Huxley was familiar with suffering on a global scale. He wrote Brave New World in the aftermath of the 1st World War and the Spanish flu. His novel looks for a 'solution' to this kind of suffering and to the pain of such difficult decisions: between a baby and a community of 500.
Huxley looked for security and safety in a common identity and, above all, stability. He wanted to reduce the pain of emotion by minimising friendships and making family unnecessary.
In class you appear to think this was wrong. You appear to prefer greater individuality and more opportunity, even if this means greater uncertainty.
But:
- What about the father who had to decide between his child and the rest of his family and friends?
- Wouldn't he and the other hundreds of thousands who suffer war and repression prefer Brave New World to our own?
In Brave New World society has reached a perfect Utopia world in which there is no crime and no suffering. The society is very different to ours and displays no signs of individuality or freedom. You ask if people in our world who are suffering from war and are put in difficult situations daily would prefer the world in Brave New World rather than ours. Well I believe that every situation we are put through daily and all we go through shapes us, turns us into the individuals that will stand before you with unique beliefs and takes on life. If one were to take all that away then sure, the father would have been saved of probably the most difficult decision of his life; millions of people around the world would be spared from daily suffering.
ReplyDeleteHowever, after having gone through this experiences this people come out renewed they find happiness in much smaller things and they enjoy things we would just dismiss. Their suffering ends at some point and they are able to look back and take their knowledge on to future generations. In Brave New World this doesn’t happen, furthermore these people would have been conditioned to one more in the society, hypnotized and forced to be someone who they might have not been had their freedom not been taken away.
In conclusion, I think that that is the reason these people suffer: freedom. They fight for it every day for it and if our world were to be changed into the perfect Utopia in Brave New World then all their suffering would have been for nothing, all their fight and their will to survive would be lost because they would have lost their freedom anyways.