Taken from Wikipedia and Neil Postman's "Amusing ourselves To Death."  

Social critic Neil Postman contrasts the worlds of Nineteen Eighty-Four and Brave New World in the foreword of his 1985 book Amusing Ourselves to Death. He writes:

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egotism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions." In 1984, Orwell added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we fear will ruin us. Huxley feared that our desire will ruin us.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_New_World#Characters


A further look into the eerie similarities between our world and Brave New World's.... 


 It is very ironic that Huxely uses the names/personalities of real people for his fictional characters, because in doing so, he is trying to make a point. I believe that Aldous Huxely is trying to show us what our World really is; A Brave New World. He creates this fictional world, with "fictional" characters, who for some reason, resemble real world people extremely creepily. Take for example, Lenina. Lenina is a pseudonym for Vladimir Lenin,  a former communist politician of the Soviet Union. By using the name Lenina to resemble Lenin, Huxely makes a satirical joke. In the story, Lenina disagrees with her friend Fanny, and decides to try something new. Not completely new, like Bernard Marx does, but something a little off the status quo. Lenin, on the other hand, also disagreed with the way his government was being run. He rallied supporters, and started a partisan movement called the "Bolsheviks," and for a short time, he got to run the city.


The similarities only continue.


Take leader of Brave New World, Mustapha Mond. This fictional character is actually a stand-in for Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of Turkey after the World War I. 
Ironically, Mustapha Mond also founded a whole "world," gluing it back together from the past, when all was not right.


Interestingly enough, Huxely got a few ideas from Shakespeare's "Tempest," especially from the character Miranda. Miranda says the line "Oh glorious Brave New World that has such people in it,"  which Huxely then uses for John the Savage to say when he enters the Brave New World. Surprisingly enough, Huxely does not have a single character with the name Miranda. Did Huxely think it would be too obvious if he used it? Did he not like it?


What do you think?

Consider this: Dystopian Literature, such as Brave New World, has two sides to the story, like anything else. 


One side believes that Huxely is writing a satirical piece of fiction, not a scientific prophecy.  They believe that Brave New World is a heartless, soulless society, and that we are not. After all, we "care about our planet." - But if we care so much, how come our world is at the brink of environmental collapse? People who believe in this suggest that to achieve "universal happiness, we will be forced to give up what is dear to us. (Our planet?)  People who believe that Huxely was not predicting the future say that as a society, we are in a pretty good place right now. I disagree. I think that as a society=, we have reached a new low. People are being killed because of their orientations, our economy is in a huge crisis, the conflict in the middle east still has not been resolved, our environment is slowly turning into a garbage dump, and on top of all that, we are beginning to turn to technology and drugs, rather then face the problems of our society. 


The other side of this controversy are the people who believe that Aldous Huxely is a prophet. They believe that Huxely is trying to warn us of scientific utopianism. They argue that our world is driven by our fears and needs, much like BNW's. Technology in our world is advancing at a faster rate then humans are capable of adapting to, and therefore the technology of BNW could possibly achieved soon. As for the medicine in BNW, at the rate that improvements are being made, medicine will be a panacea faster then you could say "What?!?!" And, as it is evident, our world is just one, biro corporation, like Brave New Worlds. 


Thoughts?

http://bit.ly/yU7BbB

Great article on dystopian literature... Once again, was struck by that horrible feeling that our society is eerily similar to that of Brave New World.  In our world, we have this implied maxim that in order to be socially accepted, you must act/look/be like everyone else. In both our society and the totalitarian society of Brave New World, people who look different or strange are considered outcasts, and are ostracized. I think this is a really big issue on our world, and even though it is not "life-threatining," I think that the impacts it may have on our society are great, and damaging.  I found that there are several interesting parallels between the two worlds.


BNW: Our World
-soma: pot smoking
-soma: drugs
-soma: Facebook, media or television (technology)
-sex: premarital and extramarital sex are more widely accepted now
-government control: government control... So many new limitations in our governments
-"everybody belongs to everyone": polygamy


Scared?


Do not be. These are just examples that show that the wrong decisions can make this made-up world a reality. 


Remember: Be aware of what you do, say, and the people around you. You never know who could be the next Lenina, and who could be the next Mustafa Mond...

Today's topic of discussion: PO-MO.
Post-Modernism. 


Through-out the course of history, there have been many different eras. Romantic era, the Crusades, the Renaissance... The last known era is the era known as "Modernist."


BUT....


We have now exited this era, and entered a new one... We have yet to learn what this new era brings, or what it is even called, for that matter, but for now, we have dubbed this ear "Post-Modernist" era, or "PO-MO" for short. How do we know we have left the last era?


We have made discoveries that challenge everything that the last era stood for; the last era was all about science, and the ideology that science would answer all of our questions. 


Recently, a bunch of discoveries were made, one of which found particles that could travel at the speed of light. This contradicted so many of the "Modernist Era" theories, that it was considered the end of an era, and the start of a new one.


This may seem like a good thing; however, the past will always come back to haunt us. With this new ear ahead, we know not what to expect. Will it be the long-awaited "Golden" era where our world's meta-narrative  is answered, or will it be the era in which we all make horrible mistakes and our world comes to its pre-destined end?


I think that this PO-MO era is not what initially seems... I think it will be an era where the conflicting opinions of all the people will finally collide, and create a huge, unwanted "Big Bang."


Watch:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTSKU0FgZts

Does this ring a bell?


It should, because this is exactly what our world looks like right now. And we can change it: if we work hard enough.

In the book Brave New World, the characters live in a dystopian world of drugs, sex and no-emotions. They are taught how to live one certain way, and ONLY that way. They know nothing but what they are taught. This made me think of our world. We also use things such as drugs, or the media, to shut out our world, like soma. When we are hit with a problem, our generation is the first of many to not only avoid the problem, but to shut out the rest of the world completely. Why? Is it because we were taught to act this way? Or is it because we are used to being pampered and we are used to avoiding problems and letting them swallow us up? I think we are the most unfortunate generation, because we will never know what it is like to truly live life. We will be to busy staring into the screens of our iPads, with our earphones plugged into our ears. Agree?