Maybe you don't hate Brave New World.
dictatorship
Earth is the only home for mankind, but it has long since become an overpopulated planet.
According to data provided by the United Nations Population Fund, the global population was 2.6 billion in 1950, reached 5 billion in 1987, rose to 6 billion in 1999, exceeded 7 billion in October 2011, and is expected to increase to 9.7 billion in 2050. , will reach a peak of 11 billion in 2100.
Overpopulation poses a serious threat to natural resources, living environment, social stability, and personal well-being. Human beings may face the prospect of economic recession, social unrest, and plummeting living standards.
The government will be entrusted with unprecedented and arduous responsibilities, and it is logical to obtain unprecedented and powerful control rights, and the democratic mechanism will also face disaster.
But this is unavoidable, and the people's sense of unease and panic is the catalyst for the dictatorship.
The Covid-19 pandemic is the equivalent of a global crisis exercise in which the prospect of a global crisis of democracy has emerged.
Hungarian President Orban took the opportunity to pass the emergency bill, which gives him the power to freeze certain laws during a "state of emergency", suspending the legislature and replacing it with executive orders;
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took the opportunity to close the court, postpone his corruption trial, and refuse to step down from the throne of power;
Philippine President Duterte announces that he can shut down the media;
Turkmenistan has even arrested citizens for speaking out about the outbreak in public.
At the same time, the hanging rail experience revealed by the epidemic is that in the face of a major crisis, a more stringent system is more effective than a looser system.
If this phantom cannot be dismantled, when humanity faces a greater crisis, it is hard not to assume that democracy will be abandoned and terrified people will resolutely embrace dictatorship.
Not long ago, there were media reports that more than 500 politicians, civic leaders, Nobel laureates and democratic institutions signed an open letter defending democracy, warning that the government is using the new crown epidemic to strengthen power control and threaten freedom.
Just showing the attitude of defending will not help. Theoretical research and system repair after the disaster are the only way.
In Brave New World, the establishment of the state of nations stems from a state of emergency. Although it is not stated in the book, it is very likely that due to the shortage of resources caused by population expansion, a "Nine Years War" broke out between Britain and Russia. In this war, both sides used devastating biological and chemical weapons, and the economy fell into the Great Depression.
The Nine Years' War, and then the Great Crash. At that time either managed the world as one, or waited for the demise of mankind. In fact, either choose stability, or...
Liberalism naturally disappeared because of the anthrax bombs.
The excessively brutal war made the heads of state realize that the earth is in danger of destruction, and only peace and global unity can save the earth. Thus, a state of nations ruled by several heads of state was established.
In order to promote the economy and maintain stability, they encourage carnival-style consumerism and eliminate advocates of returning to nature and classicism.
In Gottgreen, we machine gunned down eight hundred fools.
Then we had a big fight at the British Museum, sprayed with dichlorodiethyl sulfide, and 2,000 fans of classical culture had their pigtails up.
But the heads of state of the nations found that the cost of violence was too great, and that the symptoms could not be cured.
So they thought of in vitro breeding, new Pavlovian domestication, sleep education methods, such forms of domination, which are very slow, but absolutely reliable...
That is, from the source of each person's life, directly mass-produce and transform them physically and spiritually, and customize idealized citizens.
brainwashing
Pavlov found that dogs exposed to physical or psychological stress for long periods of time exhibited all the symptoms of a nervous breakdown. He also found that dogs were more susceptible than ever when they were about to collapse. All the symptoms Pavlov had seen in the lab dogs were later reproduced in the soldiers of the World War.
The Pavlovian experiment inspired dictators and their policemen to break down and confess everything under abuse beyond the limits of tolerance. This is the most vulnerable moment for prisoners, and the interrogators seize the opportunity to implant new behavior patterns in prisoners—that is, brainwashing, which can be unprofitable.
"Nineteen Eighty-Four" uses a large amount of O'Brien's torture of Winston to demonstrate this terrifying technical means.
Modern dictators are all brainwashed, and Hitler chose to hold rallies in the evening.
"In the daytime," Hitler wrote, "the willpower of men is so high that they will resist if anyone tries to impose one's will and thought upon them; but at night, in the face of a more powerful master force, they'll crawl to the ground more easily."
