Brave New World

I must say, to say that Brave New World is interesting is a complete understatement. It was honestly hard to understand the context at a lot of places, but in the same moment, I can proudly say that I understood the blunt of the novel. Once I read the book, I noticed all the themes stuffed in between the covers. One that stuck out the most to me was the entire society issue. The main problem that surfaced throughout the book was the constant drive for structure in their society through repetition and the denial of anything that opposed that structure. The leaders that were created for that complete purpose molded their living styles and what was supposed to happen and what was okay and what wasn’t, until living turned into routine. To me, I kept seeing the image of a face, as in the face of humanity and society, getting beat over and over again and remolded again and again until one time, the beating revealed that it was actually a machine underneath the skin. In my essay, I want to talk about that view mostly and analyze different passages that prove that life was just a routine, and that society was just another big machine that had to operate just right or all hell would break loose. I want to bring in Sir Ken Robinson’s lecture and a few quotes from him because he made a good point on education and the use of structure. He made an example out our world and the way we do things, for example, with the use of “factory lines”. I would also like to try to find an undergraduate essay, if I could, about structural society, and, perhaps, the danger of it. By taking quotes from Brave New World and possibly The Tempest, and using the analysis from Sir Ken Robinson and the undergraduate student to out line my essay, I should be able to put together a nice paper… hopefully.

I'm just happy it made sense to me :)

Sir Ken Robinson

 First off, although it is off-topic, I would like to be Captain Obvious real quick and say that Sir Ken Robinson is an amazing artist. I had to watch the video clip two more times because it was so difficult to try to listen to his words more than just watching that marker create awesome pictures. But anyways, back onto topic...

Sir Ken Robinson made some very elaborate and well-thought of points that connected themselves with the ideas stated in Brave New World. During his lecture, Robinson talked a lot about ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) and brought up the medication that doctors prescribe to the children that are diagnosed with this disorder. Robinson makes a claim that this medication is overused, desperately trying to get kids to just pay attention. We surround these children with distraction on top of distraction and then force pills down their throats to get them to stop looking at their surroundings. ADHD medication is used to make kids calm down and pay attention just as soma is used in Brave New World to make things normal again. When someone is not having a good day or a good time or is looking off-track, they are more than encouraged to just take some soma and are promised that those pills will make them feel better. Soma is an anaesthetic drug. It is used to shut the senses off and deaden oneself to what's happening. For example, when the Warden was talking about the history of the Reservation, Lenina slipped into her own mental coma. "When the Warden started booming, she had inconspicuously swallowed half a gramme of soma, with the result that she could now sit, serenely no listening, thinking of nothing at all, but with her large blue eyes fixed on the Warden's face in an expression of rapt attention"(pg. 101). This is a regular thing in the society in Brave New World. If the people don't want to feel it, they don't. They completely take themselves away from the situation mentally and emotionally. Another parallel I found was that of the aesthetic experience. An aesthetic experience is one in which one's senses are operating at their peak. In the book, I related that to the "feelies". This is a form of art in the book in which people are on stage acting so the audience can see everything that is happening, but, by holding on to bars on the chair, the audience can completely drown themselves in the action by feeling and smelling, on top of the seeing it all happen. Every sense is being kept up on its toes, making sure the audience is fully alive in that moment.

Another great point that Robinson made was about the education and how it is modeled on the interests of industrialization and in the image of it. He stated that schools are organized on factory lines with its ringing bells, separate facilities, how it's specialized into separate subjects and kids are educated in batches (age group). Robinson asked, about the educating the children in batches, "Is this the most important thing? The date of manufacture?" This one was extremely important to me because the entire novel by Aldous Huxley is based on industrialization. After Ford came along with his Model T and factory lines, he was the one who the society worshiped. After that, their world became a machine. The world leaders went out of their way to beat the face of society with the ideas of structure and the need to have order for so long until that face wore out to reveal a machine. Society became just another piece of metal that was formed to do exactly what was needed. Families were exterminated, therefore taking away emotionally links to people. Ideas that everyone belonged to everyone else and giving regular soma rations so that everyone could live their own lives in content molded the society into thinking that this was how life was supposed to be. Babies were produced in bottles by separate social classes in gigantic numbers (making one batch all look like each other), children were taught through repetition what was right and what was wrong, and they were raised to know what job they were to do for the rest of their lives. Everything was about standardization, conformity, and structure, just as Robinson pointed out about education in this generation.
Sir Ken Robinson made a lot of points that can parallel to the ideas made in Brave New World. The ADHD pills and the main purpose of them reminded me of soma. The definition of aesthetic and anaesthetic experiences reminded me of the "feelies" and another example of soma. Finally, Robinson's outlooks on education nowadays completely fit into the society in Brave New World. And I agree with Robinson on a lot that he had to say. And I still do believe that he completely awesome.

