CLICK HERE FOR THOUSANDS OF FREE BLOGGER TEMPLATES »

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

BNW Response #4

After responding to question three, the answer is quite clear for me: I feel the society presented in Brave New World is bad. I don’t think I could live in a world full of false happiness and brainwashed people. There is no freedom of expression, which makes Huxley’s view of the future horrifying.

In thinking about a Utopia makes me think of the movie, Pleasantville. We watched it on this year’s Diversity Day. It’s about a teenage boy and girl who are completely opposites, and they gets ‘sucked’ into the television and placed into what seems to be an I Love Lucy sitcom. Everything is perfect in this society and needless to say, it’s colorless. The citizens aren’t allowed - or rather they just don’t know - about individuality, emotions, pain, war…really anything outside their perfect world. So to imagine that kind of world and actually live in it seems terrible.

Also, to not be able to feel emotions and to just sleep around with everyone with no consequences is very disturbing to me. It desensitizes the meaning of life.

BNW Response #3

In the discussion between Mustapha Mond and John Savage about civilization in chapter 17, it’s very apparent of their opposite mind sets. Mond’s argument boils down to him thinking society is perfectly fine the way it is. He feels it’s okay to let the leaders in society control people’s emotions and minds, and explains to John why society has no need for God, as the citizens don’t fear death. Mond goes on saying everything negative and bad have been taken out of society. There is no need to leave or question the State because everyone is happy.

John’s argument focuses on being an individual and having the ability to make decisions where they are good or bad. John wants to learn and feel emotion! He feels people should be able to learn from their mistakes and not take soma to make them feel better. When he says, “What you need is something with tears for a change,” John’s argument is clear: feelings are necessary to have a compatible, free society. “Nothing costs enough here,” also hints that when everything is free, only materialistic things are gained; nothing is learned because nothing is given up. John wants individuality and intelligence to have value, and it has to come with a price.

BNW Response #2

Sex, games, and sayings like “ending is better than mending” are used to limit the search for truth, a threat the State’s control. They maintain stability and show everyone is equal by everyone having sex with one another in their respective social class. Additionally, the government encourages no commitment sex to eliminate humans from attaching to each other – thus, building on the idea that everyone is equal to the State, happy and won’t revolt.

This applies to games too; no one wants to be the odd man out, like Bernard for example, and so they stick together as a community. Moreover, games are also used to condition children against questioning. They become accustomed to playing and believe it’s nothing more than fun. It consumes their time and allows the government to have more control.

And lastly, saying like “ending is better than mending” are used to avoid reality. The State is able to maintain control and stability with hypnopaedic sayings by changing what people want; they are used to suppress people and lead them to believe what they are being told. The fact that the saying, “ending is better than mending” translates into it being easier to end something than to fix it, allows the government to control and enforce things like the drug soma. It takes away their ability to challenge anything because they never know better.

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

BNW Response #1

There are some aspects of Brave New World’s society that are relevant to the present day and some that are far-fetched. Stability, for example, is a word that is very important in most countries today. Leaders and their parties want stability and try to achieve it through different ways. The far-fetched about this idea in Brave New World is the government controlling people in order to preserve its own power. The people are so superficially fulfilled that they don’t care about their personal freedom.

Another example of Brave New World’s society that’s relatable to todays is the idea of class rankings. In the novel, five class systems made up society: Alphas, Betas, Gamma, Delta, and Epsilon. While there is not a traditional class system anymore, as there have been in previous years, most societies are still divided into classes based on wealth – that is, upper-class, middle-class, and lower class.

An idea that is somewhat stretched in relation in today is the idea of human cloning and manipulating genetics. In Brave New World, babies are developed in test tubes in a lab and are chosen based upon their abilities and appearance. Conditioning is fixed genetically, physically, and psychologically for the social destiny they belong to. During the last few years this idea has come about; couples, for example, pick sperm donors by their appearance or family/genetic history.

I think Huxley’s vision of Utopia world is nowhere near where we are today and I think there is a strong contrast between the two worlds. The birth of a child and being a parent, for example, are some of the most memorable events for a woman (and man). In Huxley’s Utopia, however, the words ‘mother’ and ‘father’ are unheard of and if one is caught having a child, they will be punished and exiled.