A Brave New World is Pending
In the March 6 issue of Science News, J. Raloff wrote "If pregnancies early in adulthood reduce a woman's lifelong risk of developing breast cancer, could short-term hormonal treatments that simulate aspects of pregnancy do the same thing? A new study suggest that the answer is yes."
Reading that fast-forwarded my imagination to a horrible future, one described in Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World," where women of the future undergo surrogate pregnancies. In the book it was for mental reasons, but now, there's a physical reason to do such a hormonal treatment.
How many other predictions will come true in the next, say, 20 years? Already we have television, airplanes, submarines, cyberspace and virtual reality. Is the next step a measurable move toward Utopia? Will we all live with perfect health? Will we stave off death so effectively that we are killed for population control reasons at the old, old age of 60? Will we lose sight of the goal of a long, productive life, abandon it for a long, forever young life (making aging a disease, because drugs to enhance the here and now build up to a painful later)?
I'm all for advancement in medicine. My own father, an oncologist and hematologist, deals with ground-breaking new procedures and medicines on a daily basis. But to air out my cautious side: if the government ever starts worshiping Henry Ford, outlawing Shakespeare, instituting mandatory sterilization of certain groups of people, encouraging and perpetuating class divisions and distributing drugs to solve potential conflict, help me out by saying "STOP!" really, really loudly.
Then again, this government does revere Henry Ford in a way. If a big car company wanted something done that was contrary to the desires of a community, my bets are on the car company. This thorough encouragement of big business and the tradition of such can almost be seen as worship.
While Shakespeare hasn't been outlawed anywhere (as far as I know), teaching Darwin's theory of Natural Selection is banned in some school districts. J.D. Salinger's "Catcher in the Rye" is banned in some school districts.
Ruth Sherman, a white teacher in a black and Hispanic neighborhood in New York, left her job in fear for her life over a book called "Nappy Hair": some parents (who of course, hadn't read the award-winning novel and for the most part weren't her student's parents) thought it was racist and divisive.
John's eyes fluttered open and he cautiously surveyed his surroundings. Where was he taken? Who knocked him unconscious and carried him from his solitude at the lighthouse? He did not have to wait long for his answer, when he saw his friend standing over him, shaking him to awareness.
Thomas Paine lived in a time period in America where there was much talk about independence from Britain. Although there was still debate on whether independence should be put forward or whether better representation could satisfy the wants of the people, Thomas Paine wrote his pamphlet, Common Sense in order to bring common people closer to the side of independence. In his pamphlet Paine broke up his argument into four sections including Of the origin and design of government in general, Of monarchy and hereditary succession, Thoughts on the present state of American affairs, and Of the present ability of America. These four sections lay out Paine’s point of view and his views on what he believed the American Revolution should be about.
Thomas Paine started life as a common man, but became a distinguished writer and devoted patriot. The son of a corset maker, Paine was more influenced by his father's religion than his work. His father's religious influence in combination with his study of science caused him to dislike Government based on hereditary privilege. Eventually, Paine immigrated to Philadelphia, gained more schooling, and became very acquainted with several advocates of political change (Foner 1). Paine's success had two origins. The first, and most well known, was his sympathy with the American plight. Paine disliked monarchy as did many other Americans. Secondly, his transcendentalist style of writing caused his writings to be quite unique making them all the more interesting to his readers. Paine died poor and alone after many of his views were considered too radical. However, history remembers him as one of the greatest contributors ...
Censorship is a shroud for the intolerable, a withdrawal from the cold truths of humanity, and ultimately, the suppression of expression. When a book such as The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is banned in classrooms, students are not only stripped of an enriching work of literature, but also consequently stripped of the cultural and moral awareness required to survive in a world stained with imperfection and strewn with atrocity.
1.) The Savage Reservation is similar to the Utopia world in several ways. They both have drugs that are designed to calm people down. Soma, used in the Utopia and mescal used in the Reservation. They both also have a separation within their own society. The Utopia has social castes and the reservation has separation between the men and women, the men having more power. The two worlds also both have ceremonies. The Utopia has the orgy porgy ceremony in which everyone gathers around and has an orgy, hence the name. The Savage Reservation has traditional dancing ceremonies like the many traditional Indian tribes have today. The two cultures have many similar ideas, just expressed a little differently.
Thomas Paine is responsible for some of the most influential pamphlets about the colonial situation in the 1700’s. He found himself in the right position and time to make his opinions known through his writing. He was a journalist in Philadelphia when the American relationship with England was thinning and change was on the horizon. Paine became famous at this time for writing Common Sense, as well as his sixteen Crisis papers. Through his particular style of reasoning and vehemence, Paine’s Common Sense became crucial in turning American opinion against Britain and was instrumental in the colonies' decision to engage in a battle for complete independence.
