Welcome to your venue to post anything and everything dedicated to your independent reading for Q2. Refer to the handouts for guidance. I hope you enjoy this assignment.
Despite the fact that many characters have similar desires or interests, their different upbringings often lead to conflict. John is struggling in this foreign world. He is a circus freak to the majority of the people here. He isn’t impressed by their technology, and doesn’t understand their customs. John is very much alone in an unfamiliar world that he doesn’t understand, and that doesn’t understand him. He loves Lenina, and she loves him too, yet he breaks down, hits her and scares her off. They have very different ideas of love- what it means, and how it should be expressed. John comes from a world of ceremonies and he reads stories of heroes where a man would prove himself for a woman- where sex before marriage is looked down upon and love means being bonded eternally with someone. Lenina sees love as nothing more than a physical desire. She was trained to see long term or monogamous relationships as ridiculous, told again and again in her sleep that “everyone belongs to everyone else.” This is what causes their fight, which for me was one of the more sudden surprising scenes in the book. John had seemed uncomfortable in his new life for a long time, but he finally snaps when she’s throwing herself at him. The environment John was raised in shaped him just as much as the hypnodeaia did to Lenina, for just as she calls his ideas ridiculous and finds him frustrating, he lashes out and calls her a whore, hitting her as she leaves. This demonstrates the extreme effects the environment we are raised in and the beliefs we are taught on our behaviors. Even Helmholtz, who is one of the more freethinking characters in this novel falls victim to his conditioning at times and it causes a divide between himself and John. Helmholtz has spent the novel trying to find something beyond the controlled society he has spent his entire life in, yet despite how hard he tries to be above the narrow-minded attitude of his world, he cannot escape his prejudices. When Romeo is reading Romeo and Juliet, and Helmholtz starts laughing at the concepts of it, “….the savage looked at him over the top of his book and then, as the laughter still continued, closed it indignantly, got up and, with the gesture of one who removes his pearl from before swine, locked it away in its drawer.” (185) The story, which John found personal and relatable, was nothing more to Helmholtz than “smutty absurdity” and “irresistibly comical.” Their different worlds formed such a barrier between them that they cannot understand one another, despite their shared love of words, stories, and something greater than oneself. John’s differences have brought him nothing but confusion, loneliness and isolation. Is it possible for someone so different to find a place in a world where everyone is supposed to think the same?
Halle, I completely agree with your idea of how the upbringings of characters from Brave New World shape their ideals and beliefs, which eventually causes conflict for them. Likewise, in a previous blog entry I discussed how the characters have no free will. With this, I don’t think the members of the World State should be blamed for their beliefs, as so many factors outside of their control shape them. Still, these citizens don’t realize the immense demands they put on people to conform to society because everyone acts the same. So, with your question at the end, it is impossible for John to find a role in the World State society. These pressures of the World State make it difficult for John to deal with his individuality. This is evident at the end of the novel (spoiler), when he commits suicide. I think this is one of the most significant parts of the story because Huxley is saying that even a character like John, who fights for his ideals with passion and dedication, cannot deal with a strong opposing force. Do you think John’s suicide will cause the citizens to question their own values, or are they so conditioned that the World State will continue as it always was?
I would disagree with there being blame at all for the conformist society that is the World State; to me, John's worse. While the reactions of the members of the World State are bad, they're non-violent (Already a great deal more than can be said for some of the more vicious forms of our own ways to make people conform) and they are in response to far greater differences than we have in our own world. With such large differences, I'd say their responses are nearly genteel.
Thanks for the replies! To reply to Lia, I feel John's suicide will be meaningless to the majority of members of the World State, who don't understand his morals or emotions. If anyone were to be effected it would be Helmholtz and/or Mond. Helmholtz and John, despite their differences in philosophies and upbringings could share writings with one another (at least until Helmholtz laughed at Romeo and Juliet)and had a closer bond than most other people within the world state. If Helmholtz hears of it in his exile, I'm sure he would write a lot about it. The reason why I think Mond would care is because of how aware he is about many things- science, religion, and history. Mond and John's dialogue toward the end of the book was some of my favorite in the entire novel, because you see people who truly want to understand the world. But Mond and Helmholtz are the exception to the rule, and the majority would either never hear of it, and the ones who did would write it off as a genetic error, or a crazy savage.
John was never going to find a place in this society. He could never learn to understand the ideals of this society as much as they could learn to understand his. I agree with Oliver that it was John's violent responses to this lack of understanding that led to his end. Both groups of people were so absorbed in their own lifestyles that anything out of what they think is ordinary they immediately shut themselves down to and don't try to understand. Everyone John had trusted turned on him and left him alone to be ridiculed and tortured without anyone to turn to. He lacked what my parents like to call a "support system." When trying to adjust to a new place, like my family had to do a few years ago, some people in my family could not find someone that could help them deal with starting in a new environment than what they were used to. This support system is necessary because when surrounded by strangers, it is important to have at least one person to turn to when things reach their hardest point.
Alexandra Rinaldi January 3rd, 2013 Entry #5: Clashing Societies & Death Conditioning
I want to discuss two scenes that disturbed me, but that I found extremely significant to the plot. These scenes include the fight between John and Lenina in chapter 13, and the scene in chapter 14 when John visits his mother in the hospital. In chapter 13, the sharp differences between the “savage” and a loyal citizen of the World State is amplified, as John becomes violent when Lenina goes against his morals. In chapter 14, the main ideas of death-conditioning are touched upon and the savages again, sharply differ from the people of the World State.
I think that Huxley was attempting to express the violence and danger that arises when two civilizations that are so radically different are forced to interact. On page 190 after Lenina stripped, John was disgusted and started to scream he “pushed her away with such force that she staggered and fell.” Much violence comes from passionate people who feel such loyalty and commitment towards the way they were raised and their moral values and beliefs. In this case, John clearly feels absolutely dedicated to his opinions on sexual relationships, which he believes should only happen between people when they are in love. John’s strong physical attraction to Lenina combined with his conflicting devoutness to stay true to his beliefs leaves him angry and violent calling her grotesque names likes “Whore!” and “Impudent strumpet!” John goes from being amazed by Lenina’s beauty and personality to losing all respect for her and looking down on her as an inferior being and threatening her to “get out of my sight or I’ll kill you,”(p.190). Johns loss of admiration towards Lenina was directly connected to her going against what John believed was ethically correct, which in this case was participating in sex before falling in love or getting married. The clashing morals of John and Lenina are what lead to their fall out and what drives John to act so violently. This has been the reason for many holy wars and genocides throughout history; Peoples strong feelings of devotion towards their principles combined with the one sided view that their ideas are superior can lead to violence and resentment. For example, Napoleon Bonaparte of France was a great military leader who strived to gain independence for the nation. He was a revolutionary who was willing to kill anyone who went against him or got in his way of achieving his goals of unifying and strengthening France. Napoleons nationalistic feelings clashed with those of the conservatives who wanted to go back to France’s old regimes and this lead to much violence and persecution.
The scene in chapter 14, which discusses death conditioning in the World State society, really stood out to me for obvious reasons. The idea of conditioning little children to accept the concept of death is disturbing; because it is such a complex concept in today’s society and its something that many people struggle with understanding. This chapter disturbs me and the death of Linda is unsettling and miserable. The savages are already misfits within society because they were never conditioned and have knowledge of the past and the outside world. They are also able to age and lose their beauty but this was more of Linda’s problem. When John makes a scene about his mothers choking, the nurse selfishly reprimands him “Think of the little ones…You might decondition...”(p.206). John then proceeds to uncontrollably sob at the foot of his mothers bed, which aggravated the nurse into thinking “he’s undoing all their wholesome death-conditioning with this disgusting outcry….It might give them the most disastrous ideas about the subject, might upset them into reacting in the entirely wrong way,”(206). Here, the nurse is expressing her worry of the children growing up to fear death and look at it “as though death were something terrible,”(206). This was interesting to me, and it related back to the idea of ignorance. The children are raised being comfortable with death and know it only as a way of life, while John must deal with feelings of grief and remorse. This lead me to question our society, and again I ask myself: Would I rather be ignorant to a situation and be able to live happily with it or would I rather be educated living and unhappily?
The gap between the savages and the people of the World State civilization is deepened and becomes more apparent as the plot moves forward. How do you feel about the fact that this civilization death-conditions their children? Do you think that when it comes to death this is a beneficial or dangerous way of thinking?
Rosie, I agree with you that death-conditioning children is very unsettling. However, the World State finds it necessary to condition its citizens to accept death because if they didn’t, religions may emerge that challenge the World State. During John and Mustapha’s conversation about religion, it is brought up that religion is a result of fear of death. In other words, people create religions to make death less cruel by believing that life continues after detah. However, by conditioning the children to accept death rather than fear it, the World State is preventing the creation of religions that may oppose it.
Vanessa, your question of Ignorant Bliss/Enlightened Cynicism strikes at a core question of the novel; indeed, the two camps of the World State and the Savage Reservation represent the sides nearly perfectly, as John's desire for truth and knowledge drives him to grief, while the other characters are happy knowing what they know. As for myself, I think I would prefer the happy unknown, assuming it does not make the situation better or worse either way.
Thank you for your replies! Lauren, I agree with this idea of religion and I actually just wrote about it on Vanessa's entry! The more I think about the, the more i question the idea of religion and death. I often say i'd rather be ignorant to these horribles ideas than know all the horrible truths there are out there. The society created in this book, in my opinion, was as close to a Utopia as you can get. If everyone is happy and ignorant to anything scary and horrible in life, even if it's because they are conditioned this way, it's better than hating your life and being miserable. Although this society isn't fair in any way shape or form and extremely disturbing, it has made me realize that I'd rather be happy and doing something miserable and not knowing anything else, than living a miserable life. Although these people are conditioned, they are happy. And happiness is key to any successful/ society in my opinion.
In Chapter 17 of the novel, the aspect of religion and its nonexistence in the World State is sprung up. This is the first time that Huxley has mentioned anything about religion and its role in the State, and it is revealed that there is no such thing as religion or even any knowledge of a God among the people.
Religion in the World State is a matter that does not fit in with the beliefs and morals of the State. During a conversation between John and Mustapha Mond, Mustapha states that the reason the state does not mention anything about God is because the whole idea of a God and religion is hundred of years old and does not apply to modern time. Also, in one of the books Mustapha re-sights, it states, “We did not make ourselves, we cannot be supreme over ourselves. We are not our own master. We are God’s property” (232). This statement goes against entirely of what the World State does. In this society, the State has certain powers of God in the sense that they are able to control the birth of humans and brainwash them to thinking what they want. The whole idea of a creator greater in than World State would be a shock and would arise questioning among the people on the superiority of the State. Another book the Mustapha has, states that when a man grows older, he turns to religion due to the idea of death and what comes after death. Contrast from the book, the World State does not have to worry about old age because that too is nonexistent and therefore there is no need for religion for that purpose. The two also argue wether the belief in God is natural by which Mond responds by saying that one does not believe by instinct, but instead that people believe what they have been conditioned to believe (Basically a motto that the World state lives by). The same goes for God in a way that people believe in God because they are conditioned to.
Along with the State being able to control people’s minds, they are able to control happenings and even the emotions of the people which is another aspect of why religion is not needed. In the novel, John mentions, “But God’s the reason for everything noble and fine and heroic” (236). During a time like this, there are no wars and therefore there is no existence of nobility and heroism. Because the government controls what thoughts the people have, no one attempts to rebel against the government. The government makes the people believe that they are happy and if anything unpleasant were to happen, there is always the soma which the people of the World State like Lenina turn to anytime they are suffering or want to escape mentally. The soma works just like religion in the way that both are turned to in times of need and suffering and allow people to let there soul escape from agonizing feelings. Although there is no religion in the World State, the soma stands in place for religion. This was something I found very interesting in that the way Huxley was able to string together a drug and religion is fascinating. This part makes one question whether religion can truly allow a person to become pure and release all suffering, or can that be easily done but just a simple drug?
