Don't miss Leonard Pitts' excellent column on Mexico's proposed drug legalization ideas in today's Bee. It's perfect.
We spent hours this weekend in rapt discussions over "Brave New World," a novel by Aldous Huxley. Our exchange daughter, Merete, has to write an essay that demonstrates her understanding of dystopias, which are basically dysfunctional societies. She has to compare the novel with a film that imagines a future in which some aspects of present day life are taken to a destructive extreme. My mind kept wandering as we discussed this book because real life kept jumping in and distracting me from the task at hand.
For example, "Brave New World": refers often to a government approved drug called"soma" which was essentially given to the masses to keep them pacified, to keep them from questioning the government. I couldn't help but think of Mexico's recent idea to legalize possession of small amounts of drugs for personal use... That's rather a a nice plan to neutralize people's frustrations rather than getting really angry and thinking critically about the way their country is ignoring the educational and economic needs of its citizens, hmmmmm?
From the novel: "I don't understand anything," she said with decision, determined to preserve her incomprehension intact. "Nothing. Least of all," she continued in another tone "why you don't take soma when you have these dreadful ideas of yours. You'd forget all about them. And instead of feeling miserable, you'd be jolly. So jolly."
Despite loving science fiction, it wasn't until this year (or maybe the end of last) that I finally got around to reading this book.
Have you finished the book, or are you still working through it? Did your discussions spin off to discussing Genetic Engineering? Gattaca is a useful movie for comparison along those lines...
This was required reading for one of my classes many moons ago, but such novels are always far more interesting as we go through them a second time with our exchange students. We haven't finished it all yet but -- Gattaca is a very good idea for a comparison film. I'd be interested in your thoughts about the danger signs in our everyday lives. Science fiction fans are generally very good at noticing such things.
Well, if you'd been reading 1984, the NSA scandal has big brotherish overtones... along with the Newspeak that crops up so often. Since you're reading Brave New World, it's a little different.
[via Pandagon]
Perhaps they had just read Brave New World and remembered the society that resulted from easy access to contraception.
The idiocy in opposing the HPV vaccine is another good case in point. Paranoia about sex has our current government making choices that greatly limit the freedom and health of many citizens.
Brave New World's choices seem to be the opposite... until you realize that both the book and the current administration propose a paternalistic goverment that denies its citizens the ability to make their own choices.