Cat's Cradle, literally.

Well to start out Modernism is all about the truth and finding one central grand narrative to live by and believe in.....while Postmodernism suggests that we as a civilization must deviate away from the concept of modernism because there is no one truth and trying to pursue that will only lead to chaos.  Trying to create conformity among the masses will create progress to some extent but it will also lead this "progress" down the wrong path. The book title itself, Cat's Cradle, represents postmodernism in all aspects.  As described in the book we come to realize that the Cats Cradle is the oldest game known to man, presenting no form or end to this mess of string the call a game.  The cats cradle is a representation of progress, which is always what people are trying to achieve; to work more toward perfection....which can never be attained.  Newt is often playing with this string and says "See the cat? See the cradle?" which is ironic because there is no cat or cradle in the string, its just a bunch of X's.  I see this as a metaphor for the absense of truth which is what Postmodernism is all about.  It's just a work of art to keep your mind occupied and makes you not focus on one central meaning; it allows you to broaden your thought process.  Opposed to Modernism which keeps you focused on the presence of truth, reason, and logic.  Postmodernism merely suggests that we should focus on more than what meets the eye, which is still an ironic concept proving that how can you focus on something you cant see?  We are all living this type of lifestyle unconciously.  Bokononism is a huge false religion that also has the masses in CC believeing in something thats "always being added to" there is no definite truth to anything we are living.  We just have to tell ourselves we understand to be comfortable with life. 

This is horrible.

:(

My many BNW thoughts. Im undecided.

I thought this was funny haha :)

So I came up with a lot of ideas for my Brave New World essay; way too many.  So I thought I would share a few of them and then in class I will choose which one will dominate. (F.Y.I. this will be informal and I will elaborate later; it will be a lot and sound very jumbled. deal with it.)

Truth and Happiness cannot coexist
Citizens of the world state have no idea what happiness is beause there is no truth.  They avoid daily life with soma which is said to be "Christianity without tears."  I firmly believe in this because God does not exist in the World State so they have to have something to believe in (my faith/religion brings me happiness, truth, and comfort) which is their drug soma that just represses daily life struggles and keeps them from being too stressed out from reality; therefore; soma is in place of God and/ or Religion beacuse it makes them happy.  People in the World State want immediate gratification which is a huge problem and draws many things out of that concept to prove that it is the total opposite of reality.  They want no feelings of empathy and the goverment tries to destroy all bonds of "human trust" such as friendship, love, and personal connections. Also, they influence to have multiple partners so that way you arent bonding or creating emotional ties to one person because that only creates instablility and emotions and no happiness.

The Grand Narrative of Stability
In chapter 2 we had a class discussion on this and it sounds very appealing to me. In BNW 3 types of stability exists: social, economic, and induvidual stabilty. The only reason they can attain all of this is by their conditioning all through out their lives. All of the population is developed through test tubes and treated a certain way depending on what caste they will be forced into.  There is virtually no freedom in the World State; they condition them to make them oblivious to whatever else they can experience and so they feel no emotion what so ever on anything they have to deal with. While in reality its a tough world. They "condition" the children to hate books and flowers (education and beauty) because that will only lead them to more knowledge and thoughts and "decondition" them; leaving no "aesthetic experience" to life as stated by Sir Ken Robinson. Also on the idea of conditoning they use hypnopedia to condition them even as they sleep "In their attempts to make unconscious material visual, dreams disrupt the kind of linear awareness that language requires. The visual figure-making nature of the of the unconscious, though at work within language, disrupts language, disrupts the rational philosophy and the arts" (Lyotard). They have all together abolished the concept of induvidualism and put conformity on a pedestal. In chapter 3 Huxley presents us with the water pipe analogy and "likens the channeling of emotion and desire to water in a pipe....many small holes produce streams of water.....family relationship, sexual repression, and delayed satisfaction of desire, goes against stabiliy." Overall social stability leads to which caste you are in and "is the highest social goal, and through predestination and rigirous conditioning, individuals accept their given roles in society without question"; economic stability is an obvious; and induvidual stability is obviously instant gratification and obeying by all laws in the World State.  Induvidual thought cannot exist! They also look up to Henry Ford because he was the master of  the assembely line and that contributes to stability and how everything needs to be in order and right judgement. That assemely line contributes to human life in BNW and the people and everything revolves around that.

