Brave New World Revisited

From the heightened suggestibility associated with light sleep and hypnosis let us pass to the normal sug­gestibility of those who are awake — or at least who think they are awake. (In fact, as the Buddhists insist, most of us are half asleep all the time and go through life as somnambulists obeying somebody else’s suggestions. Enlightenment is total awakeness. The word "Buddha" can be translated as "The Wake.")

Genetically, every human being is unique and in many ways unlike every other human being. The range of individual variation from the statistical norm is amazingly wide. And the statistical norm, let us remember, is useful only in actuarial calculations, not in real life. In real life there is no such person as the average man. There are only particular men, women and children, each with his or her inborn idiosyncra­sies of mind and body, and all trying (or being com­pelled) to squeeze their biological diversities into the uniformity of some cultural mold.

Suggestibility is one of the qualities that vary significantly from individual to individual. Environ­mental factors certainly play their part in making one person more responsive to suggestion than another; but there are also, no less certainly, constitutional differences in the suggestibility of individuals. Ex­treme resistance to suggestion is rather rare. Fortu­nately so. For if everyone were as unsuggestible as some people are, social life would be impossible. Socie­ties can function with a reasonable degree of efficiency because, in varying degrees, most people are fairly sug­gestible. Extreme suggestibility is probably about as rare as extreme unsuggestibility. And this also is fortunate. For if most people were as responsive to out­side suggestions as the men and women at the extreme limits of suggestibility, free, rational choice would be­come, for the majority of the electorate, virtually im­possible, and democratic institutions could not survive, or even come into existence.

A few years ago, at the Massachusetts General Hos­pital, a group of researchers carried out a most illumi­nating experiment on the pain-relieving effects of placebos. (A placebo is anything which the patient be­lieves to be an active drug, but which in fact is phar­macologically inactive.) In this experiment the sub­jects were one hundred and sixty-two patients who had just come out of surgery and were all in considera­ble pain. Whenever a patient asked for medication to relieve pain, he or she was given an injection, either of morphine or of distilled water. All the patients re­ceived some injections of morphine and some of the placebo. About 30 per cent of the patients never ob­tained relief from the placebo. On the other hand 14 per cent obtained relief after every injection of dis­tilled water. The remaining 55 per cent of the group were relieved by the placebo on some occasions, but not on others.

In what respects did the suggestible reactors differ from the unsuggestible non-reactors? Careful study and testing revealed that neither age nor sex was a significant factor. Men reacted to placebo as fre­quently as did women, and young people as often as old ones. Nor did intelligence, as measured by the standard tests, seem to be important. The average IQ of the two groups was about the same. It was above all in temperament, in the way they felt about themselves and other people that the members of the two groups were significantly different. The reactors were more co-operative than the non-reactors, less critical and suspicious. They gave the nurses no trouble and thought that the care they were receiving in the hospi­tal was simply "wonderful." But though less un­friendly toward others than the non-reactors, the reac­tors were generally much more anxious about them­selves. Under stress, this anxiety tended to translate itself into various psychosomatic symptoms, such as stomach upsets, diarrhea and headaches. In spite of or because of their anxiety, most of the reactors were more uninhibited in the display of emotion than were the non-reactors, and more voluble. They were also much more religious, much more active in the affairs of their church and much more preoccupied, on a subconscious level, with their pelvic and abdominal organs.

It is interesting to compare these figures for reac­tion to placebos with the estimates made, in their own special field, by writers on hypnosis. About a fifth of the population, they tell us, can be hypnotized very easily. Another fifth cannot be hypnotized at all, or can be hypnotized only when drugs or fatigue have lowered psychological resistance. The remaining three-fifths can be hypnotized somewhat less easily than the first group, but considerably more easily than the sec­ond. A manufacturer of hypnopaedic records has told me that about 20 per cent of his customers are en­thusiastic and report striking results in a very short time. At the other end of the spectrum of suggestibil­ity there is an 8 per cent minority that regularly asks for its money back. Between these two extremes are the people who fail to get quick results, but are sug­gestible enough to be affected in the long run. If they listen perseveringly to the appropriate hypnopaedic in­structions they will end by getting what they want — self-confidence or sexual harmony, less weight or more money.

The ideals of democracy and freedom confront the brute fact of human suggestibility. One-fifth of every electorate can be hypnotized almost in the twinkling of an eye, one-seventh can be relieved of pain by injec­tions of water, one-quarter will respond promptly and enthusiastically to hypnopaedia. And to these all too co-operative minorities must be added the slow-start­ing majorities, whose less extreme suggestibility can be effectually exploited by anyone who knows his busi­ness and is prepared to take the necessary time and trouble.

Is individual freedom compatible with a high degree of individual suggestibility? Can democratic institu­tions survive the subversion from within of skilled mind-manipulators trained in the science and art of exploiting the suggestibility both of individuals and of crowds? To what extent can the inborn tendency to be too suggestible for one’s own good or the good of a democratic society be neutralized by education? How far can the exploitation of inordinate suggestibility by businessmen and ecclesiastics, by politicians in and out of power, be controlled by law? Explicitly or implic­itly, the first two questions have been discussed in earlier articles. In what follows I shall consider the problems of prevention and cure.

XI Education for Freedom

Education for freedom must begin by stating facts and enunciating values, and must go on to develop appropriate techniques for realizing the values and for combating those who, for whatever reason, choose to ignore the facts or deny the values.

In an earlier chapter I have discussed the Social Ethic, in terms of which the evils resulting from over-organization and over-population are justified and made to seem good. Is such a system of values conso­nant with what we know about human physique and temperament? The Social Ethic assumes that nurture is all-important in determining human behavior and that nature — the psychophysical equipment with which individuals are born — is a negligible factor. But is this true? Is it true that human beings are nothing but the products of their social environment? And if it is not true, what justification can there be for main­taining that the individual is less important than the group of which he is a member?