Brave New World

I have taken up reading the Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, I have only read the first three chapters and must comment on some intriguing ideas that can be found in the Foreward of the book. The Perennial Classics 1998 edition (reprint - I believe although it is not clearly stated).

Excerpt: “A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude.”

I too have come to a similar notion, although I failed to apply it in such an efficient way (sarcasm). I have witnessed and lived in a communistic country and seen it run by fear, I saw the same happen within larger groups of people, even down to families themselves. I saw it turn individuals minds into hierarchy creating machines, where each citizen was only too apt to apply their knowledge of sovereign and slave in every situation of life. I also saw this system fail. Which is when I realized that the greatest power was not in fear, as so many have believed, but in understanding.

There is a good chance that if you scare a child into not going near a hot stove that they won’t do it, but if you make the child understand that it doesn’t want to go near a hot stove you can be assured it will never go near a hot stove of it’s own volition. It’s too bad people don’t apply this principle as aptly as they do fear. But we must come to understand that making one understand is a difficult and usually an altruistic act. The majority of this foresaken world is not interested in anything that is difficult or altruistic. Instilling fear, unfortunately, is easy, quick, and makes one feel better about themselves through the denounciation of another.

This reminds me of the cartoon-movie ‘Antz’ in which I believe are very pertinent lessons for life, one of which being at the very end where the protagonist of the story ‘Z’ makes a statement about his life being the same as before all the trial and tribulation, and that the one difference is that this time he has chosen it so. Hmmm…ever found that you hated doing something at work, school, or around authority - but paradoxically you loved it when you tried it alone?

I unlike Huxley, wish that this principle was used in order to make a society understand their surroundings and practices in order to see the world around them for what it is, from there people will be upset for the atrocities committed in the back-alley’s of their own streets, which will make them choose to act. This act will make them happy for they are doing something worth-while and more importantly, no one has subliminally or directly coerced them to do so.

There isn’t enough emphasis on understanding, people are convinced that one cannot change another and so they give up and conform to society in such a way as to use others to their own advantage in order to survive. They are right in thinking this, but only partially. I wouldn’t want to change a person even if I could, but you can make one understand a higher principle from which they can choose to change themselves. Like Morpheus once said (Matrix): “I can only show you the door, you have to walk through it” But this again is difficult and an altruistic act, for it fails to provide the egotistical stimulation associated with telling another person how to be, criticising them, ordering them, berating them, and giving up on them - and worst off is, that when they give up on them and someone questions them on it, they will say “I tried everything”. Oh, how we deceive ourselves in order to live a life more in accordance to how we have imagined it. We stupify ourselves in order to believe we understand the world and are correct in our analysis.

Many managers of companies bringing billions of dollars in profit each year have realised that a worker will never work as hard as they do when they CHOOSE to work and do that which they understand they should do. This is why I believe that governments should inform their citizens of the happenings each new week within their city state and country - this is in
relation to another recent post from another thread. I forget with who.

Through communicating our understanding we would form stronger bonds, realize tempers need to be curtailed, vulgar language adverted to key points for emphasis and not personal stress relief that gets put on others, argument fallacies would be required material in all school in order to learn how to formulate ideas in the right way and to articulate them with ease.

A world as Huxley describes it, so far (i haven’t read the whole book), shouldn’t be called a BRAVE New World, but a Technological New World. The world I describe would be a Brave New World, for it would entail all of us to be brave and do altruistic acts and to be geniuses as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle describes geniuses: “Genius is the infinite capacity for taking pains.”

What’s your take?

O wonder! How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world that has such people in it!

i’m not going to go into this in depth, but the different styles of totalitarianism found in orwell’s 1984 and huxley’s brave new world are very interesting; does the fact that the population seems to be happy in their servitude make huxley’s distopia any less horrific?

Ironic isn’t it that one of Marx’s greatest passions was not alienating the worker and that’s exacty what the communist regimes did, albiet in another, often more horrifying, way.

