Free Essays on Brave New World

, such as â€Å"God†, and spoke of ridiculous ideas like family and love. To John these things were normal; these ideas were what he was raised with. However, typical alphas didn’t understand emotions and were never related to one another. John was also clearly bothered by the society’s encouraged promiscuity. He was accustomed to love, feelings, and monotony within relationships. In John’s eyes, the actions of most alphas were gross and discourteous. How could an individual be intimate was so many others and not even care about having love or some kind of a connection with the other person? He chose not to participate in their sexual actions because he was so uncomfortable with them, and this made him even more of an outcast. John had learned about love from Shakespeare, and thus was interested in a truly romantic relationship. This, of course, could not be found in the Brave New World. Often John would become overwhelmed with everything, and so would want to be alone. To others in the Brave New World this was a strange desire; they couldn’t figure out why someone would choose to be alone. Regular alphas always wanted to... Free Essays on Brave New World Free Essays on Brave New World MacLeod1 Brave New World Literary Essay Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World is a futuristic story of a dystopian society that has rid itself of instability through science and politics, as well as the sacrifice of certain cultural values. Although the concept of this new world seems ideal, the author portrays it cynically. His ideas of progress, science and politics are reflected negatively in the novel as their employment in the society cause the sacrifice of such themes as religion, history, and freedom. The forfeitures made for stability creates a fear in the reader of the methods used to dispose of them. The theme of progress is one fundamental basis of the new culture. The people of London now idolize the belief in Ford rather than a God. In this novel, Ford represents Henry Ford who is a symbol of technological advancement and industrialization. His ideas are reflected in the novel not only in the society’s mechanical modernization, such as the use of helicopters instead of cars, but also in its scientific revolution. The use of the assembly line is now used for the manufacturing of humans on a large scale. Each human is categorized into a specific class; from an Alpha being the highest caste and of the higher intelligence, to an Epsilon being the lowest caste and of lower intelligence. In doing this, they have engineered human beings, not only to fulfill the various positions needed to sustain a society, but also to enjoy the positions that need to be filled. Therefore, they have created people in the most efficient manner possible; ‘We also predestine and condition. We decant our babies as socialized human beings, as Alphas or Epsilons, as future sewage workers or future†¦Ã¢â‚¬â„¢ He was going to say future World Controllers, MacLeod2 but correcting himself, said ‘future Directors of Hatcheries’ instead. (Huxley10). However... Free Essays on Brave New World In the novel Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, John the Savage, unlike other major characters, was not brought up in the â€Å"brave new world† of modern day London. Explain how his upbringing in what we see as a more traditional human society contributed to his actions and experiences throughout the novel. The character John, or the Savage, is one of the central figures on Aldous Huxley’s futuristic novel Brave New World. He is used primarily as a way of comparing the values of modern society – Huxley’s â€Å"brave new world† – with those of our society on the 20th and 21st centuries. Since he grew up on an â€Å"uncivilized† Savage reservation instead of in â€Å"civilized† contemporary society, he has no experience with the shallow happiness and expected promiscuity of this society’s citizens, of feelies or soma or alcohol-stunted Epsilons. These aspects of modern society seem sick and wrong to him, as the ancient customs and rituals of the Savages seem alien and insane to Bernard and Lenina. This difference in John’s upbringing allows him to view modern society with more knowledge and understanding than anyone raised in it is able; to them it seems like the only way of life imaginable. Their culture of false happiness a nd of stifling real emotions literally sickens him; for John, true happiness must be felt from the heart, and true love is far more meaningful than momentary lust. His upbringing has taught him that it is better to feel real pain than fake, shallow happiness, and that one must earn the right to live in this world. During his time in civilized England, John experiences the best aspects of upper class culture; he goes to the feelies, is entertained with many of Bernard and Lenina’s refined, important friends, rides in helicopters, and is treated as a person of great importance. However, these experiences don’t make him happy and only serve to deepen his sense of contempt for modern day society. He f... Free Essays on Brave New World Brave New World Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and George Orwells’s Nineteen Eighty-four are the most influential futuristic novels of the 20th century (Firchow 83). In Orwell’s story the state controls its citizens with fear and punishment. Winston Smith (protagonist of 1984) is forced to love Big Brother by the starving rats in room 101. In Aldous Huxley’s satire the World State’s motto is Community, Identity, and Stability. The novel begins in London in the year A.F. (After Ford) 632 and introduces a very stable society. This