"Brave" my foot.

This novel gets my goat in a big, bad way. Bad grade or no, I just don't think I will ever finish this book. It grates on me like nails on a chalkboard.

Can't you just hear it? Doesn't it just peel the enamel from your teeth?

Yeah yeah yeah. I know its a dystopia  I know that it is sarcastic and supposed to be taken with a grain of salt and we are supposed to hate the things being said in this novel. It's a warning, its actually speaking out against these things. I get it. But I still hate it. 

My Mum is a bit old fashioned in some ways. She's pretty terrified of technology. Not because she doesn't know how to use it, but because she is always afraid of it being used against her. She hates using her credit card online, or really at all. She hears about spy drones and almost has a conniption fit. Don't even get me started on the time she found out her cellphone has a GPS locator in it. 

Don't get me wrong. I love my Mum, a lot. But we all have our quirks, don't we?

And it's not just her, or her age group or anything like that. I've seen this fear everywhere, from technological enthusiasts and troglodytes alike. Out right terror at the idea of technological advancement, of change. As though our cell phones will wake up and slaughter us in our sleep. Nonsense. 

When I see a new breakthrough in technology, I am filled with joy and hope - never fear. At worst, it makes me desperately sad to see technology abused as it is from time to time. Still, advances in robotics that kill people today become robots that preform surgery or keep hospitalized people with no family company tomorrow. Its the circle of technology. What is created for war is re-appropriated by the populace for peace. Hopefully someday, war won't be a part of the equation at all. 

When people hear about drones that you can fit in your pocket and guide with your tablet computer, they are usually scared. What if the government straps a poison dart or a gun to this thing and they can send a robot the size of a finch to kill anyone they want? What do I think? I think, what if you put heat sensors on there, and use it to locate people stuck under collapsed buildings in natural disasters? What if you could carry them food and water and medicine while the rescue teams worked? What if they make these little guys into taco or chocolate cake delivery machines for every day? How awesome would that be?! What if every child had one to watch it and make sure it was safe, and alert people of any problems? What if the elderly had ones that could monitor their vitals, and call for help if it was needed? Think of the freedom that could give them. I see endless good possibilities, where other people only see fear. 

Oooh! Yummy!

In technology, I see humanity's last great hope. Our world is becoming smaller by the day. Communications anywhere at all are instantaneous  Knowledge of every culture and individuals of those cultures are right at our fingertips 24/7. Even language barriers are beginning to collapse as translators get more and more sophisticated. We can see things, go places, talk to people in ways that would have been totally inconceivable when my parents were born. And when my children are born the world will look even more different again. And I am so excited to see it. The world is becoming integrated. The internet has bound nations together in their economies and government decisions, people are getting organized. This isn't scary! This is great! Its a whole lot harder to hate a group of people if you can see and talk to them, much less play games and laugh together. 

So why do I hate Brave New World? Because there isn't anything Brave about it. Its a book of a coward's fears. He saw the very first production lines and believed that it was the end of his world. Look at his crazy ideas: technology will make the world fall apart. Technology will destroy our values. Factory made children, promiscuity required not stifled, opportunity destroyed, mobility destroyed, caste systems and a complete society enslaved by themselves. BRAINWASHING! *Gasp*

Rubber Ducky... You're the one.... You make bath time lots of fun....

I'm pretty sure practically everything we have, or eat, or use is made on, or at least worked on production lines. The shoes on my feet, the burger on my plate. I look around and I don't see these things, do you? Human morality hasn't changed, for all that some people claim we are getting more randy. Read Chaucer an then tell me people didn't sleep around hundreds of years ago, before the production line was even a thought in the back of someone's head. I'm decently that I was born and raised by parents who loved  me and each other - and equally as sure that I want to have kids of my own someday in a similarly soppy, loving, happy home.

I can't wait to see what the future brings. I look forward to nanobot viruses that can cure cancer or genetic illnesses. I look forward to augmented reality software that lets you access the internet's entire knowledge with your brain. Self driving cars, 3D printers making human organs, bring it on! Technology has been bringing us together, and pretty soon I hope they make us those "People of Earth" things I have been talking about since the beginning of the semester. 

Wow! This World Is Brave!

