09-05-2012, 08:44 PM
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#21 |
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Senior Member
Join Date: Apr 2008
Posts: 28,691
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Brave New World
Huxley said that Brave New World was inspired by the utopian novels of H.G. Wells, including A Modern Utopia (1905) and Men Like Gods (1923). Wells' hopeful vision of the future's possibilities gave Huxley the idea to begin writing a parody of the novel, which became Brave New World. Unlike the most popular optimist utopian novels of the time, Huxley sought to provide a frightening vision of the future. Huxley referred to Brave New World as a "negative utopia" , somewhat influenced by Wells' own The Sleeper Awakes (dealing with subjects like corporate tyranny and behavioral conditioning) and the works of D. H. Lawrence. George Orwell believed that Brave New World must be partly derived from the novel We by Yevgeny Zamyatin. Huxley visited the newly opened and technologically advanced Brunner and Mond plant, part of Imperial Chemical Industries, or ICI, Billingham, United Kingdom, and gives a fine and detailed account of the processes he saw. The introduction to the most recent print of Brave New World states that Huxley was inspired to write the classic novel by this Billingham visit. Although the novel is set in the future it deals with contemporary issues of the early 20th century. The Industrial Revolution had transformed the world. Mass production had made cars, telephones, and radios relatively cheap and widely available throughout the developed world. The political, cultural, economic and sociological upheavals of the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the First World War (1914–1918) were resonating throughout the world as a whole and the individual lives of most people. Accordingly, many of the novel's characters are named after widely recognized, influential and in many cases contemporary people, for example, Polly Trotsky (Leon Trotsky), Benito Hoover (Benito Mussolini; Herbert Hoover), Lenina Crowne (Vladimir Lenin; John Crowne), Fanny Crowne (Fanny Brawne; John Crowne), Mustapha Mond (Mustafa Kemal Atatürk; Alfred Mond and Ludwig Mond, at whose factory Huxley worked for a time, which helped to inspire the novel), Helmholtz Watson (Hermann von Helmholtz; John B. Watson), Henry Foster (Henry Ford), Bernard Marx (George Bernard Shaw; Karl Marx), Morgana Rothschild (The Rothschild banking family), Joanna Diesel (Rudolf Diesel), Fifi Bradlaugh (Charles Bradlaugh), Sarojini Engels (Sarojini Naidu; Friedrich Engels), Clara Deterding (Henri Deterding), Tom Kawaguchi (Ekai Kawaguchi) and Herbert Bakunin (Herbert George Wells; Mikhail Bakunin). For Brave New World, Huxley unsurprisingly received nearly universal criticism from contemporary critics, although his work was later embraced. Even the few sympathetic critics tended to temper their praises with disparaging remarks. http://forum.davidicke.com/showpost....&postcount=185 Last edited by lightgiver; 09-05-2012 at 08:58 PM. |
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12-08-2012, 01:09 AM
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#22 |
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Senior Member
Join Date: Apr 2008
Posts: 28,691
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Thought Police
BBC Television's live production of George Orwell's "1984". Produced in 1954... It is the job of the Thought Police to uncover and punish thoughtcrime and thought-criminals. They use psychology and omnipresent surveillance (such as telescreens) to monitor, search, find and arrest members of society who could potentially challenge authority and status quo, even only by thought, hence the name Thought Police...They use terror and torture to achieve their ends... http://www.davidicke.com/forum/showp...5&postcount=46 |
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13-08-2012, 02:55 AM
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#23 |
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Senior Member
Join Date: Apr 2008
Posts: 28,691
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Proletariat
The proletariat (from Latin proletarius, a citizen of the lowest class) is a term used to identify a lower social class, usually the working class; a member of such a class is proletarian. Originally it was identified as those people who had no wealth other than their children...