stability has been achieved by a controlled genetics program and by various psychological methods that we learn about through the course of the novel. Mr. Huxley called the psychological methods used in Brave New World mind-manipulation. through sleep teaching and infant conditioning the citizens of the World State are brainwashed into liking their unescapable social destiny (Huxley 11). Those few who do not fit into the comm unity of the brave new world are exiled to an island. In the novel Bernard is sent to Iceland; and Hemholtz Watson is shipped to the Falklands. In his forward to the 1946 edition of Brave New World, Mr. Huxley wrote that he expects large government projects in the future that seek to â€Å"make people love their servitude† (xix). This love of servitude is the stability of Brave New World. People are happy and ask no questions. They do their job (that they were created to do), have sex, take drugs, and happily accept death when they are sixty years old. In Brave New World Mustapha Mond, the World Controller, tells John the Savage: â€Å"The people are well off; they’re safe; they’re blissfully ignorant of passion and old age; they’re plagued with no mothers or fathers; they’ve got no wives, or children, or lovers to feel strongly about; they’re so conditioned that they practically can’t help behaving as they ought to behave† (Huxley 169). Harold Bloom ... Free Essays on Brave New World What Makes John Different? Within every society there exist individuals who, for whatever reason, just don’t fit in. The individual may or may not look unusual, but inside they definitely feel out of place. In Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley, John â€Å"the savage† was one of those unique individuals. John wasn’t able to control the influences which made him atypical, but regardless, he was forced to live in societies which refused to accept him. It was extremely difficult for John to live in the Brave New World because he was so different from the generic alphas which surrounded him. From the beginning it was obvious that John was unlike the others. Instead of the usual color-coded clothing, John wore the sparse clothing of the native culture in which he was raised. He also used many foreign words, such as â€Å"God†, and spoke of ridiculous ideas like family and love. To John these things were normal; these ideas were what he was raised with. However, typical alphas didn’t understand emotions and were never related to one another. John was also clearly bothered by the society’s encouraged promiscuity. He was accustomed to love, feelings, and monotony within relationships. In John’s eyes, the actions of most alphas were gross and discourteous. How could an individual be intimate was so many others and not even care about having love or some kind of a connection with the other person? He chose not to participate in their sexual actions because he was so uncomfortable with them, and this made him even more of an outcast. John had learned about love from Shakespeare, and thus was interested in a truly romantic relationship. This, of course, could not be found in the Brave New World. Often John would become overwhelmed with everything, and so would want to be alone. To others in the Brave New World this was a strange desire; they couldn’t figure out why someone would choose to be alone. Regular alphas always wanted to... Free Essays on Brave New World Brave By: James E-mail: kwjefjff!@aol.com Cloning in Brave New World by Christopher M. Earhart It has been said that Muhammad is the "Seal of the Prophets," meaning that he was the last. However, our world has recently been graced by another prophet in Aldous Huxley. Huxley's prophetic vision is unmistakable in his science-fiction novel, Brave New World, in which he delivers a valuable message: control advancements in technology before they control us. Huxley supports this message with a strong example of a society that is so overrun by technology that the human race has lost their individuality, freedom, and ultimately their identity as human beings. In this "Brave New World," artificially-born humans are genetically engineered, divided into castes, molded into machines through hypnopaedia, and controlled by the drug Soma. The new world appears to be a perfect utopia on the surfacethere is no disease, no warfare, and no sadness. However, the humans have sacrificed thought, feelings, free will, and everything which makes one human to achieve this state. Through Brave New World, Huxley teaches us that these sacrifices are far too great and will eventually occur if humans continue to misuse technology in the future. Huxley's warning in Brave New World carries so much weight because of the truthful predictions he includes in the novel. Despite being written in 1932, Huxley predicts genetic engineering, test-tube babies, cloning, a loss of meaning in sexual relationships, and drug abuse. All of these predictions were far beyond his time, and all have either come true or are on the brink of occurrence. The most significant of these is his presentiment that production, not childbirth, will be the process in which humans are brought into this world. Just as Huxley predicted, scientists can now produce humans outside of the womb, and soon the cloning of human beings will be feasible. The concept of producing humans without parents is ... Free Essays on Brave New World Brave New World: Cloning In the novel Brave New World, there is no such thing as women being pregnant because the ovaries are surgically removed. In fact there is no such thing as parents. There is a factory that produces human beings and conditions them for their predestined roles in