Sometimes I think that it’s only those of us that really open our eyes and look around the world that really understand the whole horrifying nature of these worlds. You just have to look at the enthusiasm that local people throw into having surrvelience cameras put up in their villages and towns. It distresses me that more people aren’t outraged that these CC units are popping up everywhere in life, and that it’s perfectly legal for people to put their employees under survellience. Most people just don’t care.

I think it’s those of us that realise that what could be a form of controlling the peace can so rapidly be turned into a way to control the people that are scared by it.

Matt,
my sentiments exactly. Ignorance is turning people against themselves. The system, as I call it, has so much control over people through brainwashing and legal lying through advertising and marketing strategies that sooner or later we are going to be digging our own graves if you catch what I mean. I too am distressed at how happy people are for the cameras watching our every move. I wish owners of business’s took more initiative with their own businesses. I wish they took the time to really get involved. Instead they get cameras, in order to have proof when they need it, to fire or use evidence against an employee. Usually what ends up happening is that the owner never even uses the cameras, but instead, the higher up managers use it to fire employees that are not to their liking - we all have our little habits that are not exactly by the rules, but as long as nothing incriminating is happening and the work is done, why should anyone care? For instance, if all the work is done, and the phone has call waiting, if the employee on duty has finished all the work and spends two hours on the phone talking to a friend during down time (when there is nothing to do and there are no customers) what is wrong with it? To me nothing.

Furthermore, with the cameras that we find the government and police stations putting up all over the city, one must realize that the money that purchased those cameras must be explained. Ie. A police station must explain how these cameras helped to stop crime in order for them to be effective. Which unfortunately turns into cops getting people for everything. Let’s face it, if we knew that cameras saw us doing everything we have done (minus sexual experiences) in our lives from the day we were born, I’m pretty sure all of us would be in jail right now. We’ve all broken the law in one way or another in some time of our lives.

What’s your take?

It’s only recently that I’ve started reading a lot more of the original ideas behind the philosophy of law, I get very angry about where this country is heading at the moment, Blunkett has to be constantly leashed in from taking all our rights of privacy.

Sometimes I really want to go into politics to try and sort out the mess that we seem to have got in to, but I suspect I will be drawn into the same traps of desiring things to be nice and orderly. It’s a shame that politicians are always thinking about getting relected rather than just getting on and doing what they think should be done. One of my friends reckons the best form of government is a benevolent dictatorship, I think he’s probably right, but it all depends on keeping the dictator benevolent. Indirect democracy is as good as we can get I suppose.

A little article about the kind of thing our Home Secretary would have liked to enforce if he hadn’t been stopped:

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/2051117.stm

It’s got so bad here now that the Daily Telegraph, a conservative paper, has started running a"Free country" campaign to highlight the ways in which our liberty is being rapidly eroded. And we’re suppose to be a free country!

(Obviously, I’m not even pretending it is anything like the truely scary states of affairs in places like China or N.Korea, but it’s still worrying that it can happen in England).

Matt,
fear not, if all goes as planned I will have enough influence in the next few years to make a change in the world. In fact, I have devoted my life to it. I’m not just talking about mafia’s, corrupted governments, and unequality in the world. I’m talking about taking down the whole patriarchy of the world and cleaning up the place starting at the top and going down to the bottom to every individual. I think that’s where all the great people of the past who had influence went wrong, they started off with friends, individuals, communities, etc. Where they should have started off from, or atleast have made an aim to influence the greatest powers of the world. Especially now with the internet and so much influence for the average Joe, if I was modestly rich, had influence, I would spend my life changing the world for the better by implementing my ideas.

For me it hasn’t been very difficult to see where people go wrong, where I have had difficulty is influencing people. Don’t get me wrong, I make change in the areas I can, ie. Home, school, friends, my community, etc - but if I ever get a chance to make a difference where it will make a difference globally, no matter the cost to myself I will make the difference.

My ex-girlfriend and I use to joke around about taking over the world, although we each had completely different ideas for the world and my idea has nothing to do with making myself the head-honcho of anything, my chief impedus is to make people live in harmony, regardless of my getting any credit for it or not. I don’t care for credit if it means that people are happy.

What’s your take?