In Brave New World, the application of brainwashing is reflected in the sleep education implemented by Wan Guobang.
But sleep brainwashing wasn't Huxley's original creation either.
During World War I and World War II, the U.S. military used this method to train soldiers to memorize Morse code. After World War II, some companies began to sell "pillow speakers", "chronographs" and tape recorders to help actors memorize lines and politicians and priests to memorize speeches.
Scientists have found that people are more likely to be brainwashed in light sleep than in deep sleep.
Theodore X. Barber published the paper "Sleep and Hypnosis" in the October 1956 edition of the Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis, which was very enlightening. He pointed out that there is an important difference between light sleep and deep sleep. In deep sleep, the EEG fails to record alpha brain waves, while in light sleep, alpha brain waves appear. As can be seen, light sleep is closer to the waking state or the hypnotic state (in both states, alpha brain waves are present).
Wan Guobang in "Brave New World" perfectly and thoroughly shows the scene of sleep brainwashing, a fate that every child can't escape from childhood.
...the eighty children were blushing, deep in sleep, relaxed and breathing softly. Beneath every pillow, a soft voice conveys...
A very recognizable voice, very gentle, was heard: "...only the delta children wear khaki clothes. Oh, no, I don't want to play with the delta children, let alone the epsilon. Kids, they're worse and stupid enough to not read or write. Also, ε kids wear black, a color that only beasts like. As for me, being a beta kid, I couldn't be happier. "
As the famous saying in the book: "62,400 repetitions can create a truth." These concepts are deeply rooted in the subconscious of the people of all countries and countries, and they have become the norm for them to follow.
Wouldn't this kind of subconscious brainwashing be discovered by people? The heroine, Lenina, woke up in the middle of the night when she was a child. She found a ghostly voice repeating and circling in her mind. During the half-hour of insomnia, she had many doubts and guesses. But unable to resist the hypnotic effect of those words, she still fell asleep.
After experiencing the sleep brainwashing of Wan Guobang, will you continue to fall asleep without thinking when you wake up from a dream next time?
happiness
In the positive narrative of "Brave New World", you may be a little surprised, because it does not have the deliberate and conspicuous physical violence of "Nineteen Eighty-Four".
Even though the three protagonists in the book obviously had rebellious ideas that ran counter to Wan Guobang, they were not openly sentenced, tortured and killed. They could choose their place of exile, and Savage John wasn't even exiled, living a life of seclusion (and ultimately committing suicide).
As mentioned earlier, that's because the heads of nations have long realized that violence is not that useful, and they have discovered more refined and effective techniques of governance.
The theoretical part of this set of ruling techniques is their invention of "Happiness Values".
They succeeded in convincing people that "everyone is happy these days".
How is this achieved? The first and foremost point is to achieve freedom of sexual intercourse.
Unlike Oceania in Nineteen Eighty-Four, the Ten Thousand Nations in Brave New World encourages people to have sex without limits.
Oceania's policy of asceticism is because "the sexual instinct creates its own world". What does it mean? We can find profound answers from the protagonist Winston.
Winston was a not brave civil servant. It was in lust and love that he developed a sense of resistance, and it was difficult for even torture to conquer it. So, sex, and love by its extension, are seeds of freedom and resistance that are best killed.
On the other hand, depriving husband and wife of sex and family time is more conducive to snatch the individual from the intimate small community and surrender under the wing of the party. Your abundant energy will be transformed into war fanaticism and leadership. worship.
Unlike this concept, Wan Guobang’s legitimacy is based on creating and supplying all citizens with endless happiness from life to death.
So first and foremost, freedom of sexual intercourse.
From when the citizens were children, nurses would supervise teenage boys and girls playing low-level sex games in the bushes.
In adulthood, sexual services will be more abundant. Everyone is free to date, free to mate, to enjoy specially made sensual movies, and to eat sex hormone chewing gum.
Although it sounds indulgent and depraved, it does seem to be serving the nation.
That's because you didn't smell the violence behind it.
This kind of sexual service is not your free choice, everyone must obey it.
From a young age you are indoctrinated with the shameful values of single-partnership, the absurd values of starting a family, that children who don’t like sex are forced to participate, and that one-on-one relationships are seen as alien.