On the topic of religion, most faiths are something people turn to when they are at a loss for answers, and the World State tries to train people to not ask questions at all. We see Linda as an example of this in earlier chapters, how she couldn't explain chemicals to John even though she worked in the Fertilization Room, and that those on the Savage Reservation turned to religion for answers they couldn't find in times of trouble. The World State's attempt at making religion obsolete is to take away instances when one is suffering. In my opinion, neither religion or drugs can release all suffering, they are different coping mechanisms. Religion provides a sense that it will pass, or that it is not without a greater purpose, and drugs like soma provide a temporary release, but there is no way to fully escape reality.
I completely agree with Halle's comment above. In my opinion, religion and drugs are a way to get away from suffering temporarily but in the wrong one, if you are internally battling something religion and drugs are a good way to forget for a while and get a sense of comfort. World State tried to compensate for the absence of religion by creating soma to get people's minds away from reality and allow them to access the "greater good" and feelings of security. I also agree with what you said about religion being an aspect of control within a society. Religion definitely controls people and in my opinion, scares people into following the rules. For example, the Catholic Church preaches that if you go against god by breaking the commandments you won't get into heaven. Since death puts fear in almost everyone, most people will abide by all the rules so that they feel secure and more comforted about what happens after death and the afterlife. Since people in the world state aren't afraid of death, they need no religion to look towards for comfort.
Chapter 17 has without a doubt been one of my favorite chapters because it truly questions the accuracy of religion. Unlike the World State, todays world is full of wars and fighting and because of that people send up fearing and agonizing more. In our world, there are multiple religions with contrasting back rounds, yet each religion interrupts the thought of death and after life. Throughout history, people have gone through life trying to be morally right people in order to gain accesses to a life that they have been taught. I would have to agree with Mond when he says that people believe in God and even and afterlife because of what religion had taught them. On the contrary, the idea of the soma is interesting, in that it brings the same blissfulness to people like religion, but the soma only lasts for a few hours. This is definitely seen in our society with drug abuse and how people turn to drugs such as pain killers to take away pain, but because the drugs only last for a little while, this leads to the constant overdose. The difference I feel is that while a drug will take away ones suffering for an hour or so, religion is everlasting. As this chapter came to an end, I left questing wether religion is in some ways similar to the World State in being able to control the thoughts and feeling of its followers. Also, does religion control the thoughts of its followers?
I decided to do more research on drugs and their addictions and found this link on the cause of drug abuse: http://www.healthyplace.com/addictions/drug-addiction/drug-abuse-causes-what-is-the-cause-of-drug-abuse/
I also fond another article on religion and the reasons why people turn to it :http://www.angelfire.com/fl4/entropy/religion/why.html
Alexandra Rinaldi December 5, 2012 Entry#6: Final Entry: Book Overview
Utopia is a word used to describe a “perfect” society and that is exactly what the people in this book have tried to create. And for the most part they have succeeded. Almost everybody is happy with maybe the exception of people like Bernard. Nobody feels anything too deeply so nobody can hurt that badly. Everyone is beautiful because everyone is fake. Everyone is healthy because diseases are nonexistent and vaccinations are given to people when they are babies. Aldous Huxley had more or less created a “perfect” world or a utopia. One of the biggest points Huxley makes in his book is about feelings, moods, and emotions. He suggests that all pain comes from desire so by taking away much of the desire there will be less pain. He does this by showing a community where everyone gets pretty much whatever they want and they’re happy with what they have because that’s how they were conditioned, if someone becomes sad or any inconveniences are introduced the person will take a soma and wake up forgetful and happy. In a world with fewer feelings there are fewer problems because “you can’t make tragedies without social instability,”(220). There is no depression or desire or need for anything more. This idea is discussed in detail on page 220, when the Controller is talking to John, the savage, and Bernard about his view on society. He talks heavily about stability arguing, “they’re so conditioned that they practically can’t help behaving how they ought to behave. And if anything should go wrong, there’s soma,” The people of world state have no emotions because they are conditioned to be this way and if they ever find themselves disagreeing with society, they take a soma to rid themselves from unhappy thoughts. The Controller describes soma as “Christianity without tears,”(238) meaning the people get comfort and happiness from this drug. There is always soma to fall back on “to calm your anger, to reconcile you to your enemies, to make you patient and long-suffering,”(238). All of these things are exactly what religion is for, to give people a feeling of comfort and stability, to keep the people in line and following all the rules. Soma is an escape from reality and a way of controlling the people within the society. Youth and Aging is another interesting topic brought up in this book. The way it works in their world is that they take special medicine and are conditioned to be beautiful and youthful. It works until they reach the age of sixty and then they are put to death. But everybody always looks good and young and only the people on the Savage Reservation get wrinkles and look older as they age. This is why everyone was so disgusted and appalled by Linda when she was first introduced. So everyone from the World State stays physically young and beautiful for his or her entire lives while people in the Savage Community age, wrinkle, and gain weight, as they get old. While the Savage and the Controller discuss the idea of beauty, Shakespeare is brought up. The Savage questions why they don’t promote Shakespearean literature and plays and the controller’s response is simple; “Because it’s old. We haven’t any use for old things here…Particularly when they’re beautiful. Beauty’s attractive and we don’t want people to be attracted by old things. We want them to like the new ones.”(219). This connects to the idea of brainwash and Individualism versus Community. People in the World State society are only taught to accept new ideas and are incapable of comprehending old ones. If a person is “too self-consciously individual to fit into community-life,”(227) they are exiled and sent away to an island so they don’t affect or turn anyone else against the government and social system. The people who are unsatisfied with the orthodoxy of this society are sent away to maintain the stability of the World State society.
********SPOILER********Johns unhappiness and disgust with himself for being exposed to this civilization leads him to start inflicting pain on himself by whipping himself. A crowd of world state people sees this and begins an orgy. He finally gives in, goes against his morals and has sex with Lenina. His guilt is so great that he inflicts the ultimate pain and kills himself. With this idea, I feel that Aldous Huxley was trying to express the inability of ever creating a truly Utopian society where everyone is happy. I also believe he wanted to demonstrate the negative impacts of a community based society on an individual person. Especially being a teenager in high school, I can relate to this idea of the struggle to maintain individualism in such a community based place. Many people in the world find it so hard to fit in; they feel their only escape is suicide. Do you think Aldous Huxley did a good job predicting the future of society? On a smaller scale, could some of his messages about the dangers of technology and conformity be related to some problems in today’s world?
I completely agree with you Rosie when you talk about the pressures with fitting in in todays world too. The fact that most of us spend our entire childhood trying to find a way to belong is absurd when you think about it, yet we still do it. A person goes to such great lengths to fit in and yet sometimes a person is denied and because of that they think hurting themselves is the only way out. What's even sadder is that even for those who do whatever it takes to not be sucked into these pressures like John, eventually society catches up and drags them down too. I feel as if eventually the people in the society, like John, will just die out. I believe this because I don't think it's capable for the people to stay happy and naive forever, and sooner or later, others like Bernard and John will come in and question this world once again.
I completely agree with you, Vanessa. When it seems that everyone is rejecting you, you start to question yourself and wonder why you are being treated this way, why you can't be like everyone else. Even when you have a feeling that what seems normal and mainstream isn't necessarily the right choice, you can't help but question yourself. It's hard to stand alone so we try so hard to gain the acceptance of others when we should wonder if it really even matters. We have spent most of our adolescence trying to fade into the background of what is considered normal, that sometimes we forget to ask ourselves what we value and what we think is right, and forget that fear of being different.
One aspect of the World State that bothers me the most is the caste system, which divides citizens based on their roles in society. According to the Director, “the bottles [of embryos] come in [the Social Predestination Room] to be predestined in detail” (10). In other words, a person’s social position is determined before he/she is alive and can never be altered. Therefore, free will is eliminated and the World State has complete authority over the lives of its citizens.
Social divisions range from the Alphas (who run factories and fulfill leadership roles) to the Epsilons (who perform insignificant, mindless jobs). Nevertheless, the Epsilons are content with their social placement because they are conditioned to be unintelligent, and therefore unable to perform more challenging jobs. This idea that citizens are programmed to perform specific tasks to benefit the World State reminds me of a factory, in which every machine does a specific job continuously until it is no longer useful. In other words, I feel the caste system dehumanizes the people of the World State because it takes away their free will and autonomy.
Similar to the World State, India also has a rigid caste system. First of all, both citizens of the World State and India are born into their caste, never allowing them to experience freedom. However, the most distinct connection between the caste systems of India and the World State appears among the outcastes. In the World State, adversaries of modern technology are placed in a separate caste known as the “Savages.” These Savages are kept on reservations to prevent the spread of their “primitive” culture. Similarly, the Untouchables of India’s caste system are discriminated against and kept separate from the other castes. Still, although the Savages are discriminated against, they have more freedom than the other castes because their society isn’t regulated by the World State. Therefore, I feel that Huxley’s point is the less involved the government is in social structure, the happier the citizens will be. What do you think of this inference?
I agree with what you are saying Lauren with government's interference in social structure. I believe that people will be happier if government has less interference in social life because it's the one thing that gives people the slightest bit of freedom. I do't think the caste system is fair at all because a person shouldn't have to be born into a certain life. Everyone in society should be given the same opportunities in life and be able to move up in social class based on their accomplishments rather then the life the were once born into. You could have a person who is born into the lowest caste system, but is destined for greatness yet there is nothing he can do because of his backround. There is a reason the world constantly struggles with equality and a reason that foreigners leave their homes in order to get a chance at becoming equal. We all strive for a life where we can accomplish our goals and dreams and be able to be given a chance to succeed. But, some governments in the world won't allow that which is what leads to unhappiness of the people. This makes me think if there will ever be a time where all will once stand equal beside each other? (but i highly doubt it just by looking at the world now)
I think your comparison of the social classes in Brave New World to the classes in the Hindu caste system is very interesting because it shows how all organized societies strive for balance and stability, whether they use science or religion in order to do so. Likewise, both justify their methods of maintaining order. The Alphas in the World State believe that it is necessary to have people such as Epsilons preforming their type of labor in order for social stability, and justify it with facts and experiments, whereas the caste system in India is justified by religious teachings saying that you are born into your life based on you past actions, and you will be rewarded or punished again based on this one. Overall, its interesting to think about how the quest for control and stabiity exists on such a broad scale.
Lia Golden January 5th, 2012 Entry #5: Happiness in Brave New World
A remarkable scene in Brave New World is the debate between John and Mustapha Mond about the values of the World State during chapter 16 and 17. In this debate, the arguments for the World State presented by Mond are shown in a raw and truthful way. Mond argues against the freedom of its citizens, and justifies the World State’s actions. These measures that the World State take create stability, which is essential to creating a “perfect society” in Mond’s point of view.
A specific argument that interested me was the idea of happiness in the World State. Mond believes that the government must limit the happiness of its citizens. He says, “’…our world is not the same as Othello's world…you can't make tragedies without social instability. The world's stable now. People are happy; they get what they want, and they never get what they can’t get…’” (Page 220). Mond is convincing with this statement because the people of the World State are well off, safe, never ill, and if they feeling even the slight hint of sadness, can take soma and feel better. Yet, do these citizens really know what true happiness really is? They are unable to experience the intense feelings, passions, commitments, and relationships-things can establish anything from pure bliss to tragedy. So, this poses an interesting question for me: If the citizens of the World State had the opportunity to not be conditioned by the government, and have the freedom to achieve their own happiness, would they take it?
The idea of happiness additionally made me wonder how it is defined in a more scientific way. I looked this up, and ended up finding this article on PBS, which shows the viewpoints of a few physiologists. What do you all think of happiness-is it something we can attain on our own, or formed through other aspects of our life? Link: http://www.pbs.org/thisemotionallife/topic/happiness/what-happiness.
