"Till at last the child's mind is these suggestions, and the sum of the suggestions is the child's mind. And not the child's mind only. The adult's mind too, all his life long. The mind that judges and desires and decides. But all these suggetsions are our suggestions!"
It was brought up in class that Brave New World society disregards any meaning to life, however, in order to argue that, this meaning has to be defined. I'm personally not religious and my beliefs change day to day so neither of these for me really define the meaning of life. Of course I know the standard differences between right and wrong because they've been ingrained into me since birth, however, I don't think my "moral compass" or anything can give my life meaning. It was brought up that to BNW citizens, their standard of living is normal to them. Of course just because WE say something is RIGHT or NORMAL doesn't make it so. So even knowing this information, a society where humans are "pharmaceutically anesthetized to passively serve a ruling order" still bothers me. Although the people are content and it can be said that they live in a sort of utopia, I guess what bothered me most was the complete disregard of freewill, not so much the meaning of life, or maybe they're the same thing, I'm not entirely sure. But anyways, I believe free will allows humans to make decisions, to love, to make history, etc, so I guess in a way it does give a life meaning. The above quote demonstrates how the childrens' minds are able to be manipulated into anything their "superiors" want it to be and I don't like this neglect of decisions and the individual mind. Man was predestined to have freewill right? Anyways, maybe Huxley is trying to argue that postmodern society is becoming mindless and incapable of complete free thought, with all of the technology and the propaganda, etc.
"..the ruling oligarchy will find less arduous and wasteful ways of governing and of satisfying its lust for power..." -Huxley
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Man is predestined to have free will.
ReplyDeleteBy who? What predestines us? That would be a good question to answer.
So, I really enjoyed reading your blog. It was very interesting and posed some good thoughts.
I get what you're saying about the cultural differences and what is right. To other people, OUR society is inhumane and weird. However, I think part of being human is being able to think: That person or group is wrong. (As long as we don't go gung-ho on them over it. ^^)
Andrea