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"The science fiction method is dissection and reconstruction. You look at the world around you, and take it apart into its components. Then you take some of those components, throw them away, and plug in different ones, start it up and see what happens."
- Frederik Pohl
 |
| Betrization | ||
| An in utero method of reducing human aggression. |
In the novel, a future society is made easier to govern by reducing the level of aggression in people before they are born.
| Betrization acted on the developing prosencephalon at an early stage in life by means of a group of proteolytic enzymes. The effects were selective: the reduction of aggressive impulses by 80 to 88 percent in comparison with the nonbetrizated; the elimination of the formation of associative links between acts of aggression and the sphere of positive feelings; a general 87-percent reduction in the possibility of accepting personal risk in life.
Betrization causes the disappearance of aggression through the complete absence of command, and not by inhibition. |
| From Return from the Stars,
by Stanislaw Lem. Published by Not known in 1961 Additional resources -
|
Interestingly, this technique also resulted in a society that lacked true innovation and free thinking.
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