Lia, the question you pose in the third paragraph is interesting. First off, in the debate between John and Mustapha, Mustapha basically states that happiness and truth are incompatible. For this reason, the World State chooses happiness over truth and uses methods like soma to prevent true emotions from ruining peoples’ happiness. Therefore, I don’t feel that the people of the World State would want the opportunity to not be conditioned and achieve happiness on their own because in doing so, they would also have to experience unpleasant emotions. In other words, the people of the World State are so used to only being happy and never behaving truly like humans that they would be overwhelmed by all of the emotions true humans feel.
Yes, I agree with your response to my question. It is impossible for these characters to change because of how conditioned they are in the first place. This is an aspect of the novel that really bothers me, so it frustrates me even more (spoiler) when John commits suicide at the end of the story. I feel like he was the only one who had the opportunity to spark change in the World State because of his fame and effect over the other characters. Maybe Huxley creates this death to merely emphasize how Brave New World is a dystopia-and there is no way of changing it. This might be a random thought, but I always wonder what life is for the people exiled from the World State. Do you think they have established a better society since moving and are now happy?
I notice that you say you were frustrated that John wasn't able to bring down the dystopia. While I oppose the methods of the World State, I think that, once in place, it should remain. After all, it's implied that knowledge and inquisitive feelings aren't all purged- just sent to Iceland, as you say. But consider this: How often do people say "I don't like math/reading is boring/I don't like drama" Clearly, the lofty peaks of emotion and knowledge do not appeal to all. Because of that, I would say that, if offered impersonally, most people would prefer to live in the World State. Just because you aren't in control doesn't mean you can't live well; children do all the time.
I absolutely loved the scene with Mond and John's conversation. Mond's argument is very fascinating- and absolutely valid. At the same time though, what is the point of a society if it merely exists? We discover that they stopped innovation in order to keep the lower classes working, very similarly to China did in its falling years, and that’s usually a mark of a dimming society. If it is society without science, literature, discovery or philosophy, it’s hardly a society at all. Interestingly enough, this dystopia emerged from the ideas of people who thought they were doing what was morally in the best interest of the world.
One theme prevalent among the World State and our world is the dangers of technology. In Brave New World, technology provides the World State with total control over the people and eliminates truth and individuality from society. In our world, technology has many negative effects including lack of social skills, radiation, pollution, and unemployment.
The primary danger of the World State technology is that is allows for a totalitarian government. The World State controls every aspect of its citizens' lives through hypnopaedic lessons, soma and pre-natal conditioning. Although these technologies create an illusion of happiness for the people, it also dehumanizes them because they can’t experience true human emotions. For example, Mustapha Mond states, “there’s always soma to give you a holiday from the facts” (237-8). Also, the Bokanovsky process and conditioning prevent freedom and individuality among the people. Overall, while the World State technology creates a seemingly happy and safe environment, it eliminates human emotions, truth and freedom.
Today, technology has many negative effects on society, the environment and the economy. Firstly, the constant use of texting, video chatting, and social media prevents true human interaction, causing a lack of social skills. For instance, the anonymity of interacting via computer provides confidence for some people that leads to cyber-bullying. This is a major issue in our society because kids no longer know how to interact in person. Today’s technology also negatively affects our health since radiation from cell phones, microwaves, etc. causes cancer. Additionally, factories and vehicles pollute the air and cause environmental damage such as global warming. However, factories and machines have an even larger effect on our economy because they replace the need for manual labor, causing increased unemployment. While these are the major issues of modern technology, the list continues. Overall, while technology has certain beneficial aspects, I wonder if the negative aspects outweigh them? Also, I wonder if our society would be better off without technology? For instance, the San people of Africa live completely free of technology, yet they lead perfectly happy and simple lives. While the San people’s main concern is food and water, we worry about education and employment. Does this mean that that technology is the source of all of our problems?
Lauren, you pose an interesting question when you ask if technology is the source of all of our problems today. On one hand, I agree with you: technology alters communication between people, affects our economy, and causes pollution. For example, I found a video from Ted Talks that explains that our children could possibly be a new species because of the impact of technology. Link: http://www.ted.com/talks/juan_enriquez_will_our_kids_be_a_different_species.html Yet, would we want our government to control and limit the new ideas we are exposed to? In regards to Brave New World, the government bans all old things-such as Shakespeare and the Bible, as they want its citizens to have a consumer mindset, and only to want new things. Still, they monitor how much technology the citizens of the World State experience, as it might create instability. I think that if more people in our world become aware with the downsides of technology, can they have the have the knowledge to make the better choice in how they treat it.
You make a great point about how the San people are happier with simple lives compared to our complex lives of jobs and education. However, I would say that it is the reason why a previous statement of your entry is incorrect. In particular, you say that the technology of the World State creates a"Seemingly" happy environment, and you refer to the World State's "Illusion" of happiness. However, I would say that the members of the World State are not falsely happy. They are happy for different reasons than we are, but most of them are incredibly happy. Further, it could be said that the carefree drugged up happiness of the World State is quite a bit closer to the tranquility of the San than we are in the modern world.
Venesa Rugova December 6, 2013 Entry #6: Happiness vs truth
One idea that the novel constantly brings up if the difference between happiness and the truth. In the World State. the major goal of the government is ensure that the people are happy. On the other hand, for John, truth is much more substantial.
In the World State, babies are brainwashed to think and accept the class they are put in. Due to the fact that the World State is able to control the people’s thoughts and ways of life, this also leads them to having control over people’s emotions. If anything were to upset the people, then the soma would be used. Soma clouds the realities of the present and replaces them with happy hallucinations, and is thus a tool for promoting social stability. Mustapha Mond even states, “there’s always soma to give you a holiday from the facts” (237-238). It’s the governments tool to ensure the people will remain naive of the truth and stay happy. The government does what it can to prevent the public from knowing any truth about what scientific activities that the government is doing and the government also attempts to destroy all kinds of “human” truths, such as love, friendship, and personal connection. Along with that, any history of the world is nonexistent in the State. In this society, truth is no longer an aspect of society and people no longer attempt to scout for knowledge. But it’s because humans fear what the truth withholds that leads them to avoiding the truth. For example, Lenina is a clear example of a person in the World State who constantly turns to soma to escape situations like when she is on the reservation. The state is manufactured on desires and happiness rather than rationality and truth.
A person who accepts truth over happiness is John. Being the ultimate outside, John is foreign to the norms of the State. He is disgusted with the sexual desires and manufactural ways of the State. Yet, John is still fully aware of his sexual desire for Lenina and is slowly being pulled into the desires of the state that he eventually inflicts self-punishment to purge himself of the contamination of civilization. It’s not until the end of the novel that John is sucked into his desires and the final straw is drawn which is John’s death. John’s participation in the final orgy and his suicide at the end of the novel can be seen as the result of an insanity created by the conflict between his values and the reality of the world around him. John shows that although the truth is fearful, happiness on the other hand may be blissful for a moment, but it isn’t something that can hide one from the truth forever.
As the novel closes, I still question truth and happiness. In our society today we try to balance the two but happiness will always be just a bit stronger for humans than the truth. Although we don’t have the soma to take us away from the misery’s of life, people still turn to drugs and even lies to cover up the truth. Although the truth seems unbearable at times, I ultimately think that the truth sets us free more than happiness. When we look at John and what has happened to him, we see the effects of what some do to experiance the slightest bit of happiness even if it means throwing away all our values away. Even after John’s slight moment of happiness, he transitioned to being disgusted and mortified with what he had done and because of that he ended his life. In any of the novels that we have read this year, can we find a character who truly will live or has a happy life? Look at the animals in Animal Farm and how at the end of that novel the animals walked away from the window with no hope to hold on to. Or in Of Mice and Men, George had to do the hardest thing by killing Lenny which will always cause sorrow in his heart. And lastly, The Glass Menagerie ended with all the characters in misery with not being able to escape their lifes. I feel as if most authors are trying to tell us that happiness is something that isn’t eternal. This makes me question happiness and wether if it’s worth having than the truth. Either way the terror and agony of the world will always find cracks to slip into. But my final question is, Whats more valuable, truth or happiness?
Oliver Stein January 6, 2013 Entry 5- Comfortable I have lost all sympathy for John’s character, as he is acting like a spoilt brat. Mustapha Mond didn’t let him leave, (Though I don’t see why; he isn’t actually considered further scientifically, which was ostensibly the reason he wasn’t allowed to go to Iceland.) but his gift of a home in a isolated, natural place, as well as a minor sinecure, is far nicer than he needed to be. After his debate with Mustapha Mond, he loses practically all sympathy I had for his character. In particular I despise how close-minded he became. Quite honestly, I expected that by the end of Brave New World the World State would be more villainous, but it’s the opposite. At the time I saw Linda’s shunning by the savages on the Reservation as a clever balance by Huxley to show that modern society isn’t perfect either, but now I see it quite differently. When the members of the World State interact with modern society, they treat it like they are going to a zoo. It’s close-minded, to be sure. But bones are not broken. When the members of the modern world interact with the World State, they beat them and reject them. In particular, the difference is thus: The members of the World State are glad that they don’t believe something as fooling as the people of modern society do, while the members of the modern world respond with anger that the World State isn’t like them. My problem is that John hated the savages for how they treated him and his mother, and then managed to turn around and do the same to a woman he was in love with. As John says on page 126, “It hurt more than anything else he’d ever felt- like fire.” They would beat him and his mother, and he hated them for it. Yet on page 194 he says: “Damned whore…Get out of here or I’ll kill you.” When I read the scene I thought hard about why he was so willing to take up the lessons of the Savage Reserve, and it took a while for me to realize that the nonconformist Bernard does the same thing, but was taught something else. When he is gawking at the Savages on the reservation, even as he tries to prove how different he is from the rest of the World State, he clearly finds ugly people, or people that look different, to be offensive, (pg 110: “He too was startled…” even though his height is one of the reasons that he is rejected (Or as rejected as one can be by members of the World State) by the other Alphas. Because of that, I think that one of the themes that Huxley was trying to get across in Brave New World was the danger of thinking that other people are uncivilized because they are different. If John had been able to accept that the people of the World State were different, he would not have lost Lenina, and he could have saved himself from being an eremitic, half-mad flagellant.
Lia Golden January 6th, 2013 Entry #6: Women in Brave New World
Huxley differentiates the role of the men and women in Brave New World. In many situations of life, men are represented superior to women.
First, it is clear that men show the overall dominance in respects to people’s opportunities in life. This is seen when the book starts out. At the Director’s tour at the Hatchery, all of the students there are males. Women are restricted to the things that they can do from an early age. Lastly, in regards to power, men hold all of the high positions of the World State. Bernard and Helmholtz are the leaders of propaganda, Henry and the Director lead the Hatchery, and Mustapha Mond is the Controller of Western Europe. With women in lower positions in the workplace, their opportunity to become equal is impossible.
Next, women are inferior to men in regards to reproduction. In the Indian society, women are more respected as they are viewed as motherly figures, and creators of life. However, in the World State the government sterilizes the fetuses of the females, but does not sterilize the men in an attempt to control reproduction. In addition, women use the Malthusian belt, which contains contraceptives and is used to avoid pregnancies. When dealing with life, the World State view men as superior, as they don’t want the future children to be in the hands of a woman.
Last, in the social setting women are viewed as sex objects. For example, in the beginning of the novel, Lenina talks to her friend Fanny about the Director. She says, “’He patted me on the behind this afternoon,’ said Lenina. ‘There, you see!’ Fanny was triumphant. ‘That shows what he stands for. The strictest conventionality.’” (42). Something that is considered disrespectful in our society today is well thought of in the World State. However, because the World State encourages both men and women to find as many sexual partners as possible and to interact freely between one another, women seem to be equal to men in actual sexual relations.
