MacKenzie Bernard
Journal #1
What form of technology is most important to your day to day life? What, if anything, do you think are the advantages of being able to rely on this technology? What, if anything, do you think are the dangers of relying on this technology? What do you think might be the advantages of the scientific processes described in these chapters? The dangers?
I’m gonna go with the stereotypical teenage answer and say that the most important form of technology in my day to day life is my phone. I throw it around carelessly, become infuriated with it the minute it decides it just doesn’t feel like functioning, and regularly refer to it as a “piece of s—t,” but I love that phone more than I love most people. I need that thing. It keeps me entertained. Twitter, Facebook, Temple Run, Snapchat – those apps are sacred. It keeps me learning; Google, my Dictionary app, my White Pages app, the rest of the internet – they’re all essentials. It allows me to rapidly communicate essential messages. For example, one time I saw Mr. Esselman and his fiancé at Culver’s and because of my phone, I was able to instantly convey this critical information to several people via texting and Twitter. God only knows what I would’ve done without a phone then.
That being said, being in love with a phone has its disadvantages. When I asked Mr. Esselman a few days later if my Tweet creeped him out (because you can’t write an all caps Tweet about seeing your history teacher and his fiancé at Culver’s and expect him not to find out about it), he told me, “No, because I don’t blame you, MacKenzie. I blame technology.” He went on to essentially accentuate that we’re living in a world currently addicted to social media, constantly staying up to date, and perhaps most importantly, our phones. I think he has a point. Maybe I’d be more productive if I wasn’t checking Twitter 15 times a day. Maybe I’d be a happier person if I didn’t get pissed every time I died in Temple Run just because the freaking game lagged. Maybe I’d have learned more in high school if I hadn’t spent so much time worrying about whether or not my backpack, jacket, desk, etc. was effectively hiding my texting (and maybe my discipline record wouldn’t have three cell phone offenses on it).
In the first three chapters of Brave New World, there have been some incredible scientific processes. Diseases are a thing of the past. The reproduction process is incredibly rapid in comparison with that of today. “At sixty [people’s] powers and tastes are what they were at seventeen (55).” Most people are content in the world. For example, even though Betas will never be as clever as Alphas, they are still “really awfully glad [to be] a Beta, because [Betas] don’t work so hard. And then [Betas] are much better than the Gammas and the Deltas. […] And Epsilons are still worse (27).” The technology in Brave New World basically conditions people to be happy. And if their world is so technologically advanced and just about everybody is happy, how can there be a problem?
Maybe there isn’t. Maybe, unlike us, Huxley’s characters really know how to live:
No wonder these poor pre-moderns were mad and wicked and miserable. Their world didn’t allow them to take things easily, didn’t allow them to be sane, virtuous, happy. What with mothers and lovers, what with the prohibitions they were not conditioned to obey, what with the temptations and the lonely remorses, what with all the diseases and the endless isolating pain, what with the uncertainties and the poverty – they were forced to feel strongly. And feeling strongly (and strongly, what was more, in solitude, in hopelessly indivudal isolation), how could they be stable? (41)
I want to sit here and say that their controlled, restricted way of life isn’t the right way to live. I want to say that freedom and individuality as well as a lack of an obligation to live by predestination and f—k everybody you see are vital parts of true happiness. But, I can’t deny the existence of “the diseases,” “the uncertainties,” and “the poverty” in our “pre-modern” world. I want to say that the people in the world created by Huxley are only happy because they don’t know any better, but maybe the same can be said for happiness in our world. I want to say that their doing happiness wrong, but maybe the ones “doing it wrong” are us. Maybe. Right now, I’m interested in seeing what’s going to happen with Bernard Marx. He seems to currently be the only character that’s not content. He seems to be the flaw in this “utopia.” If he’s not happy, then perhaps this world is fundamentally imperfect after all. Maybe he can validate my questioning of their world or find a middle ground between happiness in our society compared to his.
P.S. I’m sorry this journal got turned into a quasi-philosophical essay draft.