Response to "The Danger of a Single Story"

The danger of the single story is simply that you do not have enough concrete evidence to have one main idea. The world around us, especially in literature, is limiting what we know by only putting one perception of an idea or a nation or a person, not giving us a chance to think for ourselves. We, as the audience, are so pulled into the storyline, that we forget that we are only listening to an opinion. We are only focusing on one side of the story. What if we got the chance to hear from the other side? Would our perceptions be the same? Unfortunately not, instead we limit ourselves by just believing the one piece of literature we read. The words are so enticing that, instead of letting our imaginations go off or letting us think for ourselves on that certain subject, the connotation of the context leads us to believe that whatever is said must be the truth. I am guilty and ashamed in the fact that, when I read about third-world nations, that is the only idea I have of them. I picture places like Haiti to have nothing but poverty and starvation because that is what I hear and what I read about in the newspapers. I hear of the devastating times in the world and it is hard to see those places as otherwise. Seeing this video makes one realize the importance of narratives and stories. How else am I to know that what I originally read is not the whole truth? Adichi says in her lecture, "The single story creates stereotypes and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete." This main idea describes a lot of what we are surrounded by in our normal lives. We create stereotypes so easily because of things we hear and read. We feel pity for those that may not need it all the time like we think because we have been induced with the information that they are an incapable people, people starving for what we have. And how do we as apart of our Western literature make single stories? Adichi says that it is simple: "Show a people as one thing, only as one thing, over and over again, and that is what they become." It is impossible for us as an audience to fully understand what is going on until we hear from every side in the situation, leaving us vulnerable to be seduced by one idea over any other. In our own history books, we don't see quotes from any people on the other side. We only are shown the "important" facts. Facts "that make us who we are today". Who we are today is not founded upon one main idea or story. We were built up upon several different stories with so many different sides and perspectives. I wonder what would happen if all those ideas went into our history books. Would we actually have the same ideas as we do now? Would we believe in the same things? We could participate in so many more educational debates if we knew more than we do now because we wouldn't be building off of one main idea. Instead, we would be putting so many more ideas underneath our belts and our own opinions could be solidified through other facts and perceptions. However, more of the same ideas come at us in different ways, and suddenly that is the only way we can see it. A solution? Don't be satisfied by one idea. Look up different views and find out as much as you possibly can before you settle on an opinion on one subject. I enjoyed and was extremely fascinated by Adichi's speech because it made me think and have more of a craving to know more. Everyone should have that craving so that we are not a limited generation where we create stereotypes so easily and are so quickly seduced by one idea that the thought of anything else would be impossible. Let us instead be the ones who set the example, who set the bar higher than the rest by refusing to rely on one side of the story and needing to know more so that our own opinions are just that and not just what we hear, see, or read from a single story.

The Wishing Well

One day, I did not have anything to do and I kept having this strange dream about a cold world with people walking aimlessly around some kind of rounded stone wall. So, I wrote a poem about it:

The Wishing Well
One whisper, just a lil'
Sent down the well
Carries a shrill
Noise, a small thrill,
For those who would kill
Just for a pill
Or one more meal,
Bounces off of a wall,
Sends a bundle, a ball,
Of hope for all
Who wait for that call
To shiver under their shawl
And continue to crawl
'Til they end up again at the rounding wall.

For me, I was seeing in my mind the hopeless, the helpless, the homeless leaning over a wall and throwing in their distress and anger and despair, desperately wishing for a better life. When they whisper down this well, they think to themselves that if no sound came back they would be dead or better off that way. But if a sound returns, it gives them hope to keep living their lives even though they all know that sooner or later they would return to that well to do the same thing again.