Given the time Huxley wrote Brave New World, he might have been emphasizing the early twentieth-century society, a time where many women were starting to be educated, and improving their status in society. Still, even in today’s world women are treated inferior to men. For example, in India a woman was raped and murdered by a group of men on a bus. This incident sparked an outrage, and people everywhere are protesting hoping to change the way women are treated. Link: http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21569031-horrible-attack-could-prove-turning-point-indias-women-rape-and-murder-delhi Do you all think Huxley had a greater purpose in creating the different gender roles in Brave New World?
Great point you brought up Lia! i actually was thinking about the same thing. I feel as if Huxley is purposely showing men with more dominance in the novel to show how in real life, even with the amount of education that women are give, people still live in the past and still look upon women as inferior to men. The major female we see in this novel is Lenina, and Huxley portrays her as being constantly sexualy active, which isn't a positive image. In Animal farm, Mollie and Clover are both portrayed as being less educated and Mollie is seen as very self absorbed. In both the government in Animal Farm and the government in Brave New World, we only see men in powerful positions. Although in todays society women are given greater positions, i still feel as if there will always be a stereotype against women stating that they will never be able to achieve anything greater than men.
Michelle Perez January 6, 2013 Journal Entry #6- John
John and his reactions to the society and lifestyle of what he refers to as the "Other Place" play an important role in providing an outside look and reaction to this society and system. Rather than having the point of view of someone like Lenina who drown away their emotions with a false happiness provided by soma, John expresses his anger and confusion towards this strange place. He sees the real problems with this system. John's upbringing allows him to have different values than those of this "brave new world" because of the different environment he grew up in. John values the ideas of the "savages" thought of as barbaric and primitive by the World State. John values monogamy and the art and beauty of the works of William Shakespeare. He finds these helpful in expressing himself. John sees women for more than their physical beauty and social status. For Lenina, John wants to prove himself as a man and prove his love for her. This conflicts with the teachings that "everyone belongs to each other" and that love is only physical. This contrasts even results in Lenina becoming confused by John and his feeling toward her. Lenina doesn't know how to deal with her feelings toward someone so strange and different from the men she is used to. She doesn't know how to react to these feelings, so she does so in the only way she knows how: by trying to seduce him.
Watching John's expectations and hopes crumble so suddenly and continuously was depressing. His reactions towards Lenina and his mother's death show how far he has fallen from his hopefulness of a better world. He immediatley rejects Lenina's advances in a dramatic and violent way. Even though he becomes extremely frustrated with Lenina because she keeps trying to seduce him, John fails to realize that their different upbringings restrict Lenina from being able to understand his feelings. Lenina is unable to understand that his love for her is not only physical, but (as cheesy as it sounds) sees the beauty within her. Lenina has never experienced this before and her response disappoints John. Every time John has tried to express his emotions and care for others like his mother and Lenina, and even expressing the magic he found in the words of Shakespeare to Helmholtz, he has been shut down, ridiculed, and not received the same love he has shown for others. John never could have adjusted to this new society, mainly because he chooses not to mask his true emotions. With soma, people are talking a "holiday" and trying to escape pain, sorrow, and disappointment. But the thing with a holiday (again, not to be cheesy) is that eventually, you have to go back. John wore his heart on his sleeve and left himself open for rejection. Unfortunately that happened quite a bit for his mother resented him, his father just didn't even know he existed, and his love interest was unable to match his feelings for her. But with each rejection, John had no one to run to or confide in. Helmholtz seemed to be able to understand his fondness for literature as a way of expression, but eventually even Helmholtz ridiculed John for ideas that seemed normal to him. It was John's high expectations that led him to such a profound and agonizing letdown. There will always be a wall between these two worlds. One will always see truth in their way of life and wonder how the other can live the way they do. They will never be able to understand each other because they will be so consumed in their own worlds and values to try to find common ground.
I definitely agree with you about the extremity of the divide between the savage reservation and the world state. Any character who has tried to transition has suffered because the morality taught in one is incompatible with the other. Similar to the example of John and Lenina, Linda’s transition to life on the reservation came at a high social cost. Since she had grown up being taught that everyone belongs to everyone else, she had no issue with other women’s men coming to her, and was afterwards labeled as a whore and ostracized. John lashes out at Lenina the same way people had treated his mother, because he, like the women of the village, saw it as morally wrong. The contradictions in the teachings of the two societies make transition impossible.
Halle Vernon January 7, 2013 Entry #6- The End John’s experiences in Brave New World bear a lot of resemblance to the early steps of monomyth, such as the call to adventure, the road of trials, the woman as a temptress, and atonement with the father. However, since the majority of John’s struggles at the world state are internal and not physical, he remains lost at the end of his journey and never passes the stage of atonement. Because of his delusions of grandeur, and even though he hopes of escaping both world he detested and living life in solitude, he feels he can never atone for his sins and the sins of civilization. There are many types of suffering, and John has known several. He has been starving, he has been beaten, yet his physical pain never plagued him to the same extent that his confusion and emptiness did. There is unrest is being aware in one’s insignificance, which is displayed in the dialogue with Mond. Mond explains to John and Helmholtz that once there was an experiment done to see how Epsilons would handle shorter work hours, since the technology already existed to make it possible. “Those three and a half hours of extra leisure were so far from being a source of happiness, that people felt constrained to take a holiday from them.” (224) When someone so accustomed to nonstop commitment has excess free time they feel pressured to do something valuable with it, make it really count. If they start thinking a lot, they’ll realize that rarely can find something substantial and worthwhile, and turn to a coping mechanism, in the case of the Epsilons it was soma, for John it was physical pain. People need ways to avoid a problem or to take decrease their guilt that they are unable to solve it. John is riddled with guilt about the death of his mother and his feelings for Lenina, and is incapable of forgiving himself. Combining this with his sense of insignificance, it is impossible for John to find any happiness. He wants to be a martyr- he would be happier being persecuted by others than being the source of his own misery. In a society where those who think differently are exiled, I doubt there is any type of support for those who feel alone other than soma. Was death truly John’s only escape, or did he have any chance of finding happiness or meaning in his life? (Side note- Both Mond and John chose to be martyrs, but had different ideas as to how to do it. While John chose a life of solitude and repentance, Mond chose a different kind of suffering. He chose to place the ignorant happiness of the lower classes over his own, to prevent the spread of knowledge and innovation and to stop asking questions and researching. He sacrificed what brought him joy on behalf of what he believed was best. What I wonder is why Mond was given the opportunity to advance in society and join the Controller’s Council if he had been dealing in illicit scientist and was considered a threat to stability. ) (Link to explanation of monomyth- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monomyth)
Michelle Perez December 7, 2013 Final Journal Entry
Mustapha talks to John about the importance of social stability and the importance of the lower class. The lower class in this society serve to do the jobs that the upper class don't want to do. But in this society they are programmed not to think for themselves, and unlike the Alphas in the experiment, they would have no incentive to move up in their positions, simply because they were not given the mental capacity to. This society is obsessed with order and stability that they are willing to sacrifice anything to achieve it. They are willing to give up free will, individuality in order to achieve this order. Mustapha expresses this obsession to live in a world that is comfortable and familiar. They eliminate any chances for the system to fail. But since the power to overthrow this system lies within the people, they immediately have removed the capacity to think for themselves. They all act in a kind of mob, afraid of standing out and alone. This need to be in a group fuels their need to conform and to mask their imperfections and would do anything to achieve this. Bernard had once been an outcast and had been against the use of soma, because of the way it masked the real emotions and thoughts of a person in exchange for a temporary escape from reality. But once the title of outcast had been lifted from him by John, Bernard got a taste of what it was like to be like everyone else. From then on, he did whatever it took, betrayed John's trust, in order to become one of the crowd and lose himself in becoming successful at the expense of others. John was turned into a kind of circus act, leaving him more alone than he ever was. John valued ideas that were obsolete in this society. He was made into something to gawk at for his daring to think differently, and the fact that he never gave up his individuality, even when Bernard did. He fought until the very end. But unfortunately anywhere he turned, he was ridiculed. It was sad to see John's life spiral down to quickly. Even when he wanted to finally be alone, as he had no one else in his life to turn to, this society singled him out as they had in the Savage Land, reacting to something they couldn't understand in the only way they knew how.
I imagine this society as a ant farm. Everyone doing everything in life being repetitive, only one path to move in. The "ants" work ghghg without thinking, as one continuous flow, not thinking of any life other than the one they were forced to live in. And when one dares to go against the conventional flow, they are immediately trampled my the swarm, and their individuality and free will is silenced. These people live in a world of ignorant bliss in which they are care free from the fears of death and disease, and yet have nothing real to care about, no real emotion to express. But when suddenly exposed to a completely different world, as John was when he left the refugee, or as an ant would if its path was blocked by a mere leaf, they would lose control. The people in Brave New World are made out to always be happy, and to not have to care about the difficulties of life. But when faced with a real problem, one that not even soma can mask, they will collapse under the pressure of being torn from their routine and forced to face the reality of their situation.
Oliver Stein January 6 Entry 6- Utopia Throughout reading Brave New World, my opinion of the World State has fluctuated from “They’re creepy, but harmless,” To “Creepy, and oppressing the members of the Savage Reserve,” to “A dystopian utopia.” The society is blatantly conformist; what took me a while to wrap my head around was that the society itself is not restrictive, the hypnopaedia is. In particular, I compared the relatively benign response the World State had to people like John, who were so perpendicular to them, to the violent response the members of the reserve had to Linda. With that outlook, the members of the World State are more accepting than the members of the reserve. But when you consider the death-conditioning and Hypnopaedia as forcible peer-pressure, (the equivalent of the beatings John received at the hands of the Savages.) the conditioning is far more in-depth. After I had realized that, the description of Dystopia made more sense to me. Nevertheless, while I was working on the Utopia project and desperately trying to come up with ideas that would make everyone happy and allow for everyone to have free will as we do in our society, I came to think that Brave New World actually is a utopia. However, it is a utopia that focuses on happiness over free will, something that we think of as tantamount. Nevertheless, John’s view, that tragedy and self-denial are central to the human experience, is not directly counter to the World State, but to the concept of a Utopia. I’ll use Shakespeare for my example, as it was his works that drove John to self-abuse, assault, and eventual suicide. Romeo and Juliet are tragic because of their feuding families preventing their marriage. If it was a Utopia, those two would act very nearly like members of the World State in regards to sleeping with each other. If a Utopia has no strife, it can’t have drama. Thinking about a Utopia this way made me want to research the older depictions of Utopias: How they were executed, how their societies worked. The one I looked at in particular is the very first (Utopia, by Thomas More) Utopia ever depicted, and in it everyone but the few ruling scholars learns at all, and lives simply as farmers, masons or weavers. What stood out to me most is that Utopia is, essentially, as restrictive as the World State, yet everyone is happy, as they are in the World State. That is the greatest similarity I found, as the punishments for everything are brutal. Two easy examples, though they are antithetical to the World State’s approach, are their punishments for premarital sex and adultery: enforced celibacy for life and slavery, respectively. Though that is nothing like the culture of the World State, the brutal punishments for those who step out of line (along the same lines all religions but atheism are accepted in Utopia, as Atheism does not preach of punishments for sinners, so they will be more likely to sin.) is a reactive version of the World State’s proactive hypnopaedia. The simple truth seems to be that a Utopia requires some way of restricting the people, as if they aren’t “perfect” people, their society can’t be perfect. So if you want a Utopia, you want a people enslaved. Links for Utopia: http://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/utopia/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utopia_(book)
Halle Vernon
ReplyDeleteJanuary 3rd, 2013
Entry #5
Despite the fact that many characters have similar desires or interests, their different upbringings often lead to conflict. John is struggling in this foreign world. He is a circus freak to the majority of the people here. He isn’t impressed by their technology, and doesn’t understand their customs. John is very much alone in an unfamiliar world that he doesn’t understand, and that doesn’t understand him.
