Thursday, August 16, 2012
Freedom in the New World
After finishing Brave New World, I grew to hate the world that they described in it. The new "civilized" world not only promotes promiscuity with multiple partners at one time, but also the use of soma, or drugs, to bury people's feelings. It looks down upon individuality and encourages its civilians to conform to society or be exiled. In the beginning, Fanny criticizes Lenina on how she only sleeps with one man. Fanny states how it is unfitting in their society to do so and that she should try sleeping with other men as well. Although Lenina never listened to her friend's advise, she still does sleep with a few more men after Henry. The new society also disparages those who possess a different characteristic other than the ones the majority of the population has. Bernard Marx, for example, is smaller than the rest of the civilians in the society. For this, he is mocked and to an extent isolated from his community.
To live in a world where you cannot even voice your own opinion without risk being sent into exile on an island, is not my idea of a perfect world. I would rather suffer and have the freedom to be myself than to abide by these regulations. Besides, to know what happiness really is, wouldn’t you have to have felt pain and suffering first? Wouldn’t you have to understand what it is like to not have happiness for you to really treasure it? Do you believe this is truly a perfect world? Or is it an epitome of what it would be like to not have the freedom you have now?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I do not believe they live in a perfect world, in fact I believe there will never be a perfect world because we are not perfect we are human. No matter how hard we try to progress in achieving new goals that are considered impossible, we will always have new conflicts with our new resolutions. Like the soma, it helps the utopians from escaping conflict but it also makes them dependent on the soma, as if they have an addiction to it. It is in our nature to be imperfect no matter how hard we strive to be that word “perfect”. Our imperfections is what makes us simply who we are, unique and simply human. Also one cannot feel happiness until they know what suffering is. How can one feel happiness if they have not felt sadness, pain, and suffering? If they have not felt any of these feelings, then they do not know what true happiness is.
ReplyDeleteAlthough these people think they are living in the "perfect world" they really arent. They are many reasons why this isnt a perfect world. One of the reasons is that they have multiple intercourse partners when in a perfect world, if there really was one, you would have one special partner for your whole life. There is never going too be a such thing as a perfect world because it is impossible.
ReplyDelete