Other thoughts:
In Lyotard's Postmodernism piece he suggests that "By attempting to present two impossibly different eras (The World State and The Savage Reservation), there is always an Other which cannot be truly represented." That kind of flows with how John was never accepted because he was different which led to all this chaos which also ties Bernard in because they both were rebels; they both had the knowledge there was something more to live for and had knowledge but has to repress it because it was not socially accepted.  I can write my essay on how rebels effect society or describe how the real world and the world in BNW are total opposites.

Honestly, there is so much to talk about.

I could go on and on about all my creative thoughts because im just such a boss when I want to be smart.
Until then I will continue to develop my thoughts more thouroghly instead of just blobbing them on a blog.

I promise I have more ideas.

Still waiting for this Brave World...

The one overall concept that binds Brave New World and Sir Ken Robinson's video together like glue is: Industrialization. In Brave New World we have massive amounts of clones running around supressing their emotions and daily struggles by taking soma which is quite similar to the video by watching the kids being "medicated routinely" with their ADHD pills because they just cannot stand to sit in class and be bored. This draws parallels by comparing the population of the World State by how they have to relieve their daily dilemmas with drugs just to make it to the next hour; furthermore, how kids in school must take their drugs to stay awake in class leaving no "aesthetic experience". Conformity plays a big role in industrialization because they are trying to standardize civilization and simply making them dumb and oblivious. Oh, but no fear, thats why the world has rebels. Bernard is an example of a student who is awake and is taking all of the world in and wants to create change (rebelling against the conformity) but cannot achieve that kind of mind set because he is living life in the factory production lane by having no say in how to shape society. He must obey and abide by the "assumptions of social structure and capacity." If you think about it, we are pretty much all conditioned, every single human being, to follow an example of something greater than ourselves and not to question but to accept it. As Bernard is going to get a permit signed by the director to visit the Reservation he comments, "I am not pleased with the reports I recieve of your behaviour outside working hours.....If I ever hear again of any lapse from a proper standard of infantile decorum, I shall ask for your transference" (Huxley 98). This reflects on the production you do in school if you aren't benefiting society by educating yourself or obeying rules; you're just wasting your time and the time of others so they will expell you or in some cases send you to Iceland. Society only wants productive members, if not, you are only going to influence others to do the same so they must fix that by enabling your thoughts and notions. You are't benefiting from these so called wonderful structures of life or improving your own being if you cant follow rules. Bernard feels rebelious knowing that he is conflicting with the norms of society and sometimes people are not comfortable with change if it goes against what everyone else is doing. We simply cant follow "production like mentality" because we dont have creativity and creativity is what is going to make the future prosper. Standardization is demolishing divergent thinking leaving narrowness and no experience to improve life. It causes chaos. People need to step out of the box to see change in the world but you cant achieve that by being told what to do or better yet, not even having the knowledge of knowing you can attain something better.

"Straight from the Horses mouth" What does that even mean?!?!