He loves Lenina, and she loves him too, yet he breaks down, hits her and scares her off. They have very different ideas of love- what it means, and how it should be expressed. John comes from a world of ceremonies and he reads stories of heroes where a man would prove himself for a woman- where sex before marriage is looked down upon and love means being bonded eternally with someone. Lenina sees love as nothing more than a physical desire. She was trained to see long term or monogamous relationships as ridiculous, told again and again in her sleep that “everyone belongs to everyone else.” This is what causes their fight, which for me was one of the more sudden surprising scenes in the book. John had seemed uncomfortable in his new life for a long time, but he finally snaps when she’s throwing herself at him. The environment John was raised in shaped him just as much as the hypnodeaia did to Lenina, for just as she calls his ideas ridiculous and finds him frustrating, he lashes out and calls her a whore, hitting her as she leaves. This demonstrates the extreme effects the environment we are raised in and the beliefs we are taught on our behaviors.
Even Helmholtz, who is one of the more freethinking characters in this novel falls victim to his conditioning at times and it causes a divide between himself and John. Helmholtz has spent the novel trying to find something beyond the controlled society he has spent his entire life in, yet despite how hard he tries to be above the narrow-minded attitude of his world, he cannot escape his prejudices. When Romeo is reading Romeo and Juliet, and Helmholtz starts laughing at the concepts of it, “….the savage looked at him over the top of his book and then, as the laughter still continued, closed it indignantly, got up and, with the gesture of one who removes his pearl from before swine, locked it away in its drawer.” (185) The story, which John found personal and relatable, was nothing more to Helmholtz than “smutty absurdity” and “irresistibly comical.” Their different worlds formed such a barrier between them that they cannot understand one another, despite their shared love of words, stories, and something greater than oneself.
John’s differences have brought him nothing but confusion, loneliness and isolation. Is it possible for someone so different to find a place in a world where everyone is supposed to think the same?
Halle, I completely agree with your idea of how the upbringings of characters from Brave New World shape their ideals and beliefs, which eventually causes conflict for them. Likewise, in a previous blog entry I discussed how the characters have no free will. With this, I don’t think the members of the World State should be blamed for their beliefs, as so many factors outside of their control shape them. Still, these citizens don’t realize the immense demands they put on people to conform to society because everyone acts the same. So, with your question at the end, it is impossible for John to find a role in the World State society. These pressures of the World State make it difficult for John to deal with his individuality. This is evident at the end of the novel (spoiler), when he commits suicide. I think this is one of the most significant parts of the story because Huxley is saying that even a character like John, who fights for his ideals with passion and dedication, cannot deal with a strong opposing force. Do you think John’s suicide will cause the citizens to question their own values, or are they so conditioned that the World State will continue as it always was?
DeleteI would disagree with there being blame at all for the conformist society that is the World State; to me, John's worse. While the reactions of the members of the World State are bad, they're non-violent (Already a great deal more than can be said for some of the more vicious forms of our own ways to make people conform) and they are in response to far greater differences than we have in our own world. With such large differences, I'd say their responses are nearly genteel.
DeleteThanks for the replies! To reply to Lia, I feel John's suicide will be meaningless to the majority of members of the World State, who don't understand his morals or emotions. If anyone were to be effected it would be Helmholtz and/or Mond. Helmholtz and John, despite their differences in philosophies and upbringings could share writings with one another (at least until Helmholtz laughed at Romeo and Juliet)and had a closer bond than most other people within the world state. If Helmholtz hears of it in his exile, I'm sure he would write a lot about it. The reason why I think Mond would care is because of how aware he is about many things- science, religion, and history. Mond and John's dialogue toward the end of the book was some of my favorite in the entire novel, because you see people who truly want to understand the world. But Mond and Helmholtz are the exception to the rule, and the majority would either never hear of it, and the ones who did would write it off as a genetic error, or a crazy savage.
DeleteJohn was never going to find a place in this society. He could never learn to understand the ideals of this society as much as they could learn to understand his. I agree with Oliver that it was John's violent responses to this lack of understanding that led to his end. Both groups of people were so absorbed in their own lifestyles that anything out of what they think is ordinary they immediately shut themselves down to and don't try to understand. Everyone John had trusted turned on him and left him alone to be ridiculed and tortured without anyone to turn to. He lacked what my parents like to call a "support system." When trying to adjust to a new place, like my family had to do a few years ago, some people in my family could not find someone that could help them deal with starting in a new environment than what they were used to. This support system is necessary because when surrounded by strangers, it is important to have at least one person to turn to when things reach their hardest point.
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DeleteAlexandra Rinaldi
ReplyDeleteJanuary 3rd, 2013
Entry #5: Clashing Societies & Death Conditioning
I want to discuss two scenes that disturbed me, but that I found extremely significant to the plot. These scenes include the fight between John and Lenina in chapter 13, and the scene in chapter 14 when John visits his mother in the hospital. In chapter 13, the sharp differences between the “savage” and a loyal citizen of the World State is amplified, as John becomes violent when Lenina goes against his morals. In chapter 14, the main ideas of death-conditioning are touched upon and the savages again, sharply differ from the people of the World State.
I think that Huxley was attempting to express the violence and danger that arises when two civilizations that are so radically different are forced to interact. On page 190 after Lenina stripped, John was disgusted and started to scream he “pushed her away with such force that she staggered and fell.” Much violence comes from passionate people who feel such loyalty and commitment towards the way they were raised and their moral values and beliefs. In this case, John clearly feels absolutely dedicated to his opinions on sexual relationships, which he believes should only happen between people when they are in love. John’s strong physical attraction to Lenina combined with his conflicting devoutness to stay true to his beliefs leaves him angry and violent calling her grotesque names likes “Whore!” and “Impudent strumpet!” John goes from being amazed by Lenina’s beauty and personality to losing all respect for her and looking down on her as an inferior being and threatening her to “get out of my sight or I’ll kill you,”(p.190). Johns loss of admiration towards Lenina was directly connected to her going against what John believed was ethically correct, which in this case was participating in sex before falling in love or getting married. The clashing morals of John and Lenina are what lead to their fall out and what drives John to act so violently. This has been the reason for many holy wars and genocides throughout history; Peoples strong feelings of devotion towards their principles combined with the one sided view that their ideas are superior can lead to violence and resentment.
For example, Napoleon Bonaparte of France was a great military leader who strived to gain independence for the nation. He was a revolutionary who was willing to kill anyone who went against him or got in his way of achieving his goals of unifying and strengthening France. Napoleons nationalistic feelings clashed with those of the conservatives who wanted to go back to France’s old regimes and this lead to much violence and persecution.
(Continuation of Entry#5)
ReplyDeleteThe scene in chapter 14, which discusses death conditioning in the World State society, really stood out to me for obvious reasons. The idea of conditioning little children to accept the concept of death is disturbing; because it is such a complex concept in today’s society and its something that many people struggle with understanding. This chapter disturbs me and the death of Linda is unsettling and miserable. The savages are already misfits within society because they were never conditioned and have knowledge of the past and the outside world. They are also able to age and lose their beauty but this was more of Linda’s problem. When John makes a scene about his mothers choking, the nurse selfishly reprimands him “Think of the little ones…You might decondition...”(p.206). John then proceeds to uncontrollably sob at the foot of his mothers bed, which aggravated the nurse into thinking “he’s undoing all their wholesome death-conditioning with this disgusting outcry….It might give them the most disastrous ideas about the subject, might upset them into reacting in the entirely wrong way,”(206). Here, the nurse is expressing her worry of the children growing up to fear death and look at it “as though death were something terrible,”(206). This was interesting to me, and it related back to the idea of ignorance. The children are raised being comfortable with death and know it only as a way of life, while John must deal with feelings of grief and remorse. This lead me to question our society, and again I ask myself: Would I rather be ignorant to a situation and be able to live happily with it or would I rather be educated living and unhappily?
The gap between the savages and the people of the World State civilization is deepened and becomes more apparent as the plot moves forward. How do you feel about the fact that this civilization death-conditions their children? Do you think that when it comes to death this is a beneficial or dangerous way of thinking?
Rosie, I agree with you that death-conditioning children is very unsettling. However, the World State finds it necessary to condition its citizens to accept death because if they didn’t, religions may emerge that challenge the World State. During John and Mustapha’s conversation about religion, it is brought up that religion is a result of fear of death. In other words, people create religions to make death less cruel by believing that life continues after detah. However, by conditioning the children to accept death rather than fear it, the World State is preventing the creation of religions that may oppose it.
DeleteVanessa, your question of Ignorant Bliss/Enlightened Cynicism strikes at a core question of the novel; indeed, the two camps of the World State and the Savage Reservation represent the sides nearly perfectly, as John's desire for truth and knowledge drives him to grief, while the other characters are happy knowing what they know. As for myself, I think I would prefer the happy unknown, assuming it does not make the situation better or worse either way.
DeleteThank you for your replies! Lauren, I agree with this idea of religion and I actually just wrote about it on Vanessa's entry! The more I think about the, the more i question the idea of religion and death. I often say i'd rather be ignorant to these horribles ideas than know all the horrible truths there are out there. The society created in this book, in my opinion, was as close to a Utopia as you can get. If everyone is happy and ignorant to anything scary and horrible in life, even if it's because they are conditioned this way, it's better than hating your life and being miserable. Although this society isn't fair in any way shape or form and extremely disturbing, it has made me realize that I'd rather be happy and doing something miserable and not knowing anything else, than living a miserable life. Although these people are conditioned, they are happy. And happiness is key to any successful/ society in my opinion.
DeleteVenesa Rugova
ReplyDeleteDecember 4,2013
Entry #5: Religion
In Chapter 17 of the novel, the aspect of religion and its nonexistence in the World State is sprung up. This is the first time that Huxley has mentioned anything about religion and its role in the State, and it is revealed that there is no such thing as religion or even any knowledge of a God among the people.
Religion in the World State is a matter that does not fit in with the beliefs and morals of the State. During a conversation between John and Mustapha Mond, Mustapha states that the reason the state does not mention anything about God is because the whole idea of a God and religion is hundred of years old and does not apply to modern time. Also, in one of the books Mustapha re-sights, it states, “We did not make ourselves, we cannot be supreme over ourselves. We are not our own master. We are God’s property” (232). This statement goes against entirely of what the World State does. In this society, the State has certain powers of God in the sense that they are able to control the birth of humans and brainwash them to thinking what they want. The whole idea of a creator greater in than World State would be a shock and would arise questioning among the people on the superiority of the State. Another book the Mustapha has, states that when a man grows older, he turns to religion due to the idea of death and what comes after death. Contrast from the book, the World State does not have to worry about old age because that too is nonexistent and therefore there is no need for religion for that purpose. The two also argue wether the belief in God is natural by which Mond responds by saying that one does not believe by instinct, but instead that people believe what they have been conditioned to believe (Basically a motto that the World state lives by). The same goes for God in a way that people believe in God because they are conditioned to.
Along with the State being able to control people’s minds, they are able to control happenings and even the emotions of the people which is another aspect of why religion is not needed. In the novel, John mentions, “But God’s the reason for everything noble and fine and heroic” (236). During a time like this, there are no wars and therefore there is no existence of nobility and heroism. Because the government controls what thoughts the people have, no one attempts to rebel against the government. The government makes the people believe that they are happy and if anything unpleasant were to happen, there is always the soma which the people of the World State like Lenina turn to anytime they are suffering or want to escape mentally. The soma works just like religion in the way that both are turned to in times of need and suffering and allow people to let there soul escape from agonizing feelings. Although there is no religion in the World State, the soma stands in place for religion. This was something I found very interesting in that the way Huxley was able to string together a drug and religion is fascinating. This part makes one question whether religion can truly allow a person to become pure and release all suffering, or can that be easily done but just a simple drug?
On the topic of religion, most faiths are something people turn to when they are at a loss for answers, and the World State tries to train people to not ask questions at all. We see Linda as an example of this in earlier chapters, how she couldn't explain chemicals to John even though she worked in the Fertilization Room, and that those on the Savage Reservation turned to religion for answers they couldn't find in times of trouble. The World State's attempt at making religion obsolete is to take away instances when one is suffering. In my opinion, neither religion or drugs can release all suffering, they are different coping mechanisms. Religion provides a sense that it will pass, or that it is not without a greater purpose, and drugs like soma provide a temporary release, but there is no way to fully escape reality.
