Brave New World
Maaja Ashemu
"And, how, hadn't you better wait till you actually see the new world?......"
In this quote, Bernard Marx was speaking with John about bringing him back to the New World, where everything is perfect and everyone belongs to each other. John is ecstatic to go to the New World, but Bernard cautions him because it's not all that it's cracked up to be. Everyone takes drugs and sleeps around with everyone to avoid reality, their emotions, and to be kept occupied. Humans and born into different casts at random and are conditioned to be a certain way. This dystopian society is warped to seem like a utopia to the people that live there.
Dystopia in the 21st century....
Poverty
The causes of poverty include poor people's lack of resources, an extremely unequal income distribution in the world and within specific countries, conflict, and hunger itself. As of 2015 the World Bank has estimated that there were just over 1 billion poor people in developing countries who live on $1.25 a day or less ("Causes of Poverty"). This means that 17 percent of people in the developing world lived at or below $1.25 a day in 2011. In all, 2.2 billion people lived on less than US $2 a day in 2011 (“Poverty Around The World”), the average poverty line in developing countries and another common measurement of deep deprivation.
Just like hunger these sufferings could easily be avoided if it was made a true priority. Progress in poverty reduction has been concentrated in Asia, and especially, East Asia, with the major improvement occurring in China. In Sub-Saharan Africa, the number of people in extreme poverty has increased. So the question should not be the matter of whether we need to find more food ((or even try to make it (GMO)),or shelter or land. The focus should be on how we can share what has already been provided for us to help those in need.
Hunger
In a world where Americans alone throw out enough trash (food) to feed the whole world there should not be a single issue when it comes to everyone being able to have the simple nutrition to live well. Yet somehow this is not the reality that we live in.
According to UNICEF, 22,000 children die each day due to poverty and the lack of food or water. Children (being young and much more vulnerable to diseases) are the most visible victims of undernutrition. Undernutrition was the cause of annually 3·1 million child deaths or 45% of all child deaths in 2011 ("U.S. Food and Drug Administration.")
Undernutrition magnifies the effect of every disease, including measles and malaria. The estimated proportions of deaths in which undernutrition is an underlying cause are roughly similar for diarrhea (61%), malaria (57%), pneumonia (52%), and measles (45%) (“2014 World Hunger and Poverty Facts and Statistics by World Hunger Education Service.”). Malnutrition is an issue that can easily be stopped if the world simply made that a true goal, but sadly that day has not come yet.
Inequality- Sexism
The first thing that comes to ones mind when Sexism is mentioned is the dismissal of a man/woman's rights simply for the fact of their gender. Yet in the 21st century it has come to a realization that there is more to sexism than just men and women.
LGBT is an initialism that stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender which has been used since the 1990’s to replace the term gay when in reference to the LGBT community beginning in the mid-to-late 1980s ("LGBT Rights"). As the term “gay community” did not accurately represent all those to whom it referred.
It is no secret that the full understanding and acceptance of the LGBT community has yet to be achieved. Some believe that the act of a changing one’s gender, man marrying man, a women marrying women, are all acts of sin. Punishable by burning in hell for eternity. One's religious beliefs or personal beliefs are not to be told whether they are wrong or right, it is their way. Yet when that belief begins to hurt, and deny others of their natural born rights is when there has to be a line drawn.
In 2013 a women by the name of Madelynn Taylor, 74, who served in the Navy from 1958 to 1964 was denied the right of her partner Jean Mixner ashes to be spread on her grave later after her passing to join her wife. The Idaho State Veterans Cemetery is refusing to allow the lesbian couple to be buried together because of the state’s ban on same-sex marriage.
Taylor explains to an interviewer
“I’m not surprised. I’ve been discriminated against for 70 years, and they might as well discriminate against me in death as well as life… I don’t see where the ashes of a couple old lesbians is going to hurt anyone.” ("Taylor")
The sad reality is that this is not uncommon or even close to the truly horrifying stories told by those discriminated against due to others beliefs. It’s true that in the past year strides for the rights of the LGBT community have occurred yet these are not enough. Until true equality is met the world will not rest breaking down barriers, boxes and confining thoughts one law at a time.
Wheres the fun if forever- Miguel
www.youtube.com/watch?v=BB33avJcmNw
The lyrics in this song describes a man’s feeling towards the thought of being eternal and how that would effect our actions. He asks
Where's the fun in forever
Would we love so hard
Would we strive to be better
Would we come this far...
The whole mystery and exhilaration of this journey called life is one’s own path that is chosen by themselves. The ups and downs, fear of failure, grief of death, and joy of succeeding. It is all part of the growth of humanity.
