wingedbeast (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
wingedbeast) wrote2017-12-25 09:44 pm
wingedbeast) wrote2017-12-25 09:44 pm
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Brave New World Deconstruction: Part 17 MEANINGLESS RIOT!
There's part of me that doesn't want to be too hard on John, here. After all, he's just lost his mother. What's more, he's just lost his mother to her own decision to OD on Soma, a drug that, as presented in the novel, is nigh-impossible to overdose.
This could have been her opportunity to take joy in introducing John, as someone she knows and loves, to the home that she has so longed for. Instead, once she's reached that home she longed for, she decided to seek oblivion. She preferred what was openly stated to be killing her to spending time alive in the world in which she had given birth to John.
That, plus the years of abuse he suffered by her hand directly and by the Malpais people responding to her, he can lay (perhaps not justly) at the feet of Fordly society.
Yet, my point from last week remains. What we're seeing isn't a realistic society. It's a straw man concocted by someone who doesn't understand the new value sets he's criticizing. And that puts a light on what's to come.
John takes it upon himself to deliver an impromptu, moving speech in order to inspire the Fordly citizens to throw off the shackles of Soma and make themselves free. His success is limited to the fact that he does, indeed, deliver an impromptu speech.
The text would have us believe that the reason for his failure is the limited intellect of his audience of Deltas. Either due to lack of pure intellectual capacity or due to lack of education, they, according to the text, just couldn't understand his speech and were more interested in getting their Soma ration.
My own thinking comes a little different. The narrator is unreliable, being the voice of Huxley's lack of understanding of what he's criticizing.
What's really happening here is that the John's audience does understand John's speech and what he's trying to say and he's just this combination of loud and wrong that can't be reasoned with.
Imagine someone stepping up on a soap-box, in front of a Planned Parenthood clinic. Imagine that they're railing not just against abortion, but the very concept of birth-control. Now, imagine that, in the attempt to convince others, they're shouting about how making conscious choices to control the size and timing of one's family is acting like a mindless animal.
On line, I frequently make the mistake of trying to engage someone like that in conversation, at least enough to explain why their rhetoric doesn't convince and why actually engaging in conversation in good faith would be a better method. I'm never successful in convincing them that listening to the other side, even if only to know what you're arguing against, is a good idea. But, that's on line over the medium of text.
Take that to an "in person" setting and the odds are even worse. You're not going to convince them. They won't hear that you don't see using birth control as lowering yourself or acting like an animal. They're just too dead set on this way of looking at things that not only doesn't match yours, but refuses to acknowledge that there can be another way of looking at things.
This whole speech would merely be annoying to John's audience, perhaps harassing. But, then he, in a bid to force people into freedom, starts throwing their Soma to the ground.
Again, the text would have us believe that the resulting violence is because the Deltas are, by prenatal brain damage and by conditioning, nigh-mindless animals. Another way of looking at it is that John is destroying their pay. If you had worked a long week, were about to be paid at the end of the week and somebody, in a bid to make you free of all things, ripped up your paychecks, you'd be angry. You might even resort to violence in order to protect those paychecks that people need.
And, there's a riot.
As John's making his scene, Bernard and Helmholtz find out and reach the scene just as the violence is beginning.
Helmholtz wades right into the violence as though that is a good and right thing to do. Bernard acts a lot more like I would. He hesitates, tries to decide to wade in with them, hesitates again because it's not like he's going to accomplish anything with that, decides again. He waffles until the police show.
The police arrest John and Helmholtz (because... well... inciting a riot is a crime! What did they expect and what does Huxley expect us to think of this?). They also arrest Bernard, basically for being a friend of Helmholtz and John.
I really don't like Helmholtz. John is obviously young and confused. But, Helmholtz isn't. He's established, educated, capable, and, apparently, oblivious to the fact that, for good or ill, the machine he's acting against includes real people who are more important than his longing for a philosophical theory.
