Saturday, July 2, 2011

Venturing into a Brave New World (Chapter 1/ Pages 3 - 18)

"One egg, one embryo, one adult - normality. But a bokanovskified egg will bud, will proliferate, will divide. From eight to ninety-six buds, and every bud will grow into a perfectly formed embryo, and every embryo into a full-sized adult. Making ninety-six human beings grow where only one grew before. Progress."

~ Brave New World, page 6

The first chapter of this book details some processes involved in genetically creating and specializing humans so that they may contribute to society. I found this world to be quite interesting, especially its community's fixation on progress and "social stability." If I am correctly interpreting the book, Epsilons are the lowest social class of people whose, according to the Director, intellectual capacity and even individuality are of no importance because they do not aid the community in any way. I do not know much about this world yet, but it seems as if the destruction of the potential of a human life can "benefit" the society, then it is completely acceptable and even proper. The Director states that the deterioration of Epsilons is a "benefaction to Society" and an "enormous saving to the Community;" however, he has no regard for the immorality of this situation. The Director justifies these unethical practices with the benefit of society, so if flawed methods enhance a civilization, does that mean that those flaws are also paralleled within that civilization? So far, this whole operation seems quite shady to me - the people in this world are considered more as machines than living, breathing humans. If a society has to degrade life to assist the progression of the community, then is the community worth the loss that its citizens suffer? (Does that make sense?)

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