DeleteI completely agree with Halle's comment above. In my opinion, religion and drugs are a way to get away from suffering temporarily but in the wrong one, if you are internally battling something religion and drugs are a good way to forget for a while and get a sense of comfort. World State tried to compensate for the absence of religion by creating soma to get people's minds away from reality and allow them to access the "greater good" and feelings of security. I also agree with what you said about religion being an aspect of control within a society. Religion definitely controls people and in my opinion, scares people into following the rules. For example, the Catholic Church preaches that if you go against god by breaking the commandments you won't get into heaven. Since death puts fear in almost everyone, most people will abide by all the rules so that they feel secure and more comforted about what happens after death and the afterlife. Since people in the world state aren't afraid of death, they need no religion to look towards for comfort.
Delete(Continuation of Entry#5)
ReplyDeleteChapter 17 has without a doubt been one of my favorite chapters because it truly questions the accuracy of religion. Unlike the World State, todays world is full of wars and fighting and because of that people send up fearing and agonizing more. In our world, there are multiple religions with contrasting back rounds, yet each religion interrupts the thought of death and after life. Throughout history, people have gone through life trying to be morally right people in order to gain accesses to a life that they have been taught. I would have to agree with Mond when he says that people believe in God and even and afterlife because of what religion had taught them. On the contrary, the idea of the soma is interesting, in that it brings the same blissfulness to people like religion, but the soma only lasts for a few hours. This is definitely seen in our society with drug abuse and how people turn to drugs such as pain killers to take away pain, but because the drugs only last for a little while, this leads to the constant overdose. The difference I feel is that while a drug will take away ones suffering for an hour or so, religion is everlasting. As this chapter came to an end, I left questing wether religion is in some ways similar to the World State in being able to control the thoughts and feeling of its followers. Also, does religion control the thoughts of its followers?
I decided to do more research on drugs and their addictions and found this link on the cause of drug abuse: http://www.healthyplace.com/addictions/drug-addiction/drug-abuse-causes-what-is-the-cause-of-drug-abuse/
I also fond another article on religion and the reasons why people turn to it :http://www.angelfire.com/fl4/entropy/religion/why.html
Alexandra Rinaldi
ReplyDeleteDecember 5, 2012
Entry#6: Final Entry: Book Overview
Utopia is a word used to describe a “perfect” society and that is exactly what the people in this book have tried to create. And for the most part they have succeeded. Almost everybody is happy with maybe the exception of people like Bernard. Nobody feels anything too deeply so nobody can hurt that badly. Everyone is beautiful because everyone is fake. Everyone is healthy because diseases are nonexistent and vaccinations are given to people when they are babies. Aldous Huxley had more or less created a “perfect” world or a utopia.
One of the biggest points Huxley makes in his book is about feelings, moods, and emotions. He suggests that all pain comes from desire so by taking away much of the desire there will be less pain. He does this by showing a community where everyone gets pretty much whatever they want and they’re happy with what they have because that’s how they were conditioned, if someone becomes sad or any inconveniences are introduced the person will take a soma and wake up forgetful and happy. In a world with fewer feelings there are fewer problems because “you can’t make tragedies without social instability,”(220). There is no depression or desire or need for anything more. This idea is discussed in detail on page 220, when the Controller is talking to John, the savage, and Bernard about his view on society. He talks heavily about stability arguing, “they’re so conditioned that they practically can’t help behaving how they ought to behave. And if anything should go wrong, there’s soma,” The people of world state have no emotions because they are conditioned to be this way and if they ever find themselves disagreeing with society, they take a soma to rid themselves from unhappy thoughts.
The Controller describes soma as “Christianity without tears,”(238) meaning the people get comfort and happiness from this drug. There is always soma to fall back on “to calm your anger, to reconcile you to your enemies, to make you patient and long-suffering,”(238). All of these things are exactly what religion is for, to give people a feeling of comfort and stability, to keep the people in line and following all the rules. Soma is an escape from reality and a way of controlling the people within the society.
Youth and Aging is another interesting topic brought up in this book. The way it works in their world is that they take special medicine and are conditioned to be beautiful and youthful. It works until they reach the age of sixty and then they are put to death. But everybody always looks good and young and only the people on the Savage Reservation get wrinkles and look older as they age. This is why everyone was so disgusted and appalled by Linda when she was first introduced. So everyone from the World State stays physically young and beautiful for his or her entire lives while people in the Savage Community age, wrinkle, and gain weight, as they get old. While the Savage and the Controller discuss the idea of beauty, Shakespeare is brought up. The Savage questions why they don’t promote Shakespearean literature and plays and the controller’s response is simple; “Because it’s old. We haven’t any use for old things here…Particularly when they’re beautiful. Beauty’s attractive and we don’t want people to be attracted by old things. We want them to like the new ones.”(219). This connects to the idea of brainwash and Individualism versus Community. People in the World State society are only taught to accept new ideas and are incapable of comprehending old ones. If a person is “too self-consciously individual to fit into community-life,”(227) they are exiled and sent away to an island so they don’t affect or turn anyone else against the government and social system. The people who are unsatisfied with the orthodoxy of this society are sent away to maintain the stability of the World State society.
(Continuation of entry#6)
ReplyDelete********SPOILER********Johns unhappiness and disgust with himself for being exposed to this civilization leads him to start inflicting pain on himself by whipping himself. A crowd of world state people sees this and begins an orgy. He finally gives in, goes against his morals and has sex with Lenina. His guilt is so great that he inflicts the ultimate pain and kills himself. With this idea, I feel that Aldous Huxley was trying to express the inability of ever creating a truly Utopian society where everyone is happy. I also believe he wanted to demonstrate the negative impacts of a community based society on an individual person. Especially being a teenager in high school, I can relate to this idea of the struggle to maintain individualism in such a community based place. Many people in the world find it so hard to fit in; they feel their only escape is suicide. Do you think Aldous Huxley did a good job predicting the future of society? On a smaller scale, could some of his messages about the dangers of technology and conformity be related to some problems in today’s world?
I completely agree with you Rosie when you talk about the pressures with fitting in in todays world too. The fact that most of us spend our entire childhood trying to find a way to belong is absurd when you think about it, yet we still do it. A person goes to such great lengths to fit in and yet sometimes a person is denied and because of that they think hurting themselves is the only way out. What's even sadder is that even for those who do whatever it takes to not be sucked into these pressures like John, eventually society catches up and drags them down too. I feel as if eventually the people in the society, like John, will just die out. I believe this because I don't think it's capable for the people to stay happy and naive forever, and sooner or later, others like Bernard and John will come in and question this world once again.
DeleteI completely agree with you, Vanessa. When it seems that everyone is rejecting you, you start to question yourself and wonder why you are being treated this way, why you can't be like everyone else. Even when you have a feeling that what seems normal and mainstream isn't necessarily the right choice, you can't help but question yourself. It's hard to stand alone so we try so hard to gain the acceptance of others when we should wonder if it really even matters. We have spent most of our adolescence trying to fade into the background of what is considered normal, that sometimes we forget to ask ourselves what we value and what we think is right, and forget that fear of being different.
DeleteLauren Prisco
ReplyDeleteJanuary 5, 2013
Entry #5: Caste System
One aspect of the World State that bothers me the most is the caste system, which divides citizens based on their roles in society. According to the Director, “the bottles [of embryos] come in [the Social Predestination Room] to be predestined in detail” (10). In other words, a person’s social position is determined before he/she is alive and can never be altered. Therefore, free will is eliminated and the World State has complete authority over the lives of its citizens.
Social divisions range from the Alphas (who run factories and fulfill leadership roles) to the Epsilons (who perform insignificant, mindless jobs). Nevertheless, the Epsilons are content with their social placement because they are conditioned to be unintelligent, and therefore unable to perform more challenging jobs. This idea that citizens are programmed to perform specific tasks to benefit the World State reminds me of a factory, in which every machine does a specific job continuously until it is no longer useful. In other words, I feel the caste system dehumanizes the people of the World State because it takes away their free will and autonomy.
Similar to the World State, India also has a rigid caste system. First of all, both citizens of the World State and India are born into their caste, never allowing them to experience freedom. However, the most distinct connection between the caste systems of India and the World State appears among the outcastes. In the World State, adversaries of modern technology are placed in a separate caste known as the “Savages.” These Savages are kept on reservations to prevent the spread of their “primitive” culture. Similarly, the Untouchables of India’s caste system are discriminated against and kept separate from the other castes. Still, although the Savages are discriminated against, they have more freedom than the other castes because their society isn’t regulated by the World State. Therefore, I feel that Huxley’s point is the less involved the government is in social structure, the happier the citizens will be. What do you think of this inference?
Link: http://adaniel.tripod.com/untouchables.htm
I agree with what you are saying Lauren with government's interference in social structure. I believe that people will be happier if government has less interference in social life because it's the one thing that gives people the slightest bit of freedom. I do't think the caste system is fair at all because a person shouldn't have to be born into a certain life. Everyone in society should be given the same opportunities in life and be able to move up in social class based on their accomplishments rather then the life the were once born into. You could have a person who is born into the lowest caste system, but is destined for greatness yet there is nothing he can do because of his backround. There is a reason the world constantly struggles with equality and a reason that foreigners leave their homes in order to get a chance at becoming equal. We all strive for a life where we can accomplish our goals and dreams and be able to be given a chance to succeed. But, some governments in the world won't allow that which is what leads to unhappiness of the people. This makes me think if there will ever be a time where all will once stand equal beside each other? (but i highly doubt it just by looking at the world now)
DeleteI think your comparison of the social classes in Brave New World to the classes in the Hindu caste system is very interesting because it shows how all organized societies strive for balance and stability, whether they use science or religion in order to do so. Likewise, both justify their methods of maintaining order. The Alphas in the World State believe that it is necessary to have people such as Epsilons preforming their type of labor in order for social stability, and justify it with facts and experiments, whereas the caste system in India is justified by religious teachings saying that you are born into your life based on you past actions, and you will be rewarded or punished again based on this one. Overall, its interesting to think about how the quest for control and stabiity exists on such a broad scale.
DeleteLia Golden
ReplyDeleteJanuary 5th, 2012
Entry #5: Happiness in Brave New World
A remarkable scene in Brave New World is the debate between John and Mustapha Mond about the values of the World State during chapter 16 and 17. In this debate, the arguments for the World State presented by Mond are shown in a raw and truthful way. Mond argues against the freedom of its citizens, and justifies the World State’s actions. These measures that the World State take create stability, which is essential to creating a “perfect society” in Mond’s point of view.
A specific argument that interested me was the idea of happiness in the World State. Mond believes that the government must limit the happiness of its citizens. He says, “’…our world is not the same as Othello's world…you can't make tragedies without social instability. The world's stable now. People are happy; they get what they want, and they never get what they can’t get…’” (Page 220). Mond is convincing with this statement because the people of the World State are well off, safe, never ill, and if they feeling even the slight hint of sadness, can take soma and feel better. Yet, do these citizens really know what true happiness really is? They are unable to experience the intense feelings, passions, commitments, and relationships-things can establish anything from pure bliss to tragedy. So, this poses an interesting question for me: If the citizens of the World State had the opportunity to not be conditioned by the government, and have the freedom to achieve their own happiness, would they take it?
The idea of happiness additionally made me wonder how it is defined in a more scientific way. I looked this up, and ended up finding this article on PBS, which shows the viewpoints of a few physiologists. What do you all think of happiness-is it something we can attain on our own, or formed through other aspects of our life? Link: http://www.pbs.org/thisemotionallife/topic/happiness/what-happiness.
