Sunday, November 27, 2011

Old Brave New World

One fine day, sometime in 1931, dear old Aldie woke up, took his usual shower and read his favourite morning paper over breakfast. Then he learned about some new industrial development - who knows? Small boxes with moving images? A new toaster perhaps? Either way, then and there, he decided to write an outrageously frightening satirical narrative describing an entirely utopian - dystopian - society where children are created in hatcheries, learn during sleep and are tyrannically distributed into castes according to genetic codes. As there is no natural reproduction, recreational sex is the norm - does it start to sound familiar? - and words such as family and marriage are considered too obscene to be mentioned in polite conversation. God forbids two individuals seeing each other for more than a couple of times, sharing is, after all, a virtue... oh wait... there is also no religion, so forget about God.
Aldous Huxley would probably turn in his grave if he could be bothered to return from the underworld and realize his practical joke on the direction his society was taking has actually taken shape some 80 years later.

It is extremely hard to convey some meaning to this post, taking into account my imaginary friends have probably never read Brave New World - no, it is not a picture book. But hey, it is Christmas, the only time of the year when book stores have a bit more noise than flies buzzing. I promise therefore to try to make some sense without getting too descriptive and get to the point as quickly as possible.

Relationships are dying. Was that too fast for you? And by 'relationship' I meant the old sense of the word, you know, when our grandparents chose a partner and stick to him or her for life, through the good and the bad. I read somewhere a psychiatrist claiming that the modern day relationships had a tendency to be brief, but intense. And this tendency will only aggravate itself in time, creating a group of people, a generation of confused and unadapted individuals, that were raised in a certain set of values, but live in a society that follows an entire different set. In other words, you are raised to find that famous and illusive love, marry, reproduce and make it work; but you are confronted with a reality where there are way too many 'loves' , that are extremely pleasurable, but end too early, because all that matters is quick gratification. There is no such thing as the need and responsibility of maintaining it, after all there are so many great people out there... and you keep looking and looking and looking.

Well, if I wasn't just an imaginary doll, I would be one of those seriously damaged girls, unsure of how to make oneself be loved, insecure in this scary scary scary shifting world. Are people that unfeeling? Is companionship obsolete? Is it all about attraction, passion, those 5 seconds when lighting strikes? It sounds so superficial to me. People are just empty minds in steaming bodies, rubbing each other until it becomes boring. No commitment, afraid of what they might find, perhaps, or simply too dumb to be able to make it work or to realize there could be something more. What is there, besides a pretty face, most of the time, anyway?

Alas, my favourite part in Brave New World describes a visit of the main character, Lenina - one of these modern women - to a natural reservation - basically, it's a closed territory where people still live barbarically, well, like we live today. Savages like we are SUPPOSED to be, with families, with values, free to chose their destinies. I remember specifically a scene where she is terribly disgusted by the sight of a woman breastfeeding. Funnily enough it is one of the things I find intolerable. What can I say, it is so... primitive. There, she meets John Savage and the book unfolds in a confrontation between the old and the new. So I'll leave you with one of my favourite quotes of all times:

«"But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin. (...) Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and impotent; the right to have syphilis and cancer; the right to have too little to eat; the right to be lousy; the right to live in constant apprehension of what may happen to-morrow; the right to catch typhoid; the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind." There was a long silence. "I claim them all," said the Savage at last.»


It all makes part of life. The good and the bad. I just think it makes more sense when you have someone to share it with. Schuss!

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