the World State. Today, succeeding in the creation of the first cloned embryo is abruptly criticized. Scientists in Massachusetts have succeeded in cloning for only a few hours cloned human embryos of four to six cells. The Catholic Church is against cloning and test tube fertilization (like in Brave New World). The Catholic Church also says that life begins at the time of the fertilization of an egg not at birth. Some think that the cloning of human beings will contaminate and dishonor the future of humankind. When a person is cloned it is most likely because you want someone that is exactly like someone else. That someone else is probably some that loves their surroundings and loves being the person they are. In Brave New World cloning is a normal thing and goes on everyday, however in the present time cloning is not as advanced as it is in the book. In the novel, Brave New World, there is a factory that creates human beings in specially designed bottles. The fetus undergoes the Bokanovsky Process so that the egg can divide and form up to ninety-six identical embryos. Each embryo will then develop and those ninety-six embryos will become ninety-six identical human beings. In other words, they will become clones of each other. Another example of cloning is that hundreds of people can be produced from the ova and sperm of the same man and women within two years. In Brave New World the people are conditioned genetically, physically, and psychologically to love and fully accept their necessity in life. The production of humans is to maximize efficiency and profit. In order to follow the rule of supply and demand they make as many... Free Essays on Brave New World Independent Study Project George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World are two novels that portray totalitarianism. Hitler used this kind of power to rule Germany during the 1930’s and 1940’s. Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four are very similar to the totalitarianism used during this regime. Government control is an important topic because if society doesn’t change its ways, we risk becoming a fascist state. The authors of these novels are trying to portray to their readers warning signals of the potential dangers of totalitarianism. Totalitarianism, is a centralized dictatorial form of government requiring complete subservience to the state, a person advocating such a system. In Nineteen Eighty-Four, Big Brother was the " Friend of the People" , the Inner Party Leader. His face was projected all day long through numerous forms of media."On each landing opposite the lift shaft, the poster with the enormous face gazed from the wall." His slogan "Big Brother is Watching You" was posted everywhere. The citizens of Oceania were not allowed to think, if they did so it was called Double Think. Double Think was the result of a totalitarian government forcing your brain to be orthodox and loyal in spite of anything. This method was enforced by the Party to ensure that no citizens of Oceania questioned the changes in policy. Oceania was a state in constant war differentiating from Huxley’s world that was always at peace. War seemed like a good idea for Big Brother; this way people would think that there was no better place for them and wouldn’t expect better living conditions, better food and less control by the government. The slogan "War is Peace" was displayed everywhere. People were so exposed to it that they saw nothing wrong with the meaning of the slogan. Again in a totalitarian state there is no freedom of thought or expression. " The Thought Police would get him just t... Free Essays on Brave New World On the road to Perfection The way in which Aldous Huxley presents his Utopia deals with the control of a society by means of stability. A Utopia in which can only be fathomable in a world made up from Huxleys mind and never reality. The use of technology in Brave New World and the way in which everyone is psychologically conditioned seems like a unrealistic dystopia. Huxley states that â€Å"the standardization of the human product has been pushed to fantastic, thoug not perhaps impossible extremes.†(foreward) The impossible extremes imply that utopia cannot be discounted as a possibility for the future. Therefore was Huxley using his sardonic world as a mockery of ours, or was the satire just a distraction to his prophetic message for the future? The Religion which is used in the Brave new world is one that is based with Techonology. It is derived from the Ford motor company which put out the first working automobile. Technology seems to have taken the place of two most important governmental ideologies during the cold war which were communism and capitalism. The Utopia of Huxleys seems to include both of them with technology. We are in a post cold war world which has seen the emergence of capitalism and fault of communism. What drove the two to super powers was based all on technology. It was not the people who chose to live in these world but those who ruled to use the ideology in order to control the masses. The use of Technology or Atomic and nuclear power almost drove Page 2 these two into war and total world anniahlation. Even though one of the main theme are satire, it is still important to understand that Huxley could be using humor to revolt against the current system in which he was living in. Many revolutionaries acts were done out of comedy and satire in order to not be suspected so easily by those in power. It is important to understand the fundamentals of communism and capitalism because both were emer... Free Essays on Brave New World A global nine years war has taken place. This war was so