Lia, the question you pose in the third paragraph is interesting. First off, in the debate between John and Mustapha, Mustapha basically states that happiness and truth are incompatible. For this reason, the World State chooses happiness over truth and uses methods like soma to prevent true emotions from ruining peoples’ happiness. Therefore, I don’t feel that the people of the World State would want the opportunity to not be conditioned and achieve happiness on their own because in doing so, they would also have to experience unpleasant emotions. In other words, the people of the World State are so used to only being happy and never behaving truly like humans that they would be overwhelmed by all of the emotions true humans feel.
DeleteYes, I agree with your response to my question. It is impossible for these characters to change because of how conditioned they are in the first place. This is an aspect of the novel that really bothers me, so it frustrates me even more (spoiler) when John commits suicide at the end of the story. I feel like he was the only one who had the opportunity to spark change in the World State because of his fame and effect over the other characters. Maybe Huxley creates this death to merely emphasize how Brave New World is a dystopia-and there is no way of changing it. This might be a random thought, but I always wonder what life is for the people exiled from the World State. Do you think they have established a better society since moving and are now happy?
DeleteI notice that you say you were frustrated that John wasn't able to bring down the dystopia. While I oppose the methods of the World State, I think that, once in place, it should remain. After all, it's implied that knowledge and inquisitive feelings aren't all purged- just sent to Iceland, as you say. But consider this: How often do people say "I don't like math/reading is boring/I don't like drama" Clearly, the lofty peaks of emotion and knowledge do not appeal to all. Because of that, I would say that, if offered impersonally, most people would prefer to live in the World State. Just because you aren't in control doesn't mean you can't live well; children do all the time.
DeleteI absolutely loved the scene with Mond and John's conversation. Mond's argument is very fascinating- and absolutely valid. At the same time though, what is the point of a society if it merely exists? We discover that they stopped innovation in order to keep the lower classes working, very similarly to China did in its falling years, and that’s usually a mark of a dimming society. If it is society without science, literature, discovery or philosophy, it’s hardly a society at all. Interestingly enough, this dystopia emerged from the ideas of people who thought they were doing what was morally in the best interest of the world.
DeleteLauren Prisco
ReplyDeleteJanuary 6, 2013
Entry #6: The Dangers of Technology
One theme prevalent among the World State and our world is the dangers of technology. In Brave New World, technology provides the World State with total control over the people and eliminates truth and individuality from society. In our world, technology has many negative effects including lack of social skills, radiation, pollution, and unemployment.
The primary danger of the World State technology is that is allows for a totalitarian government. The World State controls every aspect of its citizens' lives through hypnopaedic lessons, soma and pre-natal conditioning. Although these technologies create an illusion of happiness for the people, it also dehumanizes them because they can’t experience true human emotions. For example, Mustapha Mond states, “there’s always soma to give you a holiday from the facts” (237-8). Also, the Bokanovsky process and conditioning prevent freedom and individuality among the people. Overall, while the World State technology creates a seemingly happy and safe environment, it eliminates human emotions, truth and freedom.
Today, technology has many negative effects on society, the environment and the economy. Firstly, the constant use of texting, video chatting, and social media prevents true human interaction, causing a lack of social skills. For instance, the anonymity of interacting via computer provides confidence for some people that leads to cyber-bullying. This is a major issue in our society because kids no longer know how to interact in person. Today’s technology also negatively affects our health since radiation from cell phones, microwaves, etc. causes cancer. Additionally, factories and vehicles pollute the air and cause environmental damage such as global warming. However, factories and machines have an even larger effect on our economy because they replace the need for manual labor, causing increased unemployment. While these are the major issues of modern technology, the list continues. Overall, while technology has certain beneficial aspects, I wonder if the negative aspects outweigh them? Also, I wonder if our society would be better off without technology? For instance, the San people of Africa live completely free of technology, yet they lead perfectly happy and simple lives. While the San people’s main concern is food and water, we worry about education and employment. Does this mean that that technology is the source of all of our problems?
Link: http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~eroberts/cs201/projects/technology-dangers/issues.html
Link: http://www.unesco.org/new/en/natural-sciences/priority-areas/links/resource-management/publications/articles/the-san-sustainable-development-before-its-time/
Lauren, you pose an interesting question when you ask if technology is the source of all of our problems today. On one hand, I agree with you: technology alters communication between people, affects our economy, and causes pollution. For example, I found a video from Ted Talks that explains that our children could possibly be a new species because of the impact of technology. Link: http://www.ted.com/talks/juan_enriquez_will_our_kids_be_a_different_species.html
DeleteYet, would we want our government to control and limit the new ideas we are exposed to? In regards to Brave New World, the government bans all old things-such as Shakespeare and the Bible, as they want its citizens to have a consumer mindset, and only to want new things. Still, they monitor how much technology the citizens of the World State experience, as it might create instability. I think that if more people in our world become aware with the downsides of technology, can they have the have the knowledge to make the better choice in how they treat it.
You make a great point about how the San people are happier with simple lives compared to our complex lives of jobs and education. However, I would say that it is the reason why a previous statement of your entry is incorrect. In particular, you say that the technology of the World State creates a"Seemingly" happy environment, and you refer to the World State's "Illusion" of happiness. However, I would say that the members of the World State are not falsely happy. They are happy for different reasons than we are, but most of them are incredibly happy. Further, it could be said that the carefree drugged up happiness of the World State is quite a bit closer to the tranquility of the San than we are in the modern world.
DeleteVenesa Rugova
ReplyDeleteDecember 6, 2013
Entry #6: Happiness vs truth
One idea that the novel constantly brings up if the difference between happiness and the truth. In the World State. the major goal of the government is ensure that the people are happy. On the other hand, for John, truth is much more substantial.
In the World State, babies are brainwashed to think and accept the class they are put in. Due to the fact that the World State is able to control the people’s thoughts and ways of life, this also leads them to having control over people’s emotions. If anything were to upset the people, then the soma would be used. Soma clouds the realities of the present and replaces them with happy hallucinations, and is thus a tool for promoting social stability. Mustapha Mond even states, “there’s always soma to give you a holiday from the facts” (237-238). It’s the governments tool to ensure the people will remain naive of the truth and stay happy. The government does what it can to prevent the public from knowing any truth about what scientific activities that the government is doing and the government also attempts to destroy all kinds of “human” truths, such as love, friendship, and personal connection. Along with that, any history of the world is nonexistent in the State. In this society, truth is no longer an aspect of society and people no longer attempt to scout for knowledge. But it’s because humans fear what the truth withholds that leads them to avoiding the truth. For example, Lenina is a clear example of a person in the World State who constantly turns to soma to escape situations like when she is on the reservation. The state is manufactured on desires and happiness rather than rationality and truth.
A person who accepts truth over happiness is John. Being the ultimate outside, John is foreign to the norms of the State. He is disgusted with the sexual desires and manufactural ways of the State. Yet, John is still fully aware of his sexual desire for Lenina and is slowly being pulled into the desires of the state that he eventually inflicts self-punishment to purge himself of the contamination of civilization. It’s not until the end of the novel that John is sucked into his desires and the final straw is drawn which is John’s death. John’s participation in the final orgy and his suicide at the end of the novel can be seen as the result of an insanity created by the conflict between his values and the reality of the world around him. John shows that although the truth is fearful, happiness on the other hand may be blissful for a moment, but it isn’t something that can hide one from the truth forever.
(Continuation of entry 6)
ReplyDeleteAs the novel closes, I still question truth and happiness. In our society today we try to balance the two but happiness will always be just a bit stronger for humans than the truth. Although we don’t have the soma to take us away from the misery’s of life, people still turn to drugs and even lies to cover up the truth. Although the truth seems unbearable at times, I ultimately think that the truth sets us free more than happiness. When we look at John and what has happened to him, we see the effects of what some do to experiance the slightest bit of happiness even if it means throwing away all our values away. Even after John’s slight moment of happiness, he transitioned to being disgusted and mortified with what he had done and because of that he ended his life. In any of the novels that we have read this year, can we find a character who truly will live or has a happy life? Look at the animals in Animal Farm and how at the end of that novel the animals walked away from the window with no hope to hold on to. Or in Of Mice and Men, George had to do the hardest thing by killing Lenny which will always cause sorrow in his heart. And lastly, The Glass Menagerie ended with all the characters in misery with not being able to escape their lifes. I feel as if most authors are trying to tell us that happiness is something that isn’t eternal. This makes me question happiness and wether if it’s worth having than the truth. Either way the terror and agony of the world will always find cracks to slip into. But my final question is, Whats more valuable, truth or happiness?
Oliver Stein
ReplyDeleteJanuary 6, 2013
Entry 5- Comfortable
I have lost all sympathy for John’s character, as he is acting like a spoilt brat. Mustapha Mond didn’t let him leave, (Though I don’t see why; he isn’t actually considered further scientifically, which was ostensibly the reason he wasn’t allowed to go to Iceland.) but his gift of a home in a isolated, natural place, as well as a minor sinecure, is far nicer than he needed to be. After his debate with Mustapha Mond, he loses practically all sympathy I had for his character. In particular I despise how close-minded he became. Quite honestly, I expected that by the end of Brave New World the World State would be more villainous, but it’s the opposite.
At the time I saw Linda’s shunning by the savages on the Reservation as a clever balance by Huxley to show that modern society isn’t perfect either, but now I see it quite differently. When the members of the World State interact with modern society, they treat it like they are going to a zoo. It’s close-minded, to be sure. But bones are not broken. When the members of the modern world interact with the World State, they beat them and reject them. In particular, the difference is thus: The members of the World State are glad that they don’t believe something as fooling as the people of modern society do, while the members of the modern world respond with anger that the World State isn’t like them.
My problem is that John hated the savages for how they treated him and his mother, and then managed to turn around and do the same to a woman he was in love with. As John says on page 126, “It hurt more than anything else he’d ever felt- like fire.” They would beat him and his mother, and he hated them for it. Yet on page 194 he says: “Damned whore…Get out of here or I’ll kill you.” When I read the scene I thought hard about why he was so willing to take up the lessons of the Savage Reserve, and it took a while for me to realize that the nonconformist Bernard does the same thing, but was taught something else. When he is gawking at the Savages on the reservation, even as he tries to prove how different he is from the rest of the World State, he clearly finds ugly people, or people that look different, to be offensive, (pg 110: “He too was startled…” even though his height is one of the reasons that he is rejected (Or as rejected as one can be by members of the World State) by the other Alphas. Because of that, I think that one of the themes that Huxley was trying to get across in Brave New World was the danger of thinking that other people are uncivilized because they are different. If John had been able to accept that the people of the World State were different, he would not have lost Lenina, and he could have saved himself from being an eremitic, half-mad flagellant.
Lia Golden
ReplyDeleteJanuary 6th, 2013
Entry #6: Women in Brave New World
Huxley differentiates the role of the men and women in Brave New World. In many situations of life, men are represented superior to women.
First, it is clear that men show the overall dominance in respects to people’s opportunities in life. This is seen when the book starts out. At the Director’s tour at the Hatchery, all of the students there are males. Women are restricted to the things that they can do from an early age. Lastly, in regards to power, men hold all of the high positions of the World State. Bernard and Helmholtz are the leaders of propaganda, Henry and the Director lead the Hatchery, and Mustapha Mond is the Controller of Western Europe. With women in lower positions in the workplace, their opportunity to become equal is impossible.
Next, women are inferior to men in regards to reproduction. In the Indian society, women are more respected as they are viewed as motherly figures, and creators of life. However, in the World State the government sterilizes the fetuses of the females, but does not sterilize the men in an attempt to control reproduction. In addition, women use the Malthusian belt, which contains contraceptives and is used to avoid pregnancies. When dealing with life, the World State view men as superior, as they don’t want the future children to be in the hands of a woman.
Last, in the social setting women are viewed as sex objects. For example, in the beginning of the novel, Lenina talks to her friend Fanny about the Director. She says, “’He patted me on the behind this afternoon,’ said Lenina. ‘There, you see!’ Fanny was triumphant. ‘That shows what he stands for. The strictest conventionality.’” (42). Something that is considered disrespectful in our society today is well thought of in the World State. However, because the World State encourages both men and women to find as many sexual partners as possible and to interact freely between one another, women seem to be equal to men in actual sexual relations.
