...society has developed and grown through advances in technology. These have proved both advantageous and detrimental to society as a whole. Technology has helped connect the world and help make everybody happier. However, at what cost? When does technology cease to be beneficial and begin its destruction? Technology has led to the illusion of multitasking, the chronic and widespread abuse of prescription drugs, and the downfall of society as a whole through virtual realities. The article “Why the modern world is bad for your brain”, by Daniel J Levitin shines light on many of the societal norms in Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. “Multitasking has been found to increase the production of the stress hormone cortisol as well as the fight-or-flight hormone adrenaline, which can...
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...Jennifer Kurtenbach, Mrs. Holzhauer, world Lit, Period.3, November 16, 2015. $18,000 On Average, the amount parents spend on Genetically modifying their child. With ongoing advances in reproductive technology and genetic engineering, a human’s ability to make themselves what they please is increasingly within reach. For example, in a 1996 Nature editorial it was stated that, “the growing power of molecular genetics confronts us with future prospects of being able to change the nature of our species.”{1} This has raised serious ethical concerns. The power to change human nature says nothing at all about whether we have any right to change it or should change it. How might we use such unprecedented power? Aldous Huxley made disturbing predictions about human’s possible future. Both explored what might happen if technologies like genetic engineering and psychological conditioning were unwisely applied to mankind. Huxley’s View In Huxley’s Brave New World children...
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...June Deery examines the role technology plays on female citizens in Huxley’s novel in “Technology and Gender in Aldous Huxley’s Alternative Worlds”. As a byproduct of the implemented technology, Deery discovers the blatantly visible gender bias. Despite this detail, the critic states how technology may be beneficial to women in certain instances. For example, “there [would be] no housework, no wifely subjugation, no need to balance children and a career” (Deery 1). However, the author believes the inconspicuous suggestions of women inferiority should not go unnoticed. For instance, she notes how at first, the gender of the narrator is undefined, but when a woman is first recognized, it is through the point of view of a male. This reinforces the dependency women should have on men. Furthermore, Deery claims that Huxley associates technology with masculinity....
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...Brave New World by Aldous Huxley Brave New world is a dystopian novel written in England in 1931 and published in 1932 during the Modernism literary period. The setting of the novel is in London and New Mexico ruled under an imagined future one-world government called the World State. The World State of Brave New World is a totalitarian dystopia that uses technology to, deceive its citizens into loving their slavery. Dystopia is a society, in this case the World State, that is an imaginary society organized to create ideal conditions for human beings, eliminating hatred, pain, neglect, and all of the other evils of the world. Huxley wrote Brave New World as a dystopian novel due to the rise of technology and science in the 1930s, focusing on the totalitarianism evils (meaning centralized or dictatorial). Huxley imagined a future of a totalitarian state where there is no such thing as freedom of anything and happiness was forced through manipulation, called conditioning in the novel. When Huxley wrote Brave New World, it was just a little over a decade since World War I. During this time, totalitarian states were popping up in the Soviet Union and Fascist parties were gaining power in Europe. Also, there were advancements in science, technology, and the relationship between the two as the world became more industrialized. Aldous Huxley was born in Surrey, England, on July 26, 1894, to a well-known family of scientists, writers, and teachers deeply rooted in England’s literary...
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...Brave New World and The Time Machine Critically explore the extent to which the personal themes in Well’s THE TIME MACHINE (1895) and Huxley’s BRAVE NEW WORLD (1932) responded to the prevailing ideologies of social class that were present in England at their time of writing Keep in mind Wells wrote/rewrote The Time Machine, on and off, for around 12 years before it saw publication. Brave New World was apparently written in 1931 (and so the sharp change in ideas caused by the Great Depression could have shaped the novel.) Society is defined as “the aggregate of people living together in an ordered community” (http://www.askoxford.com/concise_oed/society). Every nation on this planet is comprised of many societies which all differ in their own ways. As time passes, society itself changes. The morals or beliefs that a society once stood by overtime, radically change to form a newer, revolutionized set of ideas. Fields like science and technology reach their most advanced states. Members of a society can also change. In most cases, members develop according to the new rules or ideals that are of the norm. Some changes are for the betterment of society while others prove to have more negative impacts. These are all changes one can expect when time travelling. Although, one cannot prepare themselves for the societies I have recently seen. Throughout my time travelling I have never come across two societies so strange. Both societies were of terrifying living conditions. One can...
