Hal horizontal in Viewing Room 5

Hal extends the master statement into a theory of the Academy and, obliquely, of the whole culture: you give children something to give themselves away to early, before the questions "why and to what" develop teeth, because an unexamined devotion is a safer container for the will-to-surrender than a chosen one. He glosses the etymology of addiction as "being bound over, dedicated, either legally or spiritually" — devotion and addiction the same root — so that the tennis, the grammar, the Substance, and the Entertainment are all species of the one plunge, differing only in whether they let you off before the beaks and claws arrive. It's the choosing-your-master problem run backward: the culture chooses the master for you young, so you never have to face the terror of choosing, which is the same terror the Entertainment finally answers by removing choice entirely.