Monday, June 27, 2011

Back to the Future

"that is the secret of happiness and virtue-liking what you've got to do. All conditioning aims at that: making people like their unescapable social destiny." pg 16 Brave New World

The first chapter of this book reveals a new world in which human development is controlled by scientific engineering. The way in which the embryos are treated as lab experiments is shocking. The workers dehumanize them by grouping them into "Alphas, Betas, or Gammas" and allowing students to observe the developing life cells. Mr. Foster uses the degrading simile, "Embryos are like photographic film. They can only stand red light," to further imply that humans are treated as mere experiments. The quote above conveys the Director's purpose-to create humans to be unaware of the real world thereby forcing them to accept their 'social destiny.' I'm not sure if this method will work. I'm interested to see how adults in this different world have turned out due to all the changed genetic development and such. Will they really be stable due to 'Bokanovsky's Process' and exemplify the Centre's motto of "Community, Identity, and Stability?" It seems to me that controlling human life early would lead to dependence on others and therefore less stability but maybe not.

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