Social Conditioning In My Utopian Society

At its most basic level of incorporation, social conditioning is actually essential to making any society work. In our own society, it is done organically through human interaction, as we are taught to act like those around us and follow a certain set of social expectations. However, social conditioning often has to be taken to an extreme level in literary utopian societies. In fact, it would not be possible for a utopian society to exist without social conditioning of some sort. This is because Utopias are an extremely delicate concept to begin with. In order to maintain a level of perfection, they have to rely on an exact structure of government and style of living in order to preserve their way of life.A giant threat against such a complex
society is the event that people digress from their preset roles or conditioned behavioral patterns. Social conditioning is the most efficient way to ensure that there is no human disruption to a utopia's structure.
Social conditioning can also be beneficial to the goals of any given utopia. For example, the society described in Moore's Utopia was aiming to fix several economic issues such as income inequality and the idleness of upper classes. It was vital that people remained productive in their given jobs and were not fixated on material possessions. One of the ways this was ensured was through changing the social attitudes of the people born into that society in order to make them different from our own. For example, there was control of family life and personal relationships. Marriages were arranged by the government by selecting biologically superior individuals, in order to make sure that the couples with the most preferable genes were the ones reproducing. Through all of these aspects of their society being monitored and normalized, people were made to follow along with the structure of the Utopia, and the entire society runs like it was intended to.
A more extreme example of social conditioning is found in Brave New World, where people are quite literally conditioned in how to feel and think about those in lower or higher castes than themselves. While children are young, they listen to a voice being played over a speaker that repeats statements about each of the castes. For example, when first introduced, the speaker repeats, "Alpha children wear grey. They work much harder than we do, because they're so frightfully clever. I'm really awfuly glad I'm a Beta, because I don't work so hard. And then we are much better than the Gammas and Deltas. Gammas are stupid," to a room of Beta children in order to condition their attitude towards their social assignment and others. There is a manufactured sense of respect for the higher castes and of disrespect for anyone lower than them. There is also reassurance that they are in the correct caste that is best for their own individual traits. This practice ensures that there is no "social unrest" between the classes that could potentially cause any disruption within the World State. Section 1, Q3: Response
Based on what we read about in other Utopian societies, my own Utopia would be focused upon aspects of systems of socialization. However, none of them had a satisfactory system for dealing with social conflict: a phenomenon that I think could have the power to wreak havoc upon a Utopia if left unsettled. If I had to create my own Utopian society, I would (alongside a specific economic and government structure) provide resources for emotional and social counseling while acknowledging the presence of social conflict and putting ways for it to be handled in place so that there would be no chance to disrupt the delicate structure of my society.
In Moore's Utopia and the society of Future Boston from Looking Backward, socialization was only touched on briefly. When it was discussed, it was assumed that overall, everyone would get along due to similar value systems. Citizens of Utopia and Future Boston were raised (and, arguably, indoctrinated) with the same core values of working for the good of the whole community and being a contributing member of society. However, the actual small scale interactions within the communities were never elaborated on past the idea of everyone getting along. From real life, we know two things: first, people do not always agree and uphold the values they were raised with, and second, upholding those values does not guarantee a lack of conflict. While it seems petty, social conflict could completely undermine many of the systems these societies depend on. Personal feuds and disagreements could hamper productivity, impact overall morale, and create corruption as individuals' biases infiltrate systems like Future Boston's process of choosing officials.
I think it would be impossible to completely eradicate disagreements.
However, establishing productive ways to deal with conflict within the population would help to create a more perfect society. In my utopia, I would create a sort of counseling system. This system would be a network of the most empathetic and emotionally intelligent people from within the society. Counselors would be nominated at a young age based on their demonstration of desirable qualities, then trained by those who served before them. As counselors, their duties would consist of mediating arguments, diagnosing and treating mental illnesses and learning disorders, and generally being available to listen to peoples' problems or help them work through their own personal issues. Having a professional mediate disagreements would be much more productive than allowing people to handle them poorly and ruin or damage relationships. Treating and diagnosing both mental illnesses and learning disabilities would both improve quality of life for citizens and make society more productive; for example, those with ADHD would have a much easier time focusing on tasks after being treated. Finally, much of a society's tension tends to come from the fact that each individual is leading their own difficult life; even the lowest level farmer from More's utopia has to have some kind of stress that bothers him. Normally, people allow these personal stressors to affect them without ever mentioning it to anyone. However, with the counseling system in place, people would be able to vent about things that bother them and get their thoughts straight so that resentment and grudges will not affect them as intensely in their day to day
lives.
The concept of being socially and emotionally healthy would be normalized for citizens of my utopia from a very young age; that way, people are used to the idea of acknowledging their own feelings and being proactive within their own social surroundings. I think this would help society to run smoothly and manage aspects on a micro-level.