In Brave New World “everyone belongs to everyone” is a very commonly used phrase and overall theme used by everyone in the New World.
Though the lifespan of an individual is not eternity, aspects such as health, wealth, happiness, youth, thoughts and feelings are all predetermined before birth. There is no need to work hard in order to get to where one needs to be, because at birth they are already given their path, purpose and desires. Happiness is given with Soma, feelings are programed thru life long hypnotizing, health and everlasting youth is taken care of with high tech medicine and treatments, in the New World there is no need for concept of free will.
If you knew you had forever to live with no worries, would you do your best? Why would you be motivated to become better if there was no sight to an end. The harsh truth is that there is no true happiness without the feeling of pain and unfortunately John experienced this firsthand when he realized that Soma wasn't enough, covering his true thoughts with drugs was never enough to really satisfy his inner feelings. In the end in order to get back to reality he chose to end his life and be free from the confinement of “freedom”. The lyrics of this song are so perfectly matched to John’s thoughts on the New World, its as if he wrote them himself. Questioning the process in which the New World works and how it affects the individuals within it.
Say NO to GMO
GMO tho very high in technology is not needed nor wanted by those who truly understand the risks of it. But these risks are not usually explained or even mentioned to those helping to develop it in their farms replacing their plants and receiving this new technology, as these are usually uneducated 2nd world locals who would do anything for money.
According to the Institute of Science in Society the risks to human health Bt toxin has been shown to cause damage to multiple organs including the heart, kidney and liver of lab animals in industry studies that were re-analysed by independent scientists. Toxicity to human kidney cells has been further confirmed in vitro, where exposure to Cry1Ab toxin caused necrotic cell death. Bt Toxin Kills Human Kidney Cells. Moreover, adverse immune responses were detected in lab animals as well as humans. A paper just published in 2013 reports significantly higher rates of severe stomach inflammation in pigs fed a mixed GM corn and soybean diet for 22.7 weeks compared with pigs fed an equivalent non-GM control diet: 32% compared to 12%. Female pigs on the GM diet also had uterus heavier by 25% on average.
For the only feeding trial on human volunteers, a single meal was given in a milkshake containing GM soya flour with about 3 x 1012 copies of the soya genome. The complete 2 266 bp of the epsps transgene was recovered from the colostomy bag in six out of seven ileostomy subjects, at levels ranging from a high of 1011 copies in one subject to 105 copies in another. This is evidence that DNA is not rapidly broken down in the gastrointestinal tract, confirming earlier results from the same research group. Further, in three of the seven ileostomy subjects, about 1 to 3 per million bacteria cultured from the contents of the colostomy bag were positive for the GM soya transgene, showing that horizontal transfer of transgenic DNA had occurred. ("Ban GMO's NOW")
Between 2005 and 2006, senior scientist Irina Ermakova at the Russian Academy of Sciences reported that female rats fed glyphosate-tolerant GM soybeans produced excessive numbers of severely stunted pups and more than half of the litter dying within three weeks, while the surviving pups were completely sterile (“Wan-Ho, Mae”). GMO does more harm than good in the long term, plus such made up food is not needed when the world is no where close to running out of resources and those resources are actually being harmed by this process.
Wheres the fun in FOREVER- Miguel
www.youtube.com/watch?v=BB33avJcmNw
The lyrics in this song describes a man’s feeling towards the thought of being eternal and how that would effect our actions. He asks
Where's the fun in forever
Would we love so hard
Would we strive to be better
Would we come this far...
The whole mystery and exhilaration of this journey called life is one’s own path that is chosen by themselves. The ups and downs, fear of failure, grief of death, and joy of succeeding. It is all part of the growth of humanity.
In Brave New World “everyone belongs to everyone” is a very commonly used phrase and overall theme used by everyone in the New World.
Though the lifespan of an individual is not eternity, aspects such as health, wealth, happiness, youth, thoughts and feelings are all predetermined before birth. There is no need to work hard in order to get to where one needs to be, because at birth they are already given their path, purpose and desires. Happiness is given with Soma, feelings are programed thru life long hypnotizing, health and everlasting youth is taken care of with high tech medicine and treatments, in the New World there is no need for concept of free will.
If you knew you had forever to live with no worries, would you do your best? Why would you be motivated to become better if there was no sight to an end. The harsh truth is that there is no true happiness without the feeling of pain and unfortunately John experienced this firsthand when he realized that Soma wasn't enough, covering his true thoughts with drugs was never enough to really satisfy his inner feelings. In the end in order to get back to reality he chose to end his life and be free from the confinement of “freedom”. The lyrics of this song are so perfectly matched to John’s thoughts on the New World, its as if he wrote them himself. Questioning the process in which the New World works and how it affects the individuals within it.