First of all let me just start out by saying Wow! Brave New World is the right title for this book because the ideas presented in here are really brave. Right away I was turned off. This is a world in which human beings are being manufactured! Given the fact that this book is set to deal with the future the idea of that is really terrifying! While I have not read the entire book there was a lot of things that I was confused by. I wasn’t sure if as the reader we are being told the story from Bernard’s point of view or if we were just a face in the crowd when the director is giving peoples a tour of the facility. I also dint understand the pavlovian conditioning that they do with the babies. Why do they want them to be conditioned to be afraid of flowers? The idea of being exposed to sexual promiscuity early on was a little jarring at first but I guess I can understand the reasoning behind that (not advocating for this at all). I also don’t understand what the people in this novel look like when the author talks about the different colors, is he referring to their skin tones or just the color of the outfits that they are wearing? When I first started reading this, I thought that there was nothing that I could like about living in a world like this but I was able to lighten up a little bit when someone made a comment during our discussion that unlike the other Utopia’s that we have read so far, this world allows room for people to be different and to have other thoughts and to question this way of life. It allows room for error and I completely agree and I have to say that I like that. But I do hope that we do not end up in a world like this where we are consumed by consumerism and that everything that we say is a conditioned phrase and where human beings are being mass produced  because that is really terrifying. With that being said, this is definitely a dystopian novel because it is a definite warning about the future, given where we are as a society right now.

My Name is Bernard Marx: How We Judge Others

      Labels are an everyday facet in our society. We use them to determine the quality of a brand of clothing. We use them so we can know what processed ingredients we're packing our bodies with. Heck, I even have to use them on this blog post so my professor can identify it as one of mine and grade me on it. Needless to say, labels are pretty important.

But they can also be a form of predestination, just like the kind we see in Brave New World.

      Rather than being an “Alpha” or a “Beta,” which would determine our status in life, we—and sometimes other people without our knowing it—assign labels to ourselves and others whether we know it or not. Obviously, this leads to judgment of others, which is something we all do (you can't deny it, sorry). It also leads to others expecting certain things from you, just like society expects poor old Bernard Marx to be a perfect Alpha.

      I'll use myself as an example, using the judgments I have been subjected to in the past. I am a Christian, and to some (if not many) people, that makes me a homosexual-hating hypocrite who watches Fox News, is a rabid conservative, a Bible-pounding-fire-and-brimstone inelegant debater, an idiot who has the audacity to believe in Creationism while mainstream science contests its reality, and a person who—in the end—will eventually deny the facts if they conflict with the point I'm trying to make.

      In reality, I love homosexuals no less than I love any other of my fellow man; I do my best not to be a hypocrite, acknowledging the fact that I will occasionally mess up really bad; I loathe partisan news channels, and I attempt to avoid the news altogether; I have a solidly moderate political stance; I (at least) think that I can debate rather well, using facts and figures and saving the fire-and-brimstone stuff for when its really needed; I've extensively studied Creationism versus Evolutionism and the science behind both, and while I am a Young-Earth theorist, I strongly hold to the existence of microevolution; and whenever I encounter an obstacle in an argument, I often research, study, and think (even to the point of losing sleep) about it until I can make a decision.

      But those people didn't know me, and they didn't want to know me. For them, the label is all they needed to see.

      These labels make life so easy, but they're so restrictive and binding and destructive!

      I think an utopia ought to be a place where labels do not give people an opportunity to judge others based on a title or a name. Needless to say, our society is a far cry from this utopian vision.

      Hello. My name is Bernard Marx. I hate labels, and like the back cover of Brave New World puts it, “I want freedom” from the judgments associated with them.

Herland what true equality really means

While many people were extremely disappointed with the outcome of Herland I felt that overall the book was written well. I mean this in the sense that even although Charlotte Perkins Gilman was an outspoken feminist of her time, she did not write about men as simply evil human beings. All that was really desired from the women of Herland was to be treated as equals to their new male counterparts. This is best symbolized in the relationship between Van and Ellador who treat each others as equals. The whole idea of having a successful marriage and a successful society is simple: everyone is equal. Sure Jeff was well intentioned in his marriage to Celis, but the biggest mistake he made was that he put her too high on a pedestal. While I’m sure this elevated position is great every now and then, being told how beautiful and perfect one is must get old and lose its meaning when it becomes commonplace. This doting behavior also makes Jeff seem to be a lesser being by contrast with Celis which is in stark contrast of what equality really means. If equality means all people are treated as equals then elevating one to a loftier place like a pedestal makes the relationship unequal. This explains why, in my opinion, this book was really well written. Gilman did not use it to create a situation of reverse disenfranchisement against men even though that tends to be the thinking behind some attempts to correct society’s wrongs. She, like many people who followed her, simply wanted to be treated as equals in the world.