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...Brave New World: The use of mass media and propaganda The society is determined by the nature of people within it and how they relate. The influence of external factors like religion, politics, and technology contribute a lot to the structure and development of the society. In the novel Brave New World, the concept of social media and propaganda are explicitly expressed through various accounts. The author has used the influence of social media to bring a deeper understanding of how various characters, decisions, and acts are influenced. Social media in the novel act as a channel through which propaganda is manifested. Social power and influence is an attribute of propaganda that is directed through the masses via social media. Hence, in the context of this essay will address how mass media and propaganda are used in novel Brave New World. The human society has been dictated by their role in social media and how they influence decision and choices in life. Aldous Huxley in his novel describes a community that has been infiltrated by untruth and misguided by some beliefs and information from a selected group of people. The basic set up in the society is controlled by those who feel superior and elite compared to the others. Propaganda is spread of wrong information that causes a severe impact to the community or a group of people. In the novel Brave New World, the conflict between individual and the society being different and unique is an act of propaganda. The use of Soma...
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...“Freedom or Perfection?” Conditioning and technology have become exceedingly common in many first world countries. Most individuals do not realize the effect conditioning and technology has on them and how it shapes them and their future. The world of technology has drastically grown over the past century, allowing mankind to accomplish feats deemed impossible in decades past. In Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, conditioning and technology play an enormous role in society. In the World State, the state of affairs is preserved through conditioning and technology, causing a lack of humanity to be evident. Technology controls many aspects of one’s life in Brave New World, resulting in limitations of freedoms. Throughout the novel, Huxley displays many situations where the implementation of technology has been used to create stability. The reader is introduced to “Bokanovsky’s Process” at the start of the novel; the process essentially allows 96 babies to be born from one embryo. This procedure produces “[m]illions of identical twins. The principle of mass production at last applied to biology,” (Huxley 5). Mass production is an invention which allows consumer goods to be created faster and sold cheaper. Therefore, consumer goods are easily replaceable, implying that children and the population as a whole is easily replaceable, thus diminishing the value of life. The significance and uniqueness of any one individual is abolished, causing everyone to be viewed as equal before the...
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...the time. It was controversial through some literature authors who were against such text. Brave New World is set in future-London 632 A.F. (After Henry Ford). The society is set as utopian times. Humans are produced in assembly lines and are manipulated right away after being born. They develop a hatred for books and flowers or anything that is ordinary in our world that brings...
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...Scientism and Technocracy in Brave New World Introduction Brave New World is well recognized as a dystopian novel, in which Aldous Huxley satirically criticized scientism and technocracy. In this new world, science and technology was paramount. It dominated all aspects of human life. Humans were mass produced in laboratory and factories; human moral value were moulded by sleeping teaching; human emotions were controlled by soma. The overuse of science and technology reduced humans to one-dimensional man without individuality and the ability of critical thinking. Human beings were used as tools for political and economic purposes. The thesis is to study scientism and technocracy, the "improper application of science to human life", from two aspects: the interference with human physical life and the elimination of human spiritual life. Scientism and Technocracy Scientism, according to Zhu Wang, is "an excessive belief in the power of scientific knowledge and technology to solve all human problems including spiritual crisis" (194). It is "the authority of natural sciences, dominating all aspects of human life and rejecting religion, philosophy, art, and literature" (194). In Brave New World, Huxley depicted a dystopian society to condemn the excessive use of science and technology which eliminated human individuality and civilization. He pointed out in his Complete Essays Vol.6 that science was "the reduction of multiplicity to unity….the theoretical reduction...
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...Just like Brave New World, “sameness is necessary” because it helps control people (IMDb). People were also divided into a caste system and were organized in societies which helped distribute labor and maintain “the World State’s motto, COMMUNITY, IDENTITY, STABILITY” (Huxley 3). The dystopia in The Giver is almost identical to the one described in Brave New World. Both forms of government imply the same strategies to control people and both societies were based off technology. The movie of The Giver covers the journey of a youth named Jonas who is worried about his role in society. He would be graduating soon and the Elders were going to assign him his profession based on his qualities and actions. Jonas enjoys spending time with his friends Ascher and Fiona as his studies comes to an end. He appreciates his family which cares for his needs, but cannot speak...
