Wednesday, September 9, 2015

Brave New World again

Can't help it, but the parallels are striking.

I noted briefly before, that in the story, Linda Lysenko was executed.  Linda was John's mother, as you may know.  Her crime was her appearance, as 20 years or so on the Savage Reservation destroyed her looks.  In the Brave New World, one's appearance was critical.  Old age wasn't to be tolerated.  Therefore, there was no place for Linda in the society that she wanted so much to rejoin.  Her wish to rejoin was nothing but a death wish, but death held no dread amongst the "civilized".  She may have preferred to be dead than to continue living on the Savage Reservation.  The only thing is that she couldn't bring herself to end it all while there.  It was too unpleasant, another reality that the "civilized" couldn't handle.

The point is that the "civilized world" could not say that they were executing Linda.  The "civilized world" continually dealt in deceit, in which the execution of Linda was only one among many such deceits.  The "civilized world" was an artificial one, and proud to be so.  Nature was to be hated, as something that made people nauseous.

The parallel with our society is on that point--- our current society is like the Brave New World in that it cannot deal with truth and is forever mired in deceit.  But without the truth, there is no real chance to correct what needs to be corrected.  If you don't know what the problem is, how can you ever solve it?


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