The sad truth is that even in today’s world the issue of equality is still being debated. Statistics show that in the workplace female workers make around eighty cents for every dollar their male counterparts earn even when both have the same education and qualifications. What is even more shocking is that many people believe the notion behind wanting equality is to create reverse discrimination. Yet this notion could not be further from the truth. All most people want in life is to be treated equally from childhood through old age. People just want to be treated fairly by others. Gradually, though, society has gotten better in the sense of seeing and treating all more equally. While there have been many bumps and sometimes setbacks along the way I believe that eventually everyone will be seen as equals and treated on the basis of their merits rather than their gender, race, creed or national origin. This, again, is why even though the ending of the book Herland is somewhat of a disappointment, the overall message from the book is a good one that should not be lost on the reader. Equality simply means that all people are equal. Period.          

 

My Utopian Experience

For the upcoming paper due, I am writing on James Hilton's Lost Horizon. This is about a place that seems to be a utopia but where people really do not enjoy their time there. It got me thinking about a time in my life where I had a similar experience. 

In January 2011 at the ripe age of 18, I was admitted into an inpatient facility for an eating disorder. I was there for about 2 months and so many aspects of my life there can be looked upon as utopian. 

Remuda Ranch was located in Bowling Green, VA, about an hour away from any type of civilization. We had horses for equine therapy, art therapy, a full medical staff on site and a chapel for non-denominational worship. 

For starters, everything was planned out. We had our day's activities lined up for us, full of therapy groups of varying degrees.

When I arrived I had hours of intake processes to go through. I had a complete physical evaluation, my luggage was gone through and all the bad things were taken away. 

Each patient was placed on a certain grade: red, yellow or green. Red patients had the most restrictions (being driven in a golf cart from building to building, getting the toilet flushed for you by a nurse, no choice in meals). Yellow and green patients had more physical abilities (walking between buildings, going on trail rides with the horses we were assigned). 

In a lot of fictional utopias, controlling mentalities is a factor. Well, Remuda had that too. Each morning, noon and night the patients would line up to receive our meds in handy paper cups. If we were having an unpleasant emotion, all we had to do was turn to the trusty psychiatrist for a new pill. 

Like in Plato's Republic, our access to books, music and movies was limited. We did not have any cable TV to see what was going on in the world. All magazines were banned. Any books we wanted to read had to be approved by our therapist. All the movies we watched were rater PG or G. Each CD was purchased from the religious section. It all became so monotonous and mindless. It was scary being so out of touch with things when I was released after just two months.

It is very interesting how in a place where we were supposed to be healing mentally and physically, I seemed to lose myself. I did not have to think about anything, just look at my weekly schedule to see what I would be doing that day. 

Looking back, everything about Remuda screams "UTOPIA!!!!!!!" yet to the patients it was anything but. I felt like I had Big Brother looking over my every move. There were so many rules about what we couldn't do and I felt like there was nothing that we could do. While I was there, I was counting down the days until I could go home. I know that I was benefitting from the ranch in the long run, but while I was there, getting home was the only thing on my mind. 

Learning about the Utopian worlds

An idea has been developing in my head. Specifically, I was trying to answer this question: how is the technique of storytelling in Brave New World different from the other works we’ve read?  I was hoping to talk about this during class, but lo and behold there was snow! So I said to myself, why not kill two birds with one stone, and write a blog post about it? Here we go:

Christopher Columbus, from oceanexplorer.noaa.gov

All of the previous literary utopias (from Thomas More’s Utopia onward) have been told from an outsider. More had Raphael Hythloday, a world traveler, describe the titular island; Unveiling a Parallel by Alice Ilgenfritz Jones and Ella Merchant told their story through an unnamed man who travelled to Mars on an “aeroplane”; Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward and William Morris’s News from Nowhere both had “deep-sleep” narrators, who both left their own world to wake up in the future; Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland had a similar device to More’s narrative, in that three men physically travelled to an unknown location.

