posted
I just finally got around to reading it, and while I liked it, I wasn't as impressed as I expected to be. What are your reactions to it? I just feel like maybe I missed something....I don't know.
posted
Eh...I read it a few years ago for a summer reading assignment. I liked it allright, but I preferred 1984.
I can't explain why. I just didn't like the characters...I couldn't identify with them.
Sorry, I guess that's not much help. Maybe I should go back and read it to figure out why I didn't like it.
Posts: 3852 | Registered: Feb 2002
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posted
REad it some weeks ago. It was interesting except.. I didn't get the savage. I don't see how whipping yourself or denying yourself of all pleasure does any good, just like too much hedonism doesn't do much good. There needs to be some middle ground between the two. The points about deep art were interesting, as well as God... Mostly I thought the Giver was better even though it's aimed at a younger audience because it was more subtle and not boldly saying, this is utopia, everyone's bred to be happy here... Prehaps I should reread it...
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I hate anti-utopian novels. I hate the idea that a perfect society would have to be boring, cookie-cutter and promote quiet desperation.
Posts: 7600 | Registered: Jan 2001
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posted
I don't look at dystopian novels as suggesting that utopias are in fact impossible. In general, their only common thread is that, as a rule, they seem to argue that ASSIGNING places to people is a bad idea.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
They all have that thread, sure. But they also assume that, in order to establish a perfect society to begin with, assigning roles would be a given. And you stay in your role, or else it wouldn't be perfect anymore. And so the conclusion is drawn, who'd want to live in a "perfect" world? That wouldn't be perfect!
A part of my opinion is coloured by the fact that I've had people tell me that they wouldn't want to live in a perfect world, 'cause it would be "boring." I think they've drawn this conclusion from dystopian novels, if only in some part. It seems like a severe lack of imagination to me, and extremely sad that anyone would prefer a world were others suffer simply so that it remains "interesting," holding the mistaken concept that otherwise everyone would have to be 'the same'. Who said that?! Oh, yeah. Dystopian novels.
(And regarding the characters in dystopian novels: Admittedly, I've never identified with people who struggle to assert their individuality. I've always been an outcast due to my inability to blend, so characters who have a hard time breaking this mold just don't speak me. Were I in such a role-assigning world, I'm sure I would have ended up being taken out post-haste, just because I always stand out like a sore thumb no matter what the situation.)
Brave New World and 1984 blend together for me, but I think I liked Brave New World better, maybe because the savage finished it by killing himself, where as in 1984 the hopelessness went on and on (am I right?).
Both were very good, but only in a 'thoughtful book' way.
Posts: 8473 | Registered: Apr 2003
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posted
There's two basic ways to have a "perfect" society: have only perfectly good citizens in the society, or find some way to redirect the less than perfectly good desires of the citizens. This is why I don't think any purely human society will ever be perfect.
Most dystopian novels use some combination of the two. In Brave New World, sleep education and genetic engineering/selection is used to create citizens as nearly perfectly "good" (within the frameworks of that society) and societal ritualsand customs (such as soma, unlimited sexual activity, and continuing education) serve to redirect any remaining non-perfect desires.
There's no way to create a "perfect" society out of less than perfect citizens, mainly because two well-intentioned people with the same moral goals can hold absolutely opposite opinions as to the best way to achieve those goals. So someone has to pick one of those means, which automatically creates a dissenting class.
posted
I think no matter how you set of a society, genetic engeneering, behaviour modification you'll still get a few unusual individuals popping up and ruining the homogeny a bit... You'll always have wild cards... depending, they are an important part of society.
Posts: 9942 | Registered: Mar 2003
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quote:There's no way to create a "perfect" society out of less than perfect citizens, mainly because two well-intentioned people with the same moral goals can hold absolutely opposite opinions as to the best way to achieve those goals. So someone has to pick one of those means, which automatically creates a dissenting class.
Also, books have to have conflict to be interesting. I know.
Okay, let me clarify: I don't like dystopian novels cause 1) I don't usually identify with the main characters; 2) They just aren't my kind of book, mang (should have probably admitted this from the get-go); and 3) I don't like that they help imprint in people's minds the idea that a perfect society would be boring and uniform, even though the premise of the genre is generally a "self-made, FORCED" perfect society. Many people don't see a difference between an enforced, 1950's-style, propaganda spewing society and one built on making life 'perfect' in the sense that no one is starving to death from malnutrition, no one is being beaten in their homes or molested, no one is being killed for a couple of bucks for drug money, and no one is being looked down on for their genetic code as opposed to their character.
Maybe the kind of people that don't bother to distinguish a difference are going to rest on their laurels, anyhoo, and are simply looking for justification, but anything that condones the thinking just feels like sand in my underwear.
posted
Ralphie, the whole "perfection is boring" meme has probably been around since people noticed all the "cool kids" being told they were going to hell, while all the boring people were going to heaven. I don't think it started with dystopian novels
quote:Many people don't see a difference between an enforced, 1950's-style, propaganda spewing society and one built on making life 'perfect' in the sense that no one is starving to death from malnutrition, no one is being beaten in their homes or molested, no one is being killed for a couple of bucks for drug money, and no one is being looked down on for their genetic code as opposed to their character.
A society only has it within itself to fix the first of those problems. The rest result from individual evil, and cannot be prevented short of totalitarian big-brotherism.
posted
What does pnuemonic mean? And can any of you think of technology that could exist in the future that hasn't been invented yet?
Posts: 9942 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
One of the best classes I took in college was a gen ed class taught by a social/behavioral sciences professor (who happened to be a commie). The class was called Utopias. We read about ten or twelve books about different people's ideas of ideal societies. We also read a handful of dystopias for contrast, most notably 1984 and Brave New World.
I like the first half of Brave New World. I liked reading about the details of the dystopic society. But when it got into the actual plot, about the Savage, I lost interest. I didn't think much of Huxley's writing.
FYI, the utopic books we read included Plato's Republic, More's Utopia, Skinner's Walden Two, Piercy's Woman on the Edge of Time, Gilman's Herland, and Huxley's Island (which I never actually read). I don't recall the rest.
Posts: 1652 | Registered: Aug 2003
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UofU, I had a very similar class on Utopia's, but as a lit course. Most of the books were the same, and I still have almost all of them.
My favorite was Moore's Utopia, which had total freedom of Religion, except they had to arrest a couple of the new Christian converts for being overly zealous--to the point of destabilizing the society. (And this was written in the 17th century)
Posts: 11895 | Registered: Apr 2002
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posted
The only ones I've reread since taking the class are the 2 dystopias, Walden Two (which I thought was very well written and fascinating, while at the same time quite wrongheaded in philosophy), and Woman on the Edge of Time. I thought that last was an interesting choice. It was practically the only contemporary science fiction I was assigned to read during my college years.
Posts: 1652 | Registered: Aug 2003
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