Viva La Revolucion!
The Defiant Do Declare
“We are not our own any more than what we possess is our own. We did not make ourselves, we cannot be supreme over ourselves. We are not our own masters.” ( Huxley )
“We are not our own any more than what we possess is our own. We did not make ourselves, we cannot be supreme over ourselves. We are not our own masters."(Huxley 232) is said by Cardinal Newman quoting a passage from a book by a philosopher called Maine de Biran
Dystopia Today
The best example of dystopia in today's world is the income gap between the have and the have nots. “One percent of Americans raked in twenty percent of the wealth last year,” writes Brian Merchant. The issue with money is that money is what makes the economy go around, money buys you clothes, your food, your home, and everything that you may need in this society is bought off with money. The more the top one percent has, the less it is distributed and trickled down to the rest of America. This scarcity of the dollar will make the people who have little have even less. Money isn't an infinite thing, there is a limit to money and when the rich earn more money they aren't getting it from the endless pit of a printing machine but from the pockets of the rest of the ninety nine percent who live in America. This gap in income inequality will upset many individuals who need that money to live. The state of our economy depends on the average citizens who buy the products the companies make, without having enough money; people will not spend and will start voicing out their unfair treatment and began protesting. Our American economy is a ticking time bomb, the more the one percent’s greed ingests the money in our economy the sooner the American citizens will become tired of the exploitation and corruption. A perfectly reasonable example of what the most probable outcome for this specific type of dystopian subject is the French Revolution against the Nobles. The noblemen of France became greedy, took the money from the people by taxing and seizure and in return the people of France started a rebellion and purged the nobles and the royals into oblivion. This could happen if the one percent continues to oppress the citizens that directly give them the power to have so much money. Squeezing the money out of people will not only hurt the people but will also hurt the one percent. There will be backlash from the people sooner or later; we have already started protesting Wall Street in a campaign as the Occupy Movement. I believe this is only one of the many that will spring up as this dystopian element continues in our society.
Healthy New Planet
Chairlift’s song Planet Health relates to the theme of Brave New World in that everyone should be the same and eat healthy. Her lyrics “So I altered myself conscious messes and body images,” remind of the first two chapters in Brave New World where they genetically modify humans and alter their genetic code to be good at a certain task, it also reminds of when they condition the children to have sex at an early age and to be afraid to read books and other activities that are not relevant for the kids predestined task in the BNW society. When she sings “ Our intercourse was well protected, we made love with each other’s’ eyes,” I recall that in the book the people of the society can make love but not be able to produce children so in a sense the intercourse was protected because the final product of intercourse is an offspring which cannot happen in BNW society. When they make love with each other’s eyes, it is normal to look and stare at other people and in the society of BNW it is normal to have sex with many partners. “Then I found out where you're sent when you're sick and sad and old they kick you off of planet health into a universe of cold,” is the perfect scenario of what they do to the elderly. The reason why that BNW society does not have any aging people is because they are all sent to be burned after a certain age and the people in the society see this as normal and as the ultimate sacrifice they can contribute to the society.
For GMOs
I am for Genetically Modified Organisms because GMOs are the future of the world. With our ever so growing population we need GMOs to sustain our numbers. Natural Agricultures and even people are susceptible to many diseases but with GMOs or GMPs they can be genetically modified to become tolerant to these diseases so the crops would survive and be able to feed our people and for people they can become engineered with increased agility, strength, speed, stamina to fight. GMOs and GMPs are a very controversial topic because many people are so afraid of it but I believe it is the only way to go as we continue to multiply and our technology advances. GMOs reduce the need for herbicide and pesticide, they reduce greenhouse emissions, and they have the ability to be manipulated to carry needed nutrients into our diet. (Natural Revolution) In my APES class we discussed the issue on GMOs fairly recently. We discussed the boosted nutrients to feed people who lack the Vitamin A or the Iron or any other nutrients they need to have stable diet. The controversy of Golden Rice was at the top of our debates because normal rice are empty calories this Golden Rice could be able to replace the normal rice as the main staple grain in many diets. Golden Rice was genetically modified with nutrients so of course it would be better than normal rice but the issue of harm to other organisms came up that people were against GMOs. They would “harm other organism owing to the fact that the genes included may have an effect which may be poisonous to other crops.” (New Vision) Even if that would happen, we really don’t need the other crops because these GMOs are an upgraded version of the other crop and if not we can just modify the crop that has been wiped out by GMOs and be able to have them again. I don’t think there is anything wrong with GMOs especially when out world is changing by the second and thousands of people are being born every day, with our growing technology I see GMOs as a necessity to continue on our path of life. From my post about dystopian today, I wrote about the income inequality between the one percent of America who hold most of the money and the ninety nine percent with little money, GMOs are easily sustainable, cheap to make, grow in large yields and good for you and cheap for you to buy. GMOs are practically already in the market today. Many of our corn products and vegetables are already genetically modified. Things such as seedless watermelons and seedless oranges, they are GMOs because organic will have seeds. GMOs are great for our diet and are necessary for our ever so expanding population. People who are afraid of GMOs are afraid of change and afraid of what will happen but all evidence points toward nothing because GMOs have already invaded into the grocery stores and into our diets.
Works Cited
"The Good, Bad and Ugly about GMOs - Natural Revolution." Natural Revolution. N.p., n.d. Web. 03 Dec. 2014.
Merchant, Brian. "Motherboard Motherboard." VICE. N.p., 11 Sept. 2013. Web. 05 Dec. 2014.
Huxley, Aldous. Brave New World. New York: Harper & Bros., 1946. Print.
Cooper, Ryan. "Don't Be Fooled: America Is Still Headed for an Aristocratic Dystopia." The Week. N.p., 10 July 2014. Web. 05 Dec. 2014.