All of these narrators lived their own lifestyle in their own world before travelling to these utopian locations. They all are easily able to compare and contrast these new people and cultures to their own. In many cases, we learn about the utopian culture by the narrator simply asking questions to the natives.  

"Brave New World;" wikipedia.org

 

However, in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, we don’t have that leisure. Our main characters, Lenina Crowne and Bernard Marx, live in this society and know the culture and daily life of the World State just like we would know our own. There’s no real need for these characters to ask questions.

So, how does Huxley try to explain this new world without spoon-feeding it to us? How can he help us explain the intricate reproductive details of the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre without breaking the fourth wall?

The novel opens up with students taking a tour of the facilities. The Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning, along with employee Henry Foster, gives realistically simplified explanations about the technology and ethics of this world, including the highest record of siblings from a single ovary (pg 19) to the so-called “Bokanovsky’s Process” (17-18). We, the reader, even learn about what the children don’t know – such as what a “parent” is (32). In this way, the reader can study, through the children’s questions and answers and the Director’s explanations, how this world of Huxley differentiates from our own.

Personally, I think Huxley was a genius in this way. Where all of our other readings had an outsider to explain the differences of cultures, he uses a realistic medium (young students) to explain to us, the reader, what this world is like. We learn about the World State by people within the culture, not outside it; this adds a whole new depth to the novel that we had not seen before.

Stark Contrast (Spoilers!)

These past few weeks have been very insightful. First, we began by reading through Herland .. and now (this week of March 15) we're reading brave new world.

Herland (if you didn't already know) is about a society full of strong, independent women who have gained the ability to give birth without men. Their society was cut off from the world by a rockslide, and they began to populate the land. Their entire society and ideals are based off the idea of maternal love and protection. Everybody is each other's sister, mother, and aunt. Kids are encouraged to study and chase their natural passions. These hypothetical women live (truly) selfless lives.

I can see why, then, Dr. MB chose to let us read Brave New World as the next topic. The societal order, where all men and women are grown in tubes and their places in society are predetermined, is very restrictive. Nobody has the chance to choose, and are conditioned to believe that their life (even though they were grown) is the best for them. Everybody lives for "orgy-porgy", soma, and "having" other people .. as if they're trying chocolate. Everyone is conditioned to believe that these base, childish desires (sex is childish, what? this book is weird) are normal, healthy, and socially acceptable.

At the end of Chapter 7, Linda said something that made me think of the scene in Donnie Darko, looking into the mirror and seeing a monster looking back.

"They're so hateful, the women here. Mad, mad and cruel. And of course they don't know anything about Malthusian Drill, or bottles, or decanting, or anything of that sort. So they're having children all the time -- like dogs. It's too revolting. And to think that I . . . "

Reading that passage really struck a chord .. something resonated. I'm not saying I agree with the way "civilization" is established in Brave New World. What I'm saying is that, often, we just get stuck in the daily ritual of things, without thought of how things might be otherwise. Then, a story comes along like this that really slaps you across the face. It says, "Wake up! Things can be different, and things can change! And they can change for the worse!"

Huxley seems overly concerned with the affinity to leisure, instant gratification, and gluttony. Often, Bernard, Lenina, and Henry complain about how the helicopter was three minutes late! God forbid! How DARE that helicopter be 15 seconds behind schedule! Brave New World is a society of no restrictions and instant gratification, the complete opposite of Herland. In Herland, all of the women are modest, rationed, and planners. Here, in Brave New World, the members of society are the complete opposite. There's a sort of stark contrast between the two worlds.

An interesting idea, though, is Brave New World, even with its Episilon Double Mega Minuses and soma, still seems like a more engaging society. Something about being able to do and go wherever you want whenever you want is appealing. But, is that luxury really something worth having? If you could look in the mirror and see your "Frank" (read: the giant terrifying bunny from Donnie Darko), would you change yourself into something nearer to this brave new world? Or would you embrace the bunny?