 As defined in the Constitution of the Roman Republic, the proletarii was a social class of Roman citizens owning little or no property. The origin of the name is presumably linked with the census, which Roman authorities conducted every five years to produce a register of citizens and their property from which their military duties and voting privileges could be determined. For citizens with property valued 11,000 asses or less, which was below the lowest census for military service, their children—proles (from Latin proli, "offspring")—were listed instead of their property; hence, the name proletarius, "the one who produces offspring". The only contribution of a proletarius to the Roman society was seen in his ability to raise children, the future Roman citizens who can colonize new territories conquered by the Roman Republic and later by the Roman Empire... http://www.davidicke.com/forum/showt...=195486&page=2 http://www.davidicke.com/forum/showp...6&postcount=12 http://www.davidicke.com/forum/showp...&postcount=312 |
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14-08-2012, 10:23 PM
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#24 |
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Senior Member
Join Date: Apr 2008
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The Introduction
The novel opens in London in 632 (AD 2540 in the Gregorian Calendar). The vast majority of the population is unified under the World State, an eternally peaceful, stable global society in which goods and resources are plentiful (because the population is permanently limited to no more than two billion people) and everyone is happy. Natural reproduction has been done away with and children are created, 'decanted' and raised in Hatcheries and Conditioning Centres, where they are divided into five castes (which are further split into 'Plus' and 'Minus' members) and designed to fulfill predetermined positions within the social and economic strata of the World State. Fetuses chosen to become members of the highest caste, 'Alpha', are allowed to develop naturally while maturing to term in "decanting bottles", while fetuses chosen to become members of the lower castes ('Beta', 'Gamma', 'Delta', 'Epsilon') are subjected to in situ chemical interference to cause arrested development in intelligence or physical growth. Each 'Alpha' or 'Beta' is the product of one unique fertilized egg developing into one unique fetus. Members of lower castes are not unique but are instead created using the Bokanovsky process which enables a single egg to spawn (at the point of the story being told) up to 96 children and one ovary to produce thousands of children. To further increase the birthrate of Gammas, Deltas and Epsilons, Podsnap's Technique causes all the eggs in the ovary to mature simultaneously, allowing the hatchery to get full use of the ovary in two years' time. People of these castes make up the majority of human society, and the production of such specialized children bolsters the efficiency and harmony of society, since these people are deliberately limited in their cognitive and physical abilities, as well as the scope of their ambitions and the complexity of their desires, thus rendering them easier to control. All children are educated via the hypnopaedic process, which provides each child with caste-appropriate subconscious messages to mold the child's lifelong self-image and social outlook to that chosen by the leaders and their predetermined plans for producing future adult generations...
To maintain the World State's Command Economy for the indefinite future, all citizens are conditioned from birth to value consumption with such platitudes as "ending is better than mending," i.e., buy a new item instead of fixing the old one, because constant consumption, and near-universal employment to meet society's material demands, is the bedrock of economic and social stability for the World State. Beyond providing social engagement and distraction in the material realm of work or play, the need for transcendence, solitude and spiritual communion is addressed with the ubiquitous availability and universally endorsed consumption of the drug soma. Soma is an allusion to a mythical drink of the same name consumed by ancient Indo-Aryans... Recreational sex is an integral part of society. According to the World State, sex is a social activity, rather than a means of reproduction (sex is encouraged from early childhood). The few women who can reproduce are conditioned to use birth control (a "Malthusian belt", resembling a cartridge belt holding "the regulation supply of contraceptives", is a popular fashion accessory). The maxim "everyone belongs to everyone else" is repeated often, and the idea of a "family" is considered pornographic; sexual competition and emotional, romantic relationships are rendered obsolete because they are no longer needed. Marriage, natural birth, parenthood, and pregnancy are considered too obscene to be mentioned in casual conversation. Thus, society has developed a new idea of reproductive comprehension... The conditioning system eliminates the need for professional competitiveness; people are literally bred to do their jobs and cannot desire another. There is no competition within castes; each caste member receives the same food, housing, and soma rationing as every other member of that caste. There is no desire to change one's caste, largely because a person's sleep-conditioning reinforces each individual's place in the caste system. To grow closer with members of the same class, citizens participate in mock religious services called Solidarity Services, in which twelve people consume large quantities of soma and sing hymns. The ritual progresses through group hypnosis and climaxes in an orgy... http://www.davidicke.com/forum/showp...2&postcount=56 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep-learning http://www.davidicke.com/forum/showp...&postcount=329 http://www.davidicke.com/forum/showthread.php?t=219804 |
