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A review by sidharthvardhan
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
2.0
"When we are healthy we respond to the presence of the hateful with fear and nausea."
In his classical conditioning experiments, Pavlov makes animals respond to a stimulus towards which they were initially neutral. The experiment in the book does same. The stimuli in question was presence of violence and response repulsion.
A lot of parenting and education involves an innocent use of this strategy on children. So parents tell their children that monster will take them if they won't remain good, thus trying to prompt, often with out much of effect, fear as response to will to bad behaviour. The carrot and stick approach is almost always with a wish to condition children into good habits.
The trouble is the doctors in novel chose to use the presence of violence as stimuli rather than cases where Alex was causing violence and thus rendering him unable to defend himself. It is more a case of choosing wrong stimuli rather than wrong experiment.
Some people will say that it will be choice inhibitory. But aren't we all slave to our instincts anyway. The freedom to Will is limited to will, which is itself an accident of nature - was it Schopenhauer who said "we can do what we will, but we can not will what we will." Education and other socialising forces are always countering the instincts dangerous or averse to what society likes. The promise of Christmas gifts is hardly more choice promoting. Same with imprisonment.
Suppose an ideal method of conditioning was created - where he felt repulsed but only at idea of being violent to innocent people. What would be ethical issues than? Now here is something to wonder about. If there are choice issues here, what about child-raising techniques then? Thus, it is not so much a choice between 'ability to chose Vs conditioning' but rather 'socially-enforced Vs natural conditioning'.
Your humble reviewer did like Nadsat (hence second star) and I didn't charge book for being full of violence (I did charge movie for that because it was graphic) but overall I think the centeral argument was weak ... and the conclusion worse. No, not the part where Alex gets away with everything (which to me is only circumstances not author's reaction), not when he turns criminal again, and not when he leaves those evil ways again. But where all the violence, murders and rapes are seen to be part of youth, growing up - wow, people died, ten year old girls got raped; but the important thing is that kid grew up.
In his classical conditioning experiments, Pavlov makes animals respond to a stimulus towards which they were initially neutral. The experiment in the book does same. The stimuli in question was presence of violence and response repulsion.
A lot of parenting and education involves an innocent use of this strategy on children. So parents tell their children that monster will take them if they won't remain good, thus trying to prompt, often with out much of effect, fear as response to will to bad behaviour. The carrot and stick approach is almost always with a wish to condition children into good habits.
The trouble is the doctors in novel chose to use the presence of violence as stimuli rather than cases where Alex was causing violence and thus rendering him unable to defend himself. It is more a case of choosing wrong stimuli rather than wrong experiment.
Some people will say that it will be choice inhibitory. But aren't we all slave to our instincts anyway. The freedom to Will is limited to will, which is itself an accident of nature - was it Schopenhauer who said "we can do what we will, but we can not will what we will." Education and other socialising forces are always countering the instincts dangerous or averse to what society likes. The promise of Christmas gifts is hardly more choice promoting. Same with imprisonment.
Suppose an ideal method of conditioning was created - where he felt repulsed but only at idea of being violent to innocent people. What would be ethical issues than? Now here is something to wonder about. If there are choice issues here, what about child-raising techniques then? Thus, it is not so much a choice between 'ability to chose Vs conditioning' but rather 'socially-enforced Vs natural conditioning'.
Your humble reviewer did like Nadsat (hence second star) and I didn't charge book for being full of violence (I did charge movie for that because it was graphic) but overall I think the centeral argument was weak ... and the conclusion worse. No, not the part where Alex gets away with everything (which to me is only circumstances not author's reaction), not when he turns criminal again, and not when he leaves those evil ways again. But where all the violence, murders and rapes are seen to be part of youth, growing up - wow, people died, ten year old girls got raped; but the important thing is that kid grew up.