Do you really want freedom? (Really?)

ah. the age old question. what is freedom? freedom i suppose is the ability to do whatever i want. of course that is a very broad definition, but its the one i choose. my freedom relies on a couple of things. it relies on having all of my limbs, my brain function, and some protection from the freedom of others (only because i'm sure some people might want to hurt me). of course if you're definition of freedom is something else it would rely on quite a different set of things. what makes us happy? for me it has to be that i use my freedom to the utmost. see i don't particularly mind our laws and regulation (as noted above i need them to protect me from you) because they don't really stop my kind of freedom since i am still able to do whatever i want. i know some of you think thats not true, but it is. i can do whatever i want as long as i don't mind or am willing to deal with the consequences. for instance, i've decided not to capitalize anything in this blog (which i'm sure upsets many of you literati) knowing full well that my ideas might seem less important because of this decapitalization [yes i made that word up, but i'm in the field (english) and am therefore allowed to make words up].

ah that made me happy.

Jesus Loves Me (or maybe I just think that)

Huxley basically hit the nail on the head when it comes to what happens to religion in an age of technology. Religion gets morphed into something entirely different than when it started and people don't really care about it in the same way people cared about it before technology. Unfortunately we don't get to see the thoughts of any religious practitioner besides Bernard, so I'm going to go ahead and just assume that many of them are like him, maybe not in the sense that they don't believe that Ford is coming back, but in the sense that they only go to those meetings because it is what they need to do to be accepted. That's basically what religion is now, some of us go because we believe, others go simply because its how they were raised, which is pretty Huxleyian to me.

This only furthers my agreement with Postman. Huxley's future is the one we should fear, not Orwell's. I mean seriously this discussion of whether or not we are stupider than we used to be or not makes no sense to me. Clearly we are. We are essentially half an inch away from a Huxleyian future and we don't seem to care. Now I'm sure many of you are going to be angry with me and disagree and that's OK with me. I don't quite know how or when we changed into such a Huxleyian society but we surely did. Our society is now based almost entirely on distracting people from the sad state of their lives while hopefully getting them to use consumption as a remedy for any emotion other than happiness. Maybe we don't use soma as much as they do, but surely we use drugs more than they do, and for similar reasons.
This is how we work.

SOCIETY: I'm sorry you lost your job, here take an antidepressant.
MASSES: (swallow pill) awesome I no longer care about anything.
SOCIETY: and we don't have to see you cry.

SOCIETY: You're child appears to have trouble learning, here take this....
MASSES: (swallow pill) my child doesn't have trouble focusing anymore
SOCIETY: and he doesn't interrupt people who can learn nor does he learn anything. He'll make a perfect Epsilon

How it used to, and probably still should, work.

SOCIETY: I'm sorry you lost your job.
MASSES: (continues crying)
SOCIETY: Alright enough get over it.

SOCIETY: Your kid is stupid.
MASSES: (beats child; either it works or the child is actually stupid)
SOCIETY: Good job.

but no, our society hasn't gotten stupid or soft or weak, we merely need drugs for everything and can't accept responsibility for anything.

Brave (New World?)

Alright, so much to talk about, so little time.
"When the individual feels, the community reels." Of the many mantras used by social controllers in Huxley's brave new world this seems to be, so far, used less often than many others yet far more important. I understand its meaning. When a single person breaks from the mold that the world controllers have put in place by "feeling" it causes the community to "reel," or falter. The reason this is more important than many of the other mantras used in the text is because the society is based, entirely, on protecting stability and any reeling, lack of stability, is a serious problem for the society, or at least its controllers. I'm not entirely sure how this is going to play out in the end of the book, but I do see instances of it starting to come into importance. Bernard's individuality causes the community to "reel," if just barely, which in turn leads to him being sent away from the community in the hopes of preserving stability. I understand the mantra's meaning and its importance; I don't understand why it is necessary. It seems that it would be much easier to just drug or kill anybody like Bernard. I suppose the reason the world controllers don't do this is because they want to preserve the APPEARANCE of freedom. This reminds me of our current world, hence the question mark in the title, but I suppose that this discussion is meant for our other blog on what is freedom, so I will save it until then.
Considering all the other mantra's they have in place to stop people from feeling, such as "a gramme is better than a damn," the necessity of this mantra should indicate that something is wrong with the way their society is being run. If their social conditioning works so well, why do they need seventeen, just a random number, other mantras in order to protect their socially conditioned community. That is, of course, unless the leaders know that their method is flawed and continue to use it anyway, which seems to be the most likely case.

DISCLAIMER: The following post may contain boredom, obvious literary insight, and dull language.

I notice that writing this blog, and many to follow, is not going to be nearly as interesting or entertaining as writing my first one and since I don't really feel like spending a lot of time on this post I am afraid that it will be quite mundane. My most sincere apologies go out to those of you who actually read this. The content of this post is, unfortunately, strictly guided by my professor, so I will, begrudgingly, follow those guidelines in order to protect my, sure to fall, grade.

So into the bright, well lit room, that is the Time Traveler's evolutionary theory of the Eloi and Morlock species. Yes, I know that the great and powerful Time Traveler himself thinks that his evolutionary theory is flawed, if not entirely wrong. I, however, because the specificity, and vagueness, of my guiding prompt, do not care whether or not he is right. I am merely concerned with what his theory is and what "characteristics support his hypothesis." The first question is simple enough to answer. His theory is that the Eloi are the descendants of the upper class and that the Morlocks are the descendants of the lower, working class. The second question is more difficult to answer. To answer it properly I must first ask at least one other question. Characteristics of what? Since this question will not be answered before I am forced to post this for everyone to read I think it is just a touch unfair that I have to answer it. I will, however, attempt to do so. I will also, because I am overly confident and arrogant, assume, correctly I'm sure, that the aforementioned characteristics are characteristics of the Eloi and Morlock. The characteristics that support his hypothesis are the ones that he chooses to call on when explain his hypothesis. The "characteristics" for the Morlocks are simple. They do all the labor. They have terrible posture, such as the working class in the late 1800s. The Eloi's characteristics are slightly more difficult, unless we assume that the Time Traveler shares Well's view that the upper class are childlike. If they share that view the supporting "characteristics" are easy to see. The Eloi are like children.

There we go, a Simple, Dull, Literary post. Be prepared for many, many, many, many more.