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16-08-2012, 12:55 AM
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#25 |
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Senior Member
Join Date: Apr 2008
Posts: 28,691
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The Shape of Things to Come
The book is dominated by Wells's belief in a world state as the solution to mankind's problems. Wells successfully predicted the Second World War, although he envisaged it dragging on into the 1960s, being finally ended only by a devastating plague that almost destroys civilization. Wells then envisages a benevolent dictatorship - 'The Dictatorship of the Air' (a term obviously modeled on 'The Dictatorship of the proletariat') - arising from the controllers of the world's surviving transportation systems (the only people with global power). This dictatorship promotes science, enforces Basic English as a global lingua franca, and eradicates all religion, setting the world on the route to a peaceful utopia. When the dictatorship finds it necessary to kill political opponents, the condemned persons are given a chance to emulate the ancient philosophers Socrates and Seneca and take a poison tablet in a congenial environment of their choice...
Eventually, after a century of reshaping humanity, the dictatorship is overthrown in a completely bloodless coup, the former rulers are sent into a very honourable retirement, and the world state "withers away" . The last part of the book is a detailed description of the Utopian world which emerges, in some ways reminiscent of Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward. The ultimate aim of this utopian world is to produce a world society composed entirely of polymaths, each and every one of its members the intellectual equal of the greatest geniuses of the past... http://www.davidicke.com/forum/showp...8&postcount=60 |
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14-09-2012, 08:23 PM
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#26 |
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Senior Member
Join Date: Apr 2008
Posts: 28,691
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G.O.
Keep the Aspidistra Flying, first published 1936, is a socially critical novel by George Orwell. It is set in 1930s London...
The main theme is Gordon Comstock's romantic ambition to defy worship of the money-god and status, and the dismal life that results...Comstock is 'obsessed' by what he sees as a pervasion of money (the 'Money God', as he calls it) behind social relationships, feeling sure that women would find him more attractive if he were better off. At the beginning of the novel, he senses that his girlfriend Rosemary Waterlow (whom he met at The Albion, and who continues to work there), is dissatisfied with him because of his poverty. An example of his financial embarrassment is when he is desperate for a pint of beer at his local pub, but has run out of pocket money and is ashamed to cadge a drink off his fellow lodger, Flaxman... http://www.davidicke.com/forum/showp...&postcount=387 |
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09-03-2013, 12:55 AM
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#27 |
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Senior Member
Join Date: Apr 2008
Posts: 28,691
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Aquarian Age & World Government
The World Plan has been in motion for centuries as a New World Order cannot happen overnight. To achive this difficult task, guns have to removed from the hands of private owners, currency has to be removed and replaced it with credit, and intelligence databases all around the world should be coordinated. Many people are becoming aware that something serious is going on and a World Plan to unite global currencies, trade boundaries & Nation States are in the offing. The principle of Global Economic Interdependence will unite all the economies of the world. There exists a benign Secret Power behind the scenes whose aim is to control all the goverments of the world. The innovative World Order is made up many elements of control - Mind control, gun control, IMF, The World Bank, FEMA, UN, Secret Societies, weather control and so on and on and on. Nothing but absolute control over everything; trade, banking, stock markets, oil, energy, technology, cyber world, nuclear capability, etc, is the New World Order.
http://www.redicecreations.com/speci...uarianage.html http://www.davidicke.com/forum/showt...=237230&page=4 |
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