From my understanding of Chapter 3 I can presume that induviduals in Brave New World are made into workers that dont have the privlidge of asking questions because they are "content." Contentment obviously comes from them not knowing what else they are capable of producing with that knowledge they could have had (since lower castes are treated with alcohol and are oxygen deprived while being fertilized in a test tube). "Stability....the primal and ultimate need. Stability. Hence all this" (43). Order matters, someone is control is a dominate feature in BNW, they cannot attain knowledge because then they would yearn for something greater than "[turning wheels steadily]." Society is based on what caste you were born in: Alpha, Beta, Delta, etc. the Alphas and Betas are the more powerful and productive ones and they kind of oversee the working class. They need stability because they proclaim that "No civilization without social stability. No social stability without induvidual stability" (42). Social stability in my point of view are all the workers, they must sit there working all day to make sure they are producing more stability in society, thus creating more workers as themselves. Induvidul stability may be refeering to the higher castes such as the Alphas and Betas because they are the ones that must be organized and keep a firm grip on the workers; they are treated as their own person, meanwhile, the workers and treated as a group. (Hence "social"). Mustapha Mond is manipulating the children to believe that homes and parenting are awful and have "no air, no space; an understarilized prison; darkness, disease and smell" (37).  But these kids have never experienced a home so they have to take MM's word for it. Just like in 1984 when the goverment was always manipulating the news and in The Tempest how Miranda never had contact with other human beings but than of those that Prospero let her come in contact with. In BNW I also see how they are dehumanizing the lower castes by not letting them feel emotions and they must always have a look of contentment and for crying out loud they were treating so bad during the fertilization process! The desire thing comes in by the whole not seeing someone for too long thing, like Mr. D said "they need to go around the block a couple of times." And as quoted in the text, "Every one belongs to every one else, after all" (47).

This is MY understaning of BNW so far and I could ramble on but id rather talk about it than type about it. Haha.

Preparing for The Tempest

In discussions of "The Tempest", one controversial issue has been colonialism and imperialism. On the one hand, George Will, a political commentator, argues that we must view Literature in a political viewpoint. The piece of literature we are examining is Shakespeare's, The Tempest, and if you look through the eyes of Will you are going to see the direct meaning of colonizing countries and/or in this case, people, and see that Shakespeare was pro-colonization because he wanted to appeal his work to the audience which was the Queen and her loyals. In order to pay the bills Shakespeare had to be their puppet and I think that is why other people have different viewpoints on The Tempest because Shakespeare himself was confined to limited expression. Will wants you to dissect Literature as "this is how it is and you are going to like it." You have no induvidual thought in the matter and in my honest opinion, that is boring. As quoted in the article, "the transmission of the culture unites, even defines America-transmission through knowledge of literature and history-is faltering." This goes to show that we obviously have lost the creative thought process while we read literature. On the other hand, Stephen Greenblatt, Professor of Humanities at Harvard University, contends the view that we should take risks and have our own opinions on what we read while respectfully maintaining what the piece was put out there to be. This makes reading more interesting and makes you want to keep reading and gaining more insight instead of being like a political robot and accept whatever is being handed to you. He states that "critics want a tame and orderly canon," while as I can infer that he is opposed to that type of approach. Greenblatt wants us readers to go in depth and analyze reading from different viewpoints and share our cummulative knowledge. In that case we should view Shakespeare's writing as creative and accept different points of view on the play such as, Aime Cesaire's, A Tempest, which to my understanding is mocking colonialism. Greenblatt is simply suggesting to not get stuck in "the social cement" of literature and "take the risk of collective amnesia." You will never get to your full potential of understanding if you follow in someone elses footsteps. However, my own view will reside with Greenblatt and I will use some of his approaches to my understanding in creating an essay that will explore The Tempest in new depths and not "deculture" literature but merely broaden the potential the play has.



Hopefully this sounds okay :)

Greenblatt and Will need real jobs.

I have no idea what these articles are talking about, but I will try my best to give myself the benefit of the doubt and explain.

George Will's point of view is purely based on politics as he states, "All literature is, whether writers are concious of it or not, political."  I do not understand the big deal with Iannoue, are they too afraid of change? They say she lacked scholarly credentials but it was really because of her conservative political learnings. This goes to show that they seem to insecure to provide their own opinions about anything so they need political evidence to show that they are correct and that politics are correct. Pffffff.  "...Political responses to literature makes literature primarily interesting as a mere index of who had power and whom the powerful victimized." I think this statement is very degrading.  The "victimized" have no opinion in to whatever is presented to induviduals that seek interest in whatever topic is presented.  Take Caliban for example, he never has a say in what he wants to do he is always following orders and never gets what he wants, there is no change, he is not progressing.  In order to progress we need to deviate away from the political backbone and speak our minds. It's called an opinion? Criticism?

