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?