Given the time Huxley wrote Brave New World, he might have been emphasizing the early twentieth-century society, a time where many women were starting to be educated, and improving their status in society. Still, even in today’s world women are treated inferior to men. For example, in India a woman was raped and murdered by a group of men on a bus. This incident sparked an outrage, and people everywhere are protesting hoping to change the way women are treated. Link: http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21569031-horrible-attack-could-prove-turning-point-indias-women-rape-and-murder-delhi Do you all think Huxley had a greater purpose in creating the different gender roles in Brave New World?
Great point you brought up Lia! i actually was thinking about the same thing. I feel as if Huxley is purposely showing men with more dominance in the novel to show how in real life, even with the amount of education that women are give, people still live in the past and still look upon women as inferior to men. The major female we see in this novel is Lenina, and Huxley portrays her as being constantly sexualy active, which isn't a positive image. In Animal farm, Mollie and Clover are both portrayed as being less educated and Mollie is seen as very self absorbed. In both the government in Animal Farm and the government in Brave New World, we only see men in powerful positions. Although in todays society women are given greater positions, i still feel as if there will always be a stereotype against women stating that they will never be able to achieve anything greater than men.
ReplyDeleteMichelle Perez
ReplyDeleteJanuary 6, 2013
Journal Entry #6- John
John and his reactions to the society and lifestyle of what he refers to as the "Other Place" play an important role in providing an outside look and reaction to this society and system. Rather than having the point of view of someone like Lenina who drown away their emotions with a false happiness provided by soma, John expresses his anger and confusion towards this strange place. He sees the real problems with this system. John's upbringing allows him to have different values than those of this "brave new world" because of the different environment he grew up in. John values the ideas of the "savages" thought of as barbaric and primitive by the World State. John values monogamy and the art and beauty of the works of William Shakespeare. He finds these helpful in expressing himself. John sees women for more than their physical beauty and social status. For Lenina, John wants to prove himself as a man and prove his love for her. This conflicts with the teachings that "everyone belongs to each other" and that love is only physical. This contrasts even results in Lenina becoming confused by John and his feeling toward her. Lenina doesn't know how to deal with her feelings toward someone so strange and different from the men she is used to. She doesn't know how to react to these feelings, so she does so in the only way she knows how: by trying to seduce him.
Watching John's expectations and hopes crumble so suddenly and continuously was depressing. His reactions towards Lenina and his mother's death show how far he has fallen from his hopefulness of a better world. He immediatley rejects Lenina's advances in a dramatic and violent way. Even though he becomes extremely frustrated with Lenina because she keeps trying to seduce him, John fails to realize that their different upbringings restrict Lenina from being able to understand his feelings. Lenina is unable to understand that his love for her is not only physical, but (as cheesy as it sounds) sees the beauty within her. Lenina has never experienced this before and her response disappoints John. Every time John has tried to express his emotions and care for others like his mother and Lenina, and even expressing the magic he found in the words of Shakespeare to Helmholtz, he has been shut down, ridiculed, and not received the same love he has shown for others. John never could have adjusted to this new society, mainly because he chooses not to mask his true emotions. With soma, people are talking a "holiday" and trying to escape pain, sorrow, and disappointment. But the thing with a holiday (again, not to be cheesy) is that eventually, you have to go back. John wore his heart on his sleeve and left himself open for rejection. Unfortunately that happened quite a bit for his mother resented him, his father just didn't even know he existed, and his love interest was unable to match his feelings for her. But with each rejection, John had no one to run to or confide in. Helmholtz seemed to be able to understand his fondness for literature as a way of expression, but eventually even Helmholtz ridiculed John for ideas that seemed normal to him. It was John's high expectations that led him to such a profound and agonizing letdown. There will always be a wall between these two worlds. One will always see truth in their way of life and wonder how the other can live the way they do. They will never be able to understand each other because they will be so consumed in their own worlds and values to try to find common ground.
I definitely agree with you about the extremity of the divide between the savage reservation and the world state. Any character who has tried to transition has suffered because the morality taught in one is incompatible with the other. Similar to the example of John and Lenina, Linda’s transition to life on the reservation came at a high social cost. Since she had grown up being taught that everyone belongs to everyone else, she had no issue with other women’s men coming to her, and was afterwards labeled as a whore and ostracized. John lashes out at Lenina the same way people had treated his mother, because he, like the women of the village, saw it as morally wrong. The contradictions in the teachings of the two societies make transition impossible.
DeleteHalle Vernon
ReplyDeleteJanuary 7, 2013
Entry #6- The End
John’s experiences in Brave New World bear a lot of resemblance to the early steps of monomyth, such as the call to adventure, the road of trials, the woman as a temptress, and atonement with the father. However, since the majority of John’s struggles at the world state are internal and not physical, he remains lost at the end of his journey and never passes the stage of atonement. Because of his delusions of grandeur, and even though he hopes of escaping both world he detested and living life in solitude, he feels he can never atone for his sins and the sins of civilization. There are many types of suffering, and John has known several. He has been starving, he has been beaten, yet his physical pain never plagued him to the same extent that his confusion and emptiness did. There is unrest is being aware in one’s insignificance, which is displayed in the dialogue with Mond.
Mond explains to John and Helmholtz that once there was an experiment done to see how Epsilons would handle shorter work hours, since the technology already existed to make it possible. “Those three and a half hours of extra leisure were so far from being a source of happiness, that people felt constrained to take a holiday from them.” (224) When someone so accustomed to nonstop commitment has excess free time they feel pressured to do something valuable with it, make it really count. If they start thinking a lot, they’ll realize that rarely can find something substantial and worthwhile, and turn to a coping mechanism, in the case of the Epsilons it was soma, for John it was physical pain. People need ways to avoid a problem or to take decrease their guilt that they are unable to solve it. John is riddled with guilt about the death of his mother and his feelings for Lenina, and is incapable of forgiving himself. Combining this with his sense of insignificance, it is impossible for John to find any happiness. He wants to be a martyr- he would be happier being persecuted by others than being the source of his own misery. In a society where those who think differently are exiled, I doubt there is any type of support for those who feel alone other than soma. Was death truly John’s only escape, or did he have any chance of finding happiness or meaning in his life?
(Side note- Both Mond and John chose to be martyrs, but had different ideas as to how to do it. While John chose a life of solitude and repentance, Mond chose a different kind of suffering. He chose to place the ignorant happiness of the lower classes over his own, to prevent the spread of knowledge and innovation and to stop asking questions and researching. He sacrificed what brought him joy on behalf of what he believed was best. What I wonder is why Mond was given the opportunity to advance in society and join the Controller’s Council if he had been dealing in illicit scientist and was considered a threat to stability. )
(Link to explanation of monomyth- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monomyth)
Michelle Perez
ReplyDeleteDecember 7, 2013
Final Journal Entry
Mustapha talks to John about the importance of social stability and the importance of the lower class. The lower class in this society serve to do the jobs that the upper class don't want to do. But in this society they are programmed not to think for themselves, and unlike the Alphas in the experiment, they would have no incentive to move up in their positions, simply because they were not given the mental capacity to. This society is obsessed with order and stability that they are willing to sacrifice anything to achieve it. They are willing to give up free will, individuality in order to achieve this order. Mustapha expresses this obsession to live in a world that is comfortable and familiar. They eliminate any chances for the system to fail. But since the power to overthrow this system lies within the people, they immediately have removed the capacity to think for themselves. They all act in a kind of mob, afraid of standing out and alone. This need to be in a group fuels their need to conform and to mask their imperfections and would do anything to achieve this. Bernard had once been an outcast and had been against the use of soma, because of the way it masked the real emotions and thoughts of a person in exchange for a temporary escape from reality. But once the title of outcast had been lifted from him by John, Bernard got a taste of what it was like to be like everyone else. From then on, he did whatever it took, betrayed John's trust, in order to become one of the crowd and lose himself in becoming successful at the expense of others. John was turned into a kind of circus act, leaving him more alone than he ever was. John valued ideas that were obsolete in this society. He was made into something to gawk at for his daring to think differently, and the fact that he never gave up his individuality, even when Bernard did. He fought until the very end. But unfortunately anywhere he turned, he was ridiculed. It was sad to see John's life spiral down to quickly. Even when he wanted to finally be alone, as he had no one else in his life to turn to, this society singled him out as they had in the Savage Land, reacting to something they couldn't understand in the only way they knew how.
I imagine this society as a ant farm. Everyone doing everything in life being repetitive, only one path to move in. The "ants" work ghghg without thinking, as one continuous flow, not thinking of any life other than the one they were forced to live in. And when one dares to go against the conventional flow, they are immediately trampled my the swarm, and their individuality and free will is silenced. These people live in a world of ignorant bliss in which they are care free from the fears of death and disease, and yet have nothing real to care about, no real emotion to express. But when suddenly exposed to a completely different world, as John was when he left the refugee, or as an ant would if its path was blocked by a mere leaf, they would lose control. The people in Brave New World are made out to always be happy, and to not have to care about the difficulties of life. But when faced with a real problem, one that not even soma can mask, they will collapse under the pressure of being torn from their routine and forced to face the reality of their situation.
Oliver Stein
ReplyDeleteJanuary 6
Entry 6- Utopia
Throughout reading Brave New World, my opinion of the World State has fluctuated from “They’re creepy, but harmless,” To “Creepy, and oppressing the members of the Savage Reserve,” to “A dystopian utopia.” The society is blatantly conformist; what took me a while to wrap my head around was that the society itself is not restrictive, the hypnopaedia is. In particular, I compared the relatively benign response the World State had to people like John, who were so perpendicular to them, to the violent response the members of the reserve had to Linda. With that outlook, the members of the World State are more accepting than the members of the reserve. But when you consider the death-conditioning and Hypnopaedia as forcible peer-pressure, (the equivalent of the beatings John received at the hands of the Savages.) the conditioning is far more in-depth. After I had realized that, the description of Dystopia made more sense to me.
Nevertheless, while I was working on the Utopia project and desperately trying to come up with ideas that would make everyone happy and allow for everyone to have free will as we do in our society, I came to think that Brave New World actually is a utopia. However, it is a utopia that focuses on happiness over free will, something that we think of as tantamount. Nevertheless, John’s view, that tragedy and self-denial are central to the human experience, is not directly counter to the World State, but to the concept of a Utopia. I’ll use Shakespeare for my example, as it was his works that drove John to self-abuse, assault, and eventual suicide. Romeo and Juliet are tragic because of their feuding families preventing their marriage. If it was a Utopia, those two would act very nearly like members of the World State in regards to sleeping with each other. If a Utopia has no strife, it can’t have drama.
Thinking about a Utopia this way made me want to research the older depictions of Utopias: How they were executed, how their societies worked. The one I looked at in particular is the very first (Utopia, by Thomas More) Utopia ever depicted, and in it everyone but the few ruling scholars learns at all, and lives simply as farmers, masons or weavers. What stood out to me most is that Utopia is, essentially, as restrictive as the World State, yet everyone is happy, as they are in the World State. That is the greatest similarity I found, as the punishments for everything are brutal. Two easy examples, though they are antithetical to the World State’s approach, are their punishments for premarital sex and adultery: enforced celibacy for life and slavery, respectively. Though that is nothing like the culture of the World State, the brutal punishments for those who step out of line (along the same lines all religions but atheism are accepted in Utopia, as Atheism does not preach of punishments for sinners, so they will be more likely to sin.) is a reactive version of the World State’s proactive hypnopaedia. The simple truth seems to be that a Utopia requires some way of restricting the people, as if they aren’t “perfect” people, their society can’t be perfect. So if you want a Utopia, you want a people enslaved.
Links for Utopia: http://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/utopia/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utopia_(book)