ENGLISHPACKET[2] - Discussion Response 1 The society...

Discussion Response 1:
The society described in “Brave New World”, was very odd however very effective.
Everyone was happy for their position in the world. Even the lower caste service groups (which
in my opinion were the equivalent of slaves) were happy. The reason for the happiness was
because the people were conditioned to do what they were to do later in life (Ch 1, p 8-9, Ch 2, p
25-29) through predestination and hypnopædia. And when older, they are rewarded with soma
for doing their job.
This social style could be adapted realistically, though there is very little chance of
decanting and hypnopædia. There is also little chance of getting rid of people’s knowledge of the
past and preventing things from being rediscovered. This would mean that there would still be
various religions, there would still be weapons, there would still be disease, and much more
faults. There would be no joy over death or anything, which would mean that there would not be
a permanent sense of happiness.
Realistically, parents in the future could start early to prepare their children for their
predetermined career and isolate them from people of other paths and classes. That however is
very discriminatory and in today’s world, that would be a very offensive and non acceptable way
of conditioning children. It may work out some day that children were assigned careers from
birth and lived in similar communities and conditioned, disciplined from violence, and maybe
even later in life, the drug reward will be possible, but it’s just nothing that we can see today.
Discussion Response 2:
Well, the new way of life shown in “Brave New World” exceeds anything that existed at
the time. There was probably fascism and Marxism, but the beliefs in Brave New World are
further beyond that. For instance, there most obviously was some sort of genocide that resulted
in the formation of the society in the story. Without genocide, it would have been nearly
impossible to form a new model society, which is why I said before that it was unlikely to form a
society like that today.
Fascism has some similarities to the book. Merriam Webster defines fascism as “ a
political philosophy, movement, or regime that exalts nation and often race above the individual
and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe
economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition ”. In the book, the
community is below one dictatorial leader the World Controller (Ch 3, p. 34) who has the power
to make any laws or policies he wants to in the autocratic society. The book also constantly
places nation above individuals, which results in Helmholtz and Bernard being dismissed to an
island away from the World State, so that their sense of individuality would not be picked up by
others and ruin what they had learned up to this point in life.