of these Greek letters in A.F.214. They make the sign of the T, which made a lot more sense when my half-sleeping car-ride-addled brain concluded that it stood for Ford. Now I am confused again. And generally they just say Ford where people nowadays might say God. Maybe in 1932 they said "Lord" instead. That would be a more satisfying substitute, in that case.

I would also like to address this concept of hypnopœdia. I'm terribly sorry to say that it just dooooesn't work like that. I know this because I recorded myself reading my AP US History outlines and played them while I slept in the day(s) leading up to my first semester final, and I still got... I don't remember... but it didn't work, is my point. The only part that worked was the part where I read it the first time. Now it's saved in a random playlist on iTunes, and occasionally when it's on shuffle, I have to lunge for the space bar in an effort to avoid being conscious while listening to my own voice. Also, they're teaching the children mean things. Azi says "stupid" is a bad word.

Also, this:

"Not so much like drops of water, though water, it is true, can wear holes in the hardest granite; rather, drops of liquid sealing-wax, drops that adhere, incrust, incorporate themselves with what they fall on, till finally the rock is all one scarlet blob."

There are so many things about that paragraph that bother me. Not in the sense that I am actually at this point harboring ill will toward Aldous Huxley, but in the sense that... actually, I am. Not only is that sentence excessive-sarcastic-air-quoting lacking both a subject noun and verb, if I'm not mistaken, which assumes bravely (pun?) that we will connect the description to his previous paragraph about the overall process of hypnopœdia, but also it ends a thing in a preposition, which I really try to avoid even though nobody cares except for me, and also he used the form of "till" that means "to prepare land for the raising of crops." And "sibilant with categorical imperative"? Come on. Preposition. You know he's just showing off. Preposition.

It is actually pretty sick that I still remember that, so... take from that what you will.