brutal and tiresome, that the people opted to control the world's actions through a means of science. "People were ready to have even their appetites controlled then. Anything for a quiet life" Brave New World takes place in 632 A.F., numerous years after civilization started to be controlled. Civilization is controlled though conditioning and hatchery. Everyone is brought into civilization though a test tube, "the operation undergone voluntarily for the good of society." The D.H.C. (the Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning) decides which of the five castes in society the test tube babies will belong to. At a young age, the babies are conditioned to think and act certain ways depending on which caste they will belong to through a means of environmental exposure as babies, hypnopaedia, and other methods. In order to keep the civilization from engaging in future wars, society must be happy. Ridding of religion and morals, and allowing sex and drugs without remorse makes this happiness... "God isn't compatible with machinery and scientific medicine, and universal happiness." The beginning chapters describe this brave new world as the D.H.C. gives a group of children a tour of the facility. The reader meets Lenina Crowne who had been dating Henry Foster for some time, and starts dating Bernard Marx to prove she is not engaging in courtship, which is unheard of in the civilization. Bernard and Lenina go on a vacation to the New Mexico reservations, and meet Linda and her son John. Bernard discovers that Linda was impregnated by the D.H.C., and thus John is his son. Bernard and Lenina bring John and Linda back to civilization with them for research purposes. Bernard learns that the D.H.C. is about to exile him for his 'uncivilized' behavior when he and Lenina return to civilization. "..He (Bernard) has proved himself an enemy of society, a subverter, ... of all order and ...

Understanding Mayan Human Sacrifice

Understanding Mayan Human Sacrifice Why did the Maya perform human sacrifices? That the Mayan people practiced human sacrifice is not in doubt, but providing motives is part speculation. The word sacrifice is from the Latin and it is associated with the word sacred- human sacrifices, like many other rituals in the Maya and other civilizations, were part of a sacred ritual, an act of appeasing or paying homage to the gods. Grappling With the World Like all human societies, the Maya grappled with uncertainty in the world, erratic weather patterns which brought drought and storms, the anger and violence of enemies, the occurrence of disease, and the inevitability of death. Their pantheon of gods provided some perceived control over their world, but they needed to communicate with those gods and to perform deeds showing that they were worthy of good luck and good weather. The Maya performed human sacrifices during particular societal events. Human sacrifices were conducted at specific festivals in their annual calendar, at times of crisis, at dedications of buildings, at the ends or beginnings of warfare, at the accession to the throne of a new ruler, and at the time of that rulers death. Sacrifices at each of these events likely had different meanings to the people who conducted the sacrifices. Valuing Life The Maya valued life highly, and according to their religion, there was an afterlife so human sacrifice of people they cared for- such as children- was not perceived as murder but rather placing that individuals life into the hands of the deities. Even so, the highest cost to an individual was to lose their children thus child sacrifice was a truly holy act, conducted at times of crisis or times of new beginnings. At times of war and at rulers accessions, human sacrifices may have had a political meaning in that the ruler was indicating his ability to control others. Scholars have suggested that public sacrifice of captives was to display that ability and to reassure the people that he was doing everything he could to stay in communication with the gods. However, Inomata (2016) has suggested that the Maya may never have evaluated or discussed the legitimacy of a ruler: sacrifice was simply an expected part of the accession. Other Sacrifices Maya priests and rulers also made personal sacrifice, using obsidian knives, stingray spines, and knotted cords to draw blood from their own bodies as offerings to gods. If a ruler lost a battle, he himself was tortured and sacrificed. Luxury goods and other items were placed in sacred locations such as the Great Cenote at Chichen Itza and in rulers burials along with the human sacrifices. When people in modern societies try to come up with the purpose of human sacrifice in the past, we are prone to put our own concepts about how people think about themselves as individuals and members of society, how authority is established in our world, and how much control we believe our gods have over the world. It makes it difficult if not impossible to parse out what the reality might have been for the Maya, but no less fascinating for us to learn about ourselves in the process. Sources: Ardren T. 2011. Empowered Children in Classic Maya Sacrificial Rites. Childhood in the Past 4(1):133-145.Inomata T. 2016. Theories of Power and Legitimacy in Archaeological Contexts: The Emergent Regime of Power at the Formative Maya Community of Ceibal, Guatemala. Political Strategies in Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica. Boulder: University Press of Colorado. p 37-60.Pà ©rez de Heredia Puente EJ. 2008. Chen K’u: The Ceramic of the Sacred Cenote at Chichà ©n Itz. Tulane, Louisiana: Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies, Inc. (FAMSI).