Explore the New World

 

Hi, everyone! This is Judy’s last post regarding the novel “Brave New World.” Since the topic of utopia has been shared for weeks, I will attempt to share something different this time.  :)

Today, I am going to discuss one of the main characters, John, in the novel “Brave New World.” John is a very special person because he is the only one born naturally of a mother. All of the people in “Brave New World” except for him are produced from Hatchery. Due to utopian society, the authorities need to control people’s ideas and thoughts by producing nearly identical human beings. However, owing to John’s mother, he is influenced a lot by her mother from the World State. Since his mother always describes it as a paradise, John is eager to see the World State. But once there, he considers the culture of this world immoral, infantilizing, and degrading to humanity. John thinks that a worthwhile human life requires suffering and danger because discomfort and the pain are essential parts of freedom.

According to these chapters that I have read, I wonder what “humanity” represents. From my own perspective, humanity should involve our understanding and kindness towards other people. Human beings are herd animals. We should listen to others’ opinions carefully instead of ignoring them. We should treat other people sincerely rather than make use of them. Take my personal experience as an example. I had ever known a person who always made friends with purpose. She always pretended to be kind and polite to ask when she needed others. She always “asked others a favor” in a way that others might be hard to reject. In other words, those who were asked almost had no choice but acceptance. What’s worse, after those people helped her out, she would just disappear and even not express her gratitude at all. I am quite disgusted at the way she treated her so-called “friends.” In my opinion, to her, those friends are just her useful tools when needed. They are not her true friends. They are just servants dominated by her. Or, to put it another way, she doesn’t have “true” friends. She might not care about friendship at all. All she cares about is what the best for herself is. After knowing such a person, I always wonder what humanity towards her is and where it is. As far as I am concerned, I would advise that If you meet such a person, all you need to do is to kick those “who make use of you when someone wants to” out of your life. As the saying goes, “sincerity and truth are the basics of every virtue.” In my eyes, it is just what humanity is.

In addition, after reading this novel, I can truly feel how strongly the environment and era impact people because this novel is written at the time equivalent to World War One. In such chaos and anarchy, people pursue a stable and systematic society. Accordingly, another major issue displayed in this dystopian satire is the extreme obsession with stability. They eliminate individual freedom, intelligence, creativity, and diversity. It indeed leads to several disadvantages beneath the surface. For example, people are subjected to others like robots. Besides, because everything has already been arranged, people will not suffer from the pains and setbacks. But actually, pains and failures can be a kind of strength rather than an annoyance. Hence, losing personal identity and freedom is the most severe problem in this novel. Like the passage written by Aldous Huxley, “We are not our own any more. We did not make ourselves, and we cannot be supreme over ourselves. We are not our own masters.”

So, if a civilization where suffering and pain have been eradicated at the price of personal autonomy, are you interested in living there? I suppose that this novel implies that pain is necessary for our lives to have meaning.