The pamphlet “Common Sense” written by Thomas Paine demanded attention. However, there were both negative and positive opinions concerning the pamphlet and its creator. Some authors were receptive to the ideologies presented by Paine and his pamphlet while others contested them. Either way, grasping an impartial account of Paine’s works is conceivably a challenging task when many have opposing views. Furthermore, the individual interpretations of each increase the difficulty level in arriving at a conclusion with utmost objectivity. Of course one prefers to make a decision regarding Paine’s contributions to society as one that does not include personal prejudices. However, it proves to be problematic in that the works I selected to review were not absent from certain biases. Moreover, I gathered a
Nicholas Copernicus was the first to question the universal truths and teachings of the church. He devised a theory that the earth along with the other planets revolved around the sun. This theory disagreed with Aristotle and the old teachings that the universe revolved around the earth, and that man was the center of the universe.
McKay, John P., Bennett D. Hill, and John Buckler. A History of Western Society. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1983. Print.
In the novel, Brave New World, by Adolous Huxley we are introduced to a world where an all-powerful government dictates the occupation, intelligence, morals, and values of an individual. The government known as the World State controls the entire process of a human, from life to death. The society is based almost solely on an consumer foundation, where making money is the sole goal of the government. Although the society is radical in its nature there are certain aspects of modern ideology that are present in it. For the purpose of this essay only conservatism will be used to analyze the society of the World State. In latter paragraphs you will see the similarities and differences between conservatism and the government of the Brave New World. Though there are very distinct differences, in many ways the conservative ideology supports the World State.
To understand the fear of the dystopian future of both Brave New World and 1984, there needs to be an understanding of the time period in which they were written. Brave New World was published in 1932 and 1984 was published in 1949, they were written when the world was it conflict with radical change of social, science, political and religious ideas. The event that had an impact in all of those categories was the book the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin written in 1859. This book systematically changed in how humans perceived their own existence, and questioned the confidence they held in Christianity. The Origin of species as stated by Tim Radford in “The book That Changed the world” was controversial because it made a dent on society’s
Imagine living in a society where there is no such thing as mothers or fathers, where you look exactly like the 500 people standing next to you, where casual sex and drug use is not only allowed, but is encouraged. Well, the society in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, is just that. While the prophecies from the Brave New World society are quite different from those of today, they can be argued as both right and wrong, but , and the technology to make them happen may be just around the corner.
As one of the greatest times of production and change in the quality of life for all classes and members of society, the Industrial Revolution marked a turning point for humankind. Together, the industrial revolutions in both America and Britain not only altered the lifestyles of many, but also offered solutions to many questions that had plagued society for numerous years. Changes that occurred in the fields of medicine and chemistry still play a role in our everyday lives. These advancements not only affected 19th century industry, but also began paving the way for modern technology.
Industrial Revolution, which took place over much of the nineteenth century, had many advantages. It provided people with tools for a better life; people were no longer dependent on the land for all of their goods. The Industrial Revolution made it possible for people to control nature more than they ever had before. However, now people were dependent on the new machines of the Industrial Age (1). The Revolution brought with it radical changes in the textile and engine worlds; it was a time of reason and innovations. Although it was a time of progress, there were drawbacks to the headway made in the Industrial Revolution. Granted, it provided solutions to the problems of a world without industry. However, it also created problems with its mechanized inventions that provided new ways of killing. Ironically, there was much public faith in these innovations; however, these were the same inventions that killed so many and contributed to a massive loss of faith. These new inventions made their debut in the first world war (2) ).
Throughout history, conflicts between faith and reason took the forms of religion and free thinking. In the times of the Old Regime, people like Copernicus and Galileo were often punished for having views that contradicted the beliefs of the church. The strict control of the church was severely weakened around the beginning of the nineteenth century when the Old Regime ended. As the church's control decreased, science and intellectual thinking seemed to advance. While the people in the world became more educated, the church worked harder to maintain its influential position in society and keep the Christian faith strong. In the mid-nineteenth century, the church's task to keep people's faith strong became much harder, due to theories published by free thinkers like Charles Darwin, Charles Lyell, David Friedrich Strauss, and others. These men published controversial theories that hammered away at the foundation on which the Christian church was built. As the nineteenth century progressed, more doubts began to arise about the basic faiths of the Christian church.