Not what you might think.
Actually it’s from a segment of “How It’s Made” on the Science Channel, coupled in with Aldous Huxley’s frequently banned book.
This one (I watched it today) was on Eggs.
And they proceeded to show what’s essentially a mechanized Egg Factory.
From time to time as I write this I’ll put in references to the book.
Civilization is sterilization, repeated 50,000 times between the ages of 5 and 6…
So they’ve got these hens, right, the basis of The Egg industry. A couple hundred thousand of them.
Raised in cages. Fed by a conveyor belt that delivers a mixture of feed that’s scientifically measured out for Maximum Egg Production.
Mesh floor so their droppings fall onto another conveyor belt.
All the cages identical, all the portions of the feed identical, the eggs as standardized as possible, the hens so identical they look like they’ve been cloned.
They lay their eggs, which roll out the cage onto yet another of those damned conveyor belts.
For the sake of literary diversity I’ll insert here, the hens looked like one huge Bokanovsky Group.
I’ll point out that one of the big commercial sponsors of the show is an Investment Banking group whose advertising- du-jour has thousands of Identical Looking factory workers (who aren’t the customers of the investment bank, no, we’re not THAT important to them) first at their identical, uniform “individual” workstations. Wearing of course uniforms. Sterile White Uniforms. Like the chickens, white. Sterile.
One wonders if they have a catheter arrangement where their droppings fall through the floor onto another conveyor belt…
Then that segues into the workers at the Cafeteria, at perfectly spaced, identical round white tables, (all of this As Seen From Above, so we’re literally “looking down on them”) eating identical meals, and I’d swear by the Lord God who made us all that they were eating in unison, coordinated just as surely as if they were marching.
Civilization is sterilization, repeated 50,000 times between the ages of 5 and 6.
The eggs are carried by the conveyor belts through various machines which measure them, by volume then by weight.
Machines that pick them up 5 dozen at a time and stack them quickly, efficiently, quietly, cleanly, then stacks them onto carts. Here one of the Human Intervention squads come in, identical looking workers wearing Sterile White Clothes pushing the carts onto conveyor belts which carry them into a refrigerated storage area.
Then they’re rolled, again by machines, this one triggered by a thermostat, and fed through some more sorting apparati.
A bright light is shone from behind them, and a computer reads the image to find each egg which is cracked, and mark it out for removal.
Another Worker Drone goes in with a scoop and efficiently as any machine, scoops the “tagged” eggs out.
Another computer imaging device spots which ones have traces of blood in the egg.
And the routine is once again repeated.
Then about 2 minutes more of the Glory Of The Machine being expounded…
Then the Narrator chirps much about how the chickens start laying eggs when they’re 7 weeks old, and have a productive cycle of about 52 months. Just under 4 and a half years.
Then they get a free, all expenses paid trip to the slaughterhouse.
The Narrator actually used that expression.
Which we’ve seen that mechanized, standardized operation as well…
From Hatch to Hatchet all Untouched by Human Hands.
Now, I’m sure some Industrial Apologist Type A-2 is going to give the same identical speech the Director of World Hatcheries gave to John the Savage in the book.
When John the Savage and Bernard Marx had, in a Rage Against the Machine action, interrupted the doping of a Bokanovsky Group, where they were being given their Soma rations, which triggered an Automated Security system where Soma in vaporized form was sprayed through vents in the walls and ceilings, and a Recorded Voice says “Friends, why are you being angry? Everybody belongs to everybody else, after all. ” and a couple of other Mass Calming subliminal messages they had repeated to them in their Hypnopædia sessions 100,000 times between the ages of 5 and 7…
Then Bernard and John the Savage and their friend are talking to the Director of World Hatcheries and it’s calmly explained to them, the DWH shows John the Savage copies of Shakespeare and the Bible and other Anti-social books, says the people were already so well conditioned that even if the books were given to them, they would simply dismiss it with one or more of the one-line platitudes they had been taught since childhood….
By the way, the “Hatcheries” means where Humans were grown in glass bottles until birth.
No mother, no father, just “Genetic Donors”.
The message? Conform or Else.
During the kids’ Snow Break last week, we chanced to visit the Denver Art Museum’s Psychedelic Experience exhibit. Dozens of groovy rock posters from the late sixties, mostly advertising shows at San Francisco’s Fillmore Auditorium, were on display, occasionally retro-enhanced by black light. More interesting to the kids, however, was an adjoining exhibit where ancient artifacts were displayed in a seemingly authentic sixties pad. There were LPs (how they laughed!) and record players, a giant console television, magazines from the era (first man on the moon was a big hit), shabby furniture covered in tie-dyed material, and a couple old-fashioned telephone booths with rotary phones. One by one, the kids went into the graffiti-covered booth and closed the door, sat on the bench and tried to figure out how to dial the phone. Seriously, it wasn’t obvious to them.