Thats why I choose to side with Greenblatt...

He presents an induvidualistic approach to literature, I THINK he is trying to say that people need to speak up and not be set in "the nation's social cement." I like how he stated, "The best way to kill our literary inheritence is to turn it into a decorous liturgical celebration of the new world order. Poets cannot soar when their feet is stuck in social cement."  I think he is saying we need to gather various amounts of unique perspectives in order to learn from things and not just be set in one way.  People need opinions and advice to further their knowledge and expand their own views.  The art of persuasion? ahhhhh?  Greenblatt is saying question what is being told to you, now if you questioned Will he would say you are trying to deculture literature.  No, youre simply wanting more insight to the subject being handed to you.



Now, I barely understood what I was talking about.

If you can.....congratulations.

The Tempest, so tempting to read.

So as I am trying to contain myself on how happy I was to spend my day reading The Tempest and Postcolonialism excerpts, my allergies decided to distract me. Benadryl was given to me by my lovely grandmother who did not inform me that it would make me drowsy. I fell asleep. Nice. I just thought everyone should know.


The contrast between Caliban and Colonization was very easy for me to find. In the article, "Cultural Studies," by Charles Bressler, I found that Frantz Fanon commented something that caught my attention and I think it relates to Caliban very well, he comments, "As a result of colonialism (the other-that is, any person defined as "different from") [suffers] "psychic warping" often causing what Fanon describes as "a collapse of the ego." Were forced to speak the language of the colonizer, the colonized either accepted or were coerced into accepting the collective consciousness, therefore indentifyng blackness with evil and sin and whiteness with purity and righteousness." As Prospero is bashing Caliban for everything that he is saying to him, Caliban says, "You taught me language, and all I can do is curse. Damn you for teaching me your language!" I think that this is a very typical thing, Prospero came and influenced Caliban to let him explore his island, an unknown territory, and try and convert him and teach him his own ways and then later on Caliban regreted everything he let Prospero accomplish, because Prospero later turns on him calling him "savage" and other rude names. Caliban had to accept and not try to reject any order that was givin to him because he was made into the person he was by Prospero.  Later on in Act II, Caliban meets Trinculo and Stephano and he assumes that they are spirits sent to "torture" him and adds "You havent hurt me much yet, but you will soon, I can tell by your trembling." The whole "collapse of the ego" ties in when Caliban thinks they are a "gift from God" and wants to serve them. It's kind of like WOW, be your own person. I dont think he can comprehend that because really he has served along someone pretty much his whole life. I also dont think that being called a monster, savage, stinky fish, or creature boosts his ego either. Trinculo and Stephano make him "kiss the Bible" which is referring to their whatever type of alcohol they are consuming, and Caliban adds that he will "fish for [them] and get [them] plenty of firewood. The tyrant im serving now can go to hell!!" So he is pretty much willing to get bossed around by two drunk men who dance around together?


In the cultural studies article there is also a comment that follows, "As diverse as these topics appear, they draw attention to postcolonialism's major concern: highlighting the struggle that occurs when one culture is dominated by another." Caliban is pretty much a one man band, his culture is adapted to whatever influences, better yet, WHO influences him. He is taken advantage of and dominated. All he knows is to serve and no one is on his side to defend him. He agrees to most of what is told of him and lives to serve. He is the "Other." Im looking forward to seeing how his character folds out along the course of the play.  


Id like to add one last quote from the "Cultural Studies," article, "How one treats people who are so defined does not really matter, they said, because many Westerners subscribed to the Colonists idealogy that all races other than the white were inferior or subhuman. These subhumans or "savages" quickly became the inferior and equally "evil."


Caliban is singled out, thus him being a subhuman that is treated like crap just because Prospero is a real malicious induvidual. Everyone other than Prospero and Miranda are not worthy. Hopefully things change.