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...Brave new world & The Time Machine Comparative Essay Society is defined as “the aggregate of people living together in an ordered community” (http://www.askoxford.com/concise_oed/society). Every nation on this planet is comprised of many societies which all differ in their own ways. As time passes, society itself changes. The morals or beliefs that a society once stood by overtime, radically change to form a newer, revolutionized set of ideas. Fields like science and technology reach their most advanced states. Members of a society can also change. In most cases, members develop according to the new rules or ideals that are of the norm. Some changes are for the betterment of society while others prove to have more negative impacts. These are all changes one can expect when time travelling. Although, one cannot prepare themselves for the societies I have recently seen. Throughout my time travelling I have never come across two societies so strange. Both societies were of terrifying living conditions. One can easily draw about similarities to categorize them as dystopias however; the individual societies differ from each other in many ways. The two dystopian societies differ greatly in aspects of individualism, gender relations, and social hierarchy. The two societies hold opposing views on individualism. The first society was known as The World State. This society was one that gave technology a high, almost religious-like importance. The ruling class had all of...
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...Dystopia, We by Evgeniy Zamiatin and Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, these influences are crucial for the development, the understanding in the context of the period, and the impact on the literary field. In this essay we will try to analyze the social, historical and cultural context of both novels,...
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...New Terrorism? Predicting the Future of Terrorism Introduction/ Purpose Terrorism is an often controversial subject. “One man’s freedom fighter is another man’s terrorist.” This is a well known quote that is often used to allude to the complexity of terrorism. Terrorism, the word itself is a word that has possessed over a hundred definitions and a concept that has changed as the societies of the world have progressed. The use of the terms terrorism and terrorist are politically weighted, and are often used for a polarizing effect, where 'terrorism' becomes simply a relativist term for the violence committed by an enemy, from the point of view of the attacked. Because of the political nature of some struggles, 'terrorism' can become identified as simply any violence committed against established institutions. A terrorist is, strictly speaking, one who is personally involved in an act of terrorism. The term "terrorism" comes from the French 18th century word terrorisme (under their government's Reign of Terror), based on the Latin language verbs terrere (to tremble) and deterrere (to frighten from). The use of the term "terrorist" has had broader applications however, ranging in application from disgruntled citizens to common political dissidents. It is important to understand terrorism in our modern arena and under stand its effects on society. ‘Terrorism’, as a unified political and ideological motif did not arise spontaneously in response to particular instances...
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...cultural artifacts, including law. Seen from this perspective the homogenization of international law in the field of biotechnology is a telling case of the cloning of international law. The essay will begin with a science fiction account of cloning through a brief discussion of Aldous Huxley’s novel Brave New World.17 I will then move to discuss two case studies of genetic regulation, which simultaneously address the problem of cloning and reproduce the problem on a different level. The first concerns human cloning and the 2005 United Nation Declaration on the Human Cloning.18 The second concerns stem-cell research and a more recent decision of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in the case of Brüstle v. Greenpeace (2011), to impose a blanket prohibition on patenting the outcome of stem-cell research. The two cases represent the growing international governance of biotechnologies. Both regulations set limits on the use of specific biotechnologies either by an outright prohibition of the practice, or by refusing to patent its outcome. In both cases, the underlying justification for the regulation is the concern that regulation on a national level is an insufficient response to the rise of these technologies. There are, however, as we shall 17 Aldous Huxley, Brave New World (N.Y., Garden City, 1946). 18 United Nations Declaration on Human Cloning, adopted by the General...
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...Com 1020 Assignment 2 Introduction Mass communication is the variety of all the media mediums together, and is aimed at a large audience. A ritual view is directed not towards the addition of messages in space but the maintenance of society in time, not the act of imparting information or influence but the creation, representation, and celebration of shared even if illusory beliefs, James,(1988: 43). This essay will discuss how mass communications has transformed the temporal and spatial foundations of the social-sphere. This essay will start by defining the key terms which are communication, mass communication, and the para-social. The separation of social space from the physical place by mass communications, time and space and mass communications will also be discussed in the essay. The para-social interactions, how mass communications transformed the temporal and spatial foundations of the social sphere will then follow. The ritual dimensions of communication will also be discussed, the essay will then sum up the essay and give the researcher’s opinion. Definition of key terms Communication refers to the transmission of meaningful messages; these messages are conveyed in images, language, gestures, or other symbols. Thompson. (1997:30) Anthony R, (2004), defines mass communication as the process in which professional communicators design and use media to disseminate messages widely, rapidly, and continuously in order to arouse intended meanings in large...
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