Today in the morning to visiting teachers and after school at 7:00 to visiting parents and students. I was presenting for my school about my new project Attend. The presentations went quite well and I think people especially the teachers that were visiting in the morning liked the idea for the app which gave me more confidence that the app is actually a good idea and not just a cool idea.

The world controllers in brave new world take advantage of the fact that people are always okay with what is normal. This means that for every person in the book no matter how bad their living conditions may seem to people used to something different their conditions are perfectly okay to them just like how we look down on how people lived in the medieval ages who themselves had no possible way knowing how their way of living was barbaric because they had no higher standard to compare it to. The examples in the book are the different classes of people within the world state and the differences between the ‘savages” and the people of the world state. The different classes despite the epsilons being obviously stupid by our standards and the alpha’s being obviously intelligent yet all of the other classes are quite content with their status because they have never experienced anything otherwise(the epsilons may be incapable of this as a result of the bokanovsky process) and have only been told good things about their status. The same goes for the differences between the people of the world state and the people of the savage lands who each have grown accustomed to different environments. As a reader our environment is more like that of the savages so we side with them in the story. However it is easily feasible that if we had been grown in a similar environment as the people in the world state we would have no problem with their way of life.

Both 1984 and Brave new world are both dystopian worlds involving a small party in complete authoritarian control over people. However there are several key differences between the two novels. In 1984 the main protagonist Winston Smith is presented as a able minded person who slowly gathers information and eventually attempts to bring down the government but is stopped and killed. In brave new world Bernard Marx is originally presented in the same fashion but eventually prevents himself from rebellion by succumbing to himself and the way of doing things of the world state.

In brave new world there are many different classes of people. The majority of people are epsilons which are the stupidest of all the different classes. The different classes are named in sequence of the greek alphabet. All of the different classes are conditioned to like certain things that are specific to their class. At the start of the book you see the babies being trained to dislike nature. The alpha’s which are the most intelligent have the hardest jobs and have to be careful about what they inquire about in the brave new world. The epsilons in contrast have very simple lives and preform menial tasks. All of the classes are conditioned to believe that they are the best class to live in and propaganda is everywhere even when they are sleeping.

The bokanovsky process is responsible for the creation of the different classes of people in the brave new world. The process involves the splitting of the embryo splits up to 96 times Then embryos are placed into varying amounts of alcohol to control most physical aspects of the embryo especially intelligence  the embryos are then inspected for any deformities that are unwanted for their class. This process is a major factor in how the society in brave new world is controlled allow the world controller to determine wether a person is intelligent or not. The bokanovsky process allows the creation of a cheap and reliable workforce because you do not need to worry about them revolting or worrying about poor conditions. More intelligent classes need for management and research roles can be more easily monitored as you know which people to monitor.

Soma is a drug in brave new world that is basically the future equivalent of the drug ecstasy. Soma causes people to go on “vacations” and it is how people in brave new world deal with situations that they would rather not deal with. The soma in brave new world is a way for the world controllers to control the people in the world by preventing them from thinking about things that are potentially dangerous to the government. The drug is highly addictive so people like Lenina who took the drug and then stopped intensely need to keep using it. This makes it easy to guarantee that people will continue to use Soma. People like Bernard Marx who do not use soma are outcasts because they do not act or think the same way as others(at least until the middle of the book for Bernard). I think that soma is a commentary by the author on how various ways that people avoid problems through distractions.

I search post: Why did Huxley give characters certain names

While reading through the book and discussing it in discussions a important part of the book that came up was the naming of the characters. Names like Bernard Marx or Mustapha Mond stand out. My self I found Mustapha Mond to be a interesting name because in french “monde” means world, but as that is that just means that it implies that he controls the world which the reader already knows as he is the “world controller”.  Bernard Marx is a more recognizable name that I think stands for Karl Marx who is famous for popularizing communism. By reading the pre-word written by Huxley years after the original publishing of the book he made it clear that he did not like most form of modern government. The pre-word written in the sixties during the cold war now warned of society evolving into the society in Brave new world or it could be individual nations threatening each other with nuclear bombs. A key thing that I would note about the time that the book was written is that it was written during the times of the rise of Facism and Communism. These forms of government shared many of the characteristics of the “world state” in brave new world. I believe that Huxley quite clearly demonstrates that he believes that nothing good can come of civilisation and the eventual state that he believed it would reach is demonstrated in brave new world. Huxley named the characters in the book to relate their actions and situations to the real world to give the reader some parallels to the authors criticisms of modern society. The naming of the characters in this story serves to demonstrate relationships between the real world and brave new world giving the reader better understanding of the book and Huxley many messages written into it.

Last friday in digital media I took part in a lesson on communication. In this lesson we had a group discussion on: What is communication?, What are tools to communicate?, Why do we communicate? and What is effective communication.

I decided that effective communication (between people) is about taking what you have in your head (a feeling, thought…)  and putting it in the head of another person. The reason that this lesson was important because it helped me think about communication, which is a important topic for people as our society relies so much on effective communication.

I think the lesson was really well done and I liked the ability to discuss and agree on things as a group. I would like to see that again in future lessons.