Bernard, for all that he can be a tool sometimes, is one of those people. Sure, he's got rank and position above the Deltas present, but he's a guy who does a job and tries not to let society grind him down. And, that's hard enough without your friends inciting riots in the name of great... whatever they don't understand but they really want to be great.
This could have been her opportunity to take joy in introducing John, as someone she knows and loves, to the home that she has so longed for. Instead, once she's reached that home she longed for, she decided to seek oblivion. She preferred what was openly stated to be killing her to spending time alive in the world in which she had given birth to John.
That, plus the years of abuse he suffered by her hand directly and by the Malpais people responding to her, he can lay (perhaps not justly) at the feet of Fordly society.
Yet, my point from last week remains. What we're seeing isn't a realistic society. It's a straw man concocted by someone who doesn't understand the new value sets he's criticizing. And that puts a light on what's to come.
John takes it upon himself to deliver an impromptu, moving speech in order to inspire the Fordly citizens to throw off the shackles of Soma and make themselves free. His success is limited to the fact that he does, indeed, deliver an impromptu speech.
The text would have us believe that the reason for his failure is the limited intellect of his audience of Deltas. Either due to lack of pure intellectual capacity or due to lack of education, they, according to the text, just couldn't understand his speech and were more interested in getting their Soma ration.
My own thinking comes a little different. The narrator is unreliable, being the voice of Huxley's lack of understanding of what he's criticizing.
What's really happening here is that the John's audience does understand John's speech and what he's trying to say and he's just this combination of loud and wrong that can't be reasoned with.
Imagine someone stepping up on a soap-box, in front of a Planned Parenthood clinic. Imagine that they're railing not just against abortion, but the very concept of birth-control. Now, imagine that, in the attempt to convince others, they're shouting about how making conscious choices to control the size and timing of one's family is acting like a mindless animal.
On line, I frequently make the mistake of trying to engage someone like that in conversation, at least enough to explain why their rhetoric doesn't convince and why actually engaging in conversation in good faith would be a better method. I'm never successful in convincing them that listening to the other side, even if only to know what you're arguing against, is a good idea. But, that's on line over the medium of text.
Take that to an "in person" setting and the odds are even worse. You're not going to convince them. They won't hear that you don't see using birth control as lowering yourself or acting like an animal. They're just too dead set on this way of looking at things that not only doesn't match yours, but refuses to acknowledge that there can be another way of looking at things.
This whole speech would merely be annoying to John's audience, perhaps harassing. But, then he, in a bid to force people into freedom, starts throwing their Soma to the ground.
Again, the text would have us believe that the resulting violence is because the Deltas are, by prenatal brain damage and by conditioning, nigh-mindless animals. Another way of looking at it is that John is destroying their pay. If you had worked a long week, were about to be paid at the end of the week and somebody, in a bid to make you free of all things, ripped up your paychecks, you'd be angry. You might even resort to violence in order to protect those paychecks that people need.
And, there's a riot.
As John's making his scene, Bernard and Helmholtz find out and reach the scene just as the violence is beginning.
Helmholtz wades right into the violence as though that is a good and right thing to do. Bernard acts a lot more like I would. He hesitates, tries to decide to wade in with them, hesitates again because it's not like he's going to accomplish anything with that, decides again. He waffles until the police show.
The police arrest John and Helmholtz (because... well... inciting a riot is a crime! What did they expect and what does Huxley expect us to think of this?). They also arrest Bernard, basically for being a friend of Helmholtz and John.
I really don't like Helmholtz. John is obviously young and confused. But, Helmholtz isn't. He's established, educated, capable, and, apparently, oblivious to the fact that, for good or ill, the machine he's acting against includes real people who are more important than his longing for a philosophical theory.
Bernard, for all that he can be a tool sometimes, is one of those people. Sure, he's got rank and position above the Deltas present, but he's a guy who does a job and tries not to let society grind him down. And, that's hard enough without your friends inciting riots in the name of great... whatever they don't understand but they really want to be great.
Seed of Bismuth
(Anonymous) 2017-12-31 05:32 pm (UTC)(link)But here is a rock song to go with this post:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-t74QUjM6E