Unlike Oceania, Wan Guobang is also against love. In Oceania, marriage is only for procreation, and procreation is an obligation to the party. In Wan Guobang, free sex is ostensibly for the happiness of citizens, but in fact it is for the stability of the country.
The two totalitarian governments have achieved the same goal in eliminating love, which seems to indicate that they believe that intimacy is essentially a centrifugal force that is contrary to totalitarianism, and the state must prevent the emergence of any civil community, even if it consists of only two people.
This reminds me of Shang Yang's thinking. Shang Yang believes that father, son and brother must be separated, and even protect the private property between husband and wife, which sounds like modern thinking. In fact, it is still breaking up the big family and implementing the small family system. It is not enough to implement the small family system, but also to divide and divide the relationship between young couples, and even encourage husbands to sue their wives and wives to sue their husbands.
In the final analysis, I wish to atomize the whole society, so that the people are scattered and unable to gather any resistance. If it weren't for the fact that manpower is war power, war power is national power, and children are the flowers of the country's future (actually, fertilizer), it would be possible for Shang Yang to abolish the family system and the marriage system.
In addition to freedom of sexual intercourse, IWC also provides Soma, a drug that is called "combining the strengths of Christianity and spirits without leaving any of the defects of the two", which is actually a hallucinogen.
In sleep education, everyone has accepted the brainwashing technique of "feeding one gram of soma in time is better than taking ten grams at the same time", and regards soma as the master key between personal and happiness.
But Soma is not without side effects? In the technologically developed Wanguobang, people's life expectancy is only over 60 years old, and drug abuse is a very important reason. And Soma isn't the key to happiness either, it's just an anesthetic for the walking dead.
Now that we have talked about the issue of longevity, it must be mentioned that the people of Wan Guobang will never age. This is a state of happiness achieved through the use of sex hormones, magnesium salts and the transfusion of young people's blood.
But the face that never ages is just an appearance. Death has not been eradicated. On the contrary, improper medical methods have shortened lifespan, and death is often abrupt. Under that face of eternal youth, the heart and brain have long been withered.
Satire
We've come to realize that this brave new world with a halo over our heads is really hard to match.
So what must be deconstructed is the title of the book "Brave New World". The phrase "Brave New World" comes from Shakespeare's play "The Tempest": "Ah, how wonderful! How wonderful are there; how beautiful are men! How wonderful is the new world, with such wonderful people!" Shakespeare used this phrase The lines are already ironic, and Huxley used them in a wonderful way.
"brave" means "brave" in general, the title takes another meaning "beautiful"; there is also an old usage "American Indian warrior". We know that one of the main characters in the book, John, comes from the so-called barbaric world of the book - the American Indian tribe. Therefore, the title of the book can be understood as "Beautiful New World" or "Savage New World". It seems contradictory, but it is a metaphor: the beautiful civilized world is also the barbaric old world. Although the skin has changed, the muscles and bones are the same. The line "Brave New World" appears for the first time in the book, and it is from the mouth of John who connects the civilized world and the barbaric world, which makes this contradiction and unity more reasonable and ironic.
Another very obvious irony is the so-called "Ford Year." In 1908, Henry Ford introduced the Ford Model T and introduced assembly line operations for the first time to the automotive industry. The idea of the mass reproduction of cloned embryos on the assembly line in the book was inspired by this.
We also found that the state of nations claimed that everyone was happy, but it was a naked class society. The races are artificially divided into five grades, and the embryos of the poorest grades are injected with alcohol from the beginning, placed in an oxygen-deficient environment, and received sleep education during the growth period. This is invisible bloody, but heinous atrocities.
John once questioned Mustafa, one of the heads of nations:
Since you can take whatever you want with those embryo bottles, why not make all of them as augmented alpha?
Mustapha smiled and replied:
Because none of us want to have our throats cut, we believe in happiness and stability, and a society where every member is an alpha person is inevitably turbulent and painful. A factory is full of alpha people, that is to say, all of them have good genetics, can make free choices within a limited range after domestication, and take responsibility, and can live independently and independently of each other. Think about it, what will happen?
