This book has been switched on and off the 52 list countless times, so my blog post here has been delayed since I didn't know if it was a blog book or not
Brave New World is a book that describes a "perfect" society, Things such as poverty, starvation, war, etc... have all been eliminated. On the other hand, things such as creativity, personality, free will, etc... have also been crushed
People in this society aren't born, they're made. Thousands of clones are created to have specific levels of intelligence and physical strength. They are then conditioned from the day they are "born" so that they will be perfectly content with the job they have been created for. They are also conditioned to hate books and nature, because the books may ruin their other conditioning, and nature lovers don't increase production, so there is no reason to let them love nature.
I could go on and explain the system for the duration of a book, but that's been done by the author already, so I think I've given a basic overview.
One more aspect worthy of note, people are conditioned to not only love their work, but to love "erotic play" and "soma." Erotic play is just a fancy way of saying flirting and seducing. Soma is a drug that everyone takes in order to have a drug induced vacation.
The conflict in this book occurs when a man from the "savage reserve," which is closer to our society in structure, and closer to an Indian technology level, is brought into the "civilized world"
Obviously problems occur when someone without all the conditioning others have is brought into this conformist society. This is the thing driving the plot of the book onward to it's eventual conclusion.
Now that I have given a book review of the book, lets move on to a question that I know my mom will ask in her comment if I don't answer it now.
"Would you be happy in this perfect world?"
My answer is that I don't know. I imagine that if I received all the conditioning of someone in Brave New World I would be happy. That's the point of the conditioning, but this happiness is artificial and thus false. As someone from the outside of this world looking in, I can't imagine being happy in it. Sure the constantly having girls trying to seduce me would be nice, but everything else would be miserable unless I was conditioned to love it.
The thing I liked most about this book is that it offered a glance at a world that is, in a sense, perfect, but at the same time it made that world seem so strange that it becomes repulsive to the reader, when the society doesn't really have anything wrong with it, it's just so different from what we know that our minds refuse to accept it.
I would certainly recommend this book to a sci-fi reader, it can be confusing at times, but all in all it was a good read.
Warning, this book is suggestive, parental discretion advised
I always wanted to say that
Until next time folks
cmd1095
Are there ways in which people are conditioned in our world? If you can think of any examples, to what end?
ReplyDeleteIf you were going to condition a society to behave in certain ways, what criteria would you use? What goal would you try to accomplish? Please do not say to worship you and cater to your every whim because you are the most awesome person to ever walk the Earth. ;-)
In our society, mood altering drugs are often illegal, yet in the book's society people are conditioned to love them. How would our society be different if we encouraged drug use?
If you were the "savage", do you think you could be conditioned to fit in if you had no choice but to remain in the world?
This book was written in 1931. Since that time, scientists have been able to clone living beings, began invitro fertilization, and are making breakthroughs on stem cell research to create human parts. Do you think the future of our society could head in the direction of that in the book?
"If you were going to condition a society to behave in certain ways, what criteria would you use? What goal would you try to accomplish? Please do not say to worship you and cater to your every whim because you are the most awesome person to ever walk the Earth. ;-)"
ReplyDeleteWell I am! And I would!
Seriously though, I would condition them to not rob or fight each other, and I would also condition them to always search for ways to better themselves both physically and mentally. This way people would always want to learn and keep themselves healthy.
As for how our society would be different if we encouraged, it's hard to say, the drugs we have available now do alter moods, but are incredibly unhealthy and addictive. I would say that nothing good could come of encouraging the use of these drugs
If I were the savage I could not be conditioned to fit in, the conditioning begins at birth because that it the only time it is possible. it works because the child mind is highly impressionable. The book explains how the conditioning works in detail, and it can't be done to an adult.
As for your final question, I think society COULD go in that direction, but I do not believe it is likely. For one thing, we have cloned living beings, but the lifespan of said beings has been very short if I remember correctly. As for stem cell research, that topic is so heavily opposed by religious fanatics (and republicans, though that might be saying the same thing twice, just kidding) that I highly doubt that that science will ever progress to the level described in the book. At least not so long as the religious fanatics have any say in government affairs.
And for your first question that I skipped, conditioning is attempted all the time, but it is not a surefire as the conditioning in the book. In school we are forced to recite the pledge of allegiance every single day, most of us know it by heart by now, but none of us ever recite it anymore, my own personal reason for not doing so is that I would be pledging allegiance to ideals not actually upheld in the country.
the military tries to condition soldiers to be mindless obedient killers. but they are obviously not successful all the time since there are still cases of disobedience, if there weren't there would be no such thing as a court martial.
So far as I know infants are not currently conditioned in the way suggested by this book, but I'm sure there is a case of this somewhere, it wouldn't be the first secret hidden by the government, and it won't be the last I'm sure.