Brave+New+World

Hi Michael, Matthew, Mike, and Jerry!

As you guys are reading this, I am absent from school and actually in //another// SAS: Singapore American School! As you guys are discussing, I am in the process of playing 8-9 hours a day of viola for an AMIS event (Assocation of Music in International Schools). But I did read our book and have some interesting ideas to share.

I am not sure how Jerry is going to run the discussion, so I will divide my thoughts up by the five chapters that we have read. In each chapter, I will just post my ideas that came up as I read the book. As the Connector, I am supposed to be making connections between specific details in the text with anything outside of the book, including other novels, movies, and real-life occurrences. I also have to challenge you guys to make similar connections and consider how I would react if I was in the shoes of a particular character.

=Chapter 1:= The manipulative nature of the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre over seems to me that a totally authoritative government rules the Society. This can be compared to a certain government's policy restricting families to only one offspring (best that I type like this, otherwise the filters will pwn our wikispace). But even that government isn't as controlling as the one in the book. We don't have much real-life comparisons, but the closest one that I believe is a North Korea with unlimited resources and governmental control. It'd probably result in something like we see in Chapter 1.

Also, it's important to note that both the Director and Mr. Foster have a disregard to basic human rights. They seem to cooperate fully in the Community,

Some books, movies, and games that reminded me of this artificial, controlled Society include: //The Island//, //The Giver//, ___, and Fallout 3. All share an artificial and unnatural environment, totally controlled by an elite few.

In the 2005 film //The Island//, protagonist Lincoln lives in a highly structured society, one that controls the rules of living, including clothing, meals, and jobs. In addition, the people in charge of the community make sure that the residents of the utopia do not discover about the "outside world." The controllers use medications and propaganda in order to brainwash curiosity and knowledge among the residents about the outside world. A weekly/monthly (?) lottery determines who in the community gets to go to the island, a tropical paradise that is highly sought for. However, once Lincoln discovers that the lottery was only a means of killing off people in the community, he escapes with his friend Jordan, another lottery winner. It is similar to //Brave New World// in that the setting takes place in a future setting with availability to advanced technology, and that the controllers have unimaginable power over the residents. Here's a clip of the movie that demonstrates their structured society: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NN2_fcRhm4g

In novel //The Giver// by Lois Lowry, a structured society lives in a future setting as well. Residents suppress all emotions at adolescence by taking pills, and a job is distributed to each based on individual skill. When families decide to have children, they apply for children; people whose roles as birthmothers merely serve to provide this demand.

2008 PC, Xbox 360, and PS3 game Fallout 3 starts off in a highly structured society as well. In fear that a worldwide atomic war would break loose, people bought their way into Valve 101, a secure underground community that promises to protect the residents from the harmful radiation that exists on the ground. Once in the community, the Overseer seeks to brainwash children that "Everybody was born in the Vault, and die in the Vault."

To wrap up Chapter 1, I think it's important to note that there's a high sense of importance placed on the industry, as it is applied to birth. I read this book on Organizational Theory, and it talked about Machine Theory used widely in the 20th century. I don't have the book with me in Tokyo, but this is what I recall: Machine Theory is an organizational theory (that means, used in corporations for management) that emphasizes industrial working: 1. Workers only fulfill one role to be efficient. 2. Workers are treated as machines. They perform the same routines over and over.

We see that there's a similar industrial process performed on these babies. The Bokanovsky's Process, the conveyor belt, and racks for the embryos are all evidence of using the Machine Theory. Also, the workers suffer from overwork and boredom, illustrated by Lenina's tired eyes.

Questions arise: Do people in this society have sex? Do they, like the people in //The Giver//, apply for children? Or are they simply released out into the world when they come of age?

=Chapter 2:= We see in this chapter that not only does the Hatchery industrialize the birth of a baby, it also sees through its developmental process. We see here that classical conditioning is employed on Deltas. I'm feeling lazy and I just woke up, so I'll post a Wikipedia definition of it: "**Classical Conditioning** (also **Pavlovian** or **Respondent Conditioning**) is a form of [|associative learning] that was firstly demonstrated by [|Ivan Pavlov] . The typical procedure for inducing classical conditioning involves presentations of a neutral [|stimulus] along with a stimulus of some significance." and Pavlov's experiment... "The original and most famous example of classical conditioning involved the [|salivary] conditioning of Pavlov's dogs. During his research on the physiology of digestion in dogs, Pavlov noticed that, rather than simply salivating in the presence of meat powder (an innate response to food that he called the **unconditioned response**), the dogs began to salivate in the presence of the lab technician who normally fed them. Pavlov called these //psychic secretions//. From this observation he predicted that, if a particular stimulus in the dog’s surroundings were present when the dog was presented with meat powder, then this stimulus would become //associated// with food and cause salivation on its own. In his initial experiment, Pavlov used bells to call the dogs to their food and, after a few repetitions, the dogs started to salivate in response to the bell."