Here, we see the commonalities between Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four. These two totalitarian societies are so different, but they are both pyramidal class societies in essence, allowing a few people to enjoy privileges and allowing the base to enjoy the privileges. Huge inferiors act as fertilizer. Dictators seem to believe that only a hierarchical society is stable and durable.
The head of state, Mustafa, is very interesting. Although he is full of sophistry, he appears to be a magnanimous person. He deliberately allows the three rebellious protagonists to debate with him.
In an extraordinary self-report, Mustafa mentioned his background. He was originally a physicist, but he was almost sent to the island because he violated the unified national idea, exerted his individual consciousness, and made personal inventions. He chose to give up the science he loved, and was elected as one of the heads of state by virtue of his qualifications. Not without melancholy he said:
"Sometimes, I miss my science so much. Happiness is a cruel master..."
In this sentence, the head of state has already deconstructed the concept of "happiness" packaged by Wanguobang.
We will find that the Wanguobang in the book is a completely anti-intellectual society, a barren cultural desert. John accidentally obtained a copy of Shakespeare in the Indian tribe, and his education level has far surpassed that of the wisest person in the Wanguobang. For the nations of nations have destroyed both art and science.
Maybe Wanguobang will give you the illusion that science is developed and civilization is prosperous. In fact, Wanguobang's so-called science is nothing but exquisite totalitarian technology, and its so-called civilization is nothing but empty sensory enjoyment.
Can such a civilization still be called civilization? This beautiful new world is inferior to even the savage primitive tribes.
Ironically, Mustafa himself has a quest for individuality and culture. He has a Bible in his room and talks about literature with John. Although he kept criticizing the religious and literary works of the past, if he really hated these things, why should he keep a copy for himself.
This reminds me of a great man who created a brave new world, but read through the southern art in the twenty-four histories in his dark bed.
Wan Guobang is not only a country that kills individuality, but also a country that destroys humanity. From the moment of birth, the humanity of each class has been set, and everyone is just a woven scarecrow. To put it more bluntly, the people of Wanguobang are a product. Their role in life is to work and consume, because work and consumption enable the nations to continue to exist. In addition to work and consumption, they only need to pass the time of nothingness, enter the furnace of death, and become phosphate fertilizer.
A society without civilization, creativity, and humanity, even if it can live forever, what's the point? Civilization has been destroyed, history has ended.
Hölderlin's sentence is used here, and it is more appropriate:
What turns a country into a hell on earth is precisely the people's attempt to turn it into a paradise.
The people of Wan Guobang are not really happy either, because it is just a fake happiness that has been manipulated and instilled. They have no idea what the former human beings had, and they have no idea what they have lost, let alone what choices they have.
In the final analysis, the so-called happiness is still a trick of ignorance.
warning
But are we really that far from the Brave New World?
With the prevalence of egoism and consumerism today, have we secretly replaced the definition of happiness? Merchants tell you that luxury cars and brand-name perfumes represent happiness, success studies tell you that wealth and status are happiness, and the new era tells you that positive energy is happiness.
But we are still trapped in a class pyramid. The operating mechanism of the whole society is actually a single track. People have many choices in front of them, but there are few choices, and society is like a formatted cage.
Technological progress has not liberated the human body and prospered spiritual civilization. Instead, it has led to international hegemony, economic monopoly, political centralization, and media manipulation. Hundreds of millions of workers who shuttle between factory assembly lines and office building grids are only serving a few big men.
The organization is getting tighter, but the people are getting looser and looser. The isolated island can still be connected to the mainland, but no matter how hard the sand is, it can't form a tower.
In a perverted society, depersonalized people can live normally, while normal people become mentally ill.
We mistake money for freedom, warmth for love, cowardice for independence, isolation for loneliness, emotion for standpoint, ignorance for personality, prejudice for wisdom, Mistake numbness for happiness and ugliness for beauty.
But do we really hate Brave New World?
The most despairing thing is not that this majestic Brave New World will finally come or has come, the most despairing thing is the people who are looking forward to the door of the Brave New World outside the station.
Article references: NYT article, VOA article, Zhuang Die'an translation "Return to Brave New World" and "Brave New World", "Nineteen Eighty-Four", Li Kun's paper. Subtitles: Yuanjian subtitles group.
The film reviews are all first published on the public account: Duan Xueshen
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