Similarly, Deltas are classically conditioned to dislike books, which would nurture them to be stupid.

=Chapter 3:= Chapter 3 brings up a social point. Mustapha Mond, one of the ten Controllers on Earth, tells the students that back in Ford's time (and our time also), sexual exploration at a young age and during adolescence is not encouraged. The students laugh at this, believing it to be incredulous, because in their viewpoint, our current-day society is very conservative. Similarly, the 17th century or whatever is very conservative to us as well because they believed books to be evil, and we find this hard to believe. Movies used to be treated the same way half a century ago, and we find this hard to believe as well. Like how there's a liberal movement in the social sense (women used to cover their entire bodies, and bikinis would never have been imaginable back then), in the Society in Brave New World, sexual exploration is accepted. Can this reality be achieved in the future?

The brainwashing sound repeats "Ending is better than mending." (49). While this primarily brainwashes the children to consume more (and so the industries would profit), Aldous Huxley also wrote this part parallel to the destroying of culture after the Nine Years' War. "There was a choice between World Control and destruction." (48). Hmm.. doesn't this sound familiar? A country with a long, LONG, history and deep traditions, arriving at a point in time that it simply cannot function any longer, lest it destroys all its past in an effort to survive. You guys know what country I'm referring to. Huxley, in my opinion, is insightful to have imagined this to be true when he lived before that era.

Wow, Chapter 3 sure does have a lot of goodies and references to the world we live in. The Controller describes a stable release of emotion as a water pipe with many holes. He describes our society (today) as a water pipe with only one hole, and thus with that comes instability, divorces, intense loving, etc. I think Huxley is right about this, as there's a shift in society towards a release in emotions, including self-cutting (EMOs), heavy metal, and trance-type states (both drugs and music). While these are ways to release emotions, there are other methods encouraged by doctors and psychologists. In dealing with stress, some suggest punching a pillow, a punching bag, or something to "release the anger." In dealing with sadness, some suggest to preoccupy the mind by doing other things, such as a hobby or a hanging out with friends to dissipate the emotion. In //Brave New World//, the residents use somas, pills that people take to rid of emotions. In our world, we have similar pharmaceutical products for battling depression.

=Chapter 4:= Ah, the chapter where we get to know Bernard and his private life a bit more! We see that he is insecure about his physique because he is eight (?) inches shorter than the average Alphas, which puts him on the same height level with Deltas. In the Society, the bigger the body size, the more superior one is. With this comes Bernard's perception and paranoia that the Deltas (and Epsilons?) serve him less than would a normal Alpha. In order to counter this insecurity and to prevent this situation from happening, Bernard yells at the Delta waiter.

This social class problem is not new. For decades in the United States, before African Americans gained equal rights and suffrage, wealthy blacks were not treated the same as the whites. At that time, a wealthy black man walking into an up-scale restaurant felt insecure and worried that the white hostess might treat him the same as would to a white man. Like Bernard, the black man thought, "Would the hostess serve me as a rich man, or as an inferior?"

Currently, there is also an unconscious association on body size with superiority. I really am not sure about this, so pardon me if I get this wrong. But, I get the perception that Caucasians living in Shanghai, or any other part of East Asia, tend to have a superiority complex (whether intentional or not), over Asians simply because they are physically bigger. Like Bernard and the Delta attendant, neither the Caucasian nor the Asian respect each other based on individual superiority in social class. Instead, both parties' unconscious-wired brains tell them that the one with the bigger body mass is superior.

=Questions for all:= At the end of reading these five chapters, I have some questions for all, some of which might be answered by the rest of novel, while others might be open-ended, and not included by Huxley. Here they are:

1. There is an emphasis at the Hatchery to please the industry by conditioning children to consume more. This certainly seems like a plan, but to please who? Is there a man (or special interest group) behind all this? If not, then who are they kidding? The Hatchery certainly does not have anything to gain from the residents consuming mroe. There *must* be a reason why consumption is a big part to this.

2. Bernard Marx and Helmholtz Watson seem to know that they are individuals, instead of pre-programmed people that only know how to consume and enjoy life. Bernard at one point scoffed at Henry Foster and the Assistant Predestinator for being victims of hypopaedia (47). Could they possibly find the truth to self-happiness naturally? Furthermore, is it possible that they break the mold that Society imposed on them? Maybe even help out others as well?