november 2016

Day 1

The new project was introduced. We have to read the book ‘ A Brave New W9orld’ written by Aldous Huxley. It looks boring because of the cover but I have to read it. Our teacher handed out the book to us and and I started reading it. When I finished 10 pages I didn’t know what I was actually reading. It was very difficult English and I didn’t understand the story. I read the pages another time. Then I knew what I read but I didn’t understand the story. When I read the part about babies who were made in a factory I thought that de writer was crazy or so. A few minutes later I realized that I had skipped the introduction. I read the intro. Finally I understood why the book was so strange. It is about the future.

Day 2

I have read today that the children in The Brave New World have to grow up without parents. I think that it is wrong because parents are always there for you and help you in difficult times. They always love you and take care of you. That are important reasons against growing up without parents.

In The Brave New World they produce humans artificially in tubes and clone them. I find it a horrible idea. How can you have about 96 twin brothers or sisters? It must be very strange to have no identity. All the same, like robots or machines made in a factory.

The controllers decide how many people of what kind they need. I do not like the idea that 10 people rule the whole world.

In the Brave New World they start with conditioning of the embryos. Embryos are conditioned for the life they will have. The ones who have to live in hot countries or have to work in steal factories for example were exposed to heat and then to extreme degrees of cold. When they leave the bottles as babies they would love heat and fear cold. The writer has a lot of fantasy.

Day 3

I read about the biological and chemical conditioning of the embryos and then the psychological conditioning of little children in the Brave New World. It takes place in the Central Hatchery and Conditioning Centre in the Infant Nurseries. The director shows the students how delta infants (color-coded in khaki clothes) are treated. When they crawl naturally towards picture books and real flowers they are terrorized by noises of explosions, bells and sirens and than traumatized by electric shocks. The babies learn to connect in their mind books and flowers with those painful experiences and turn away from them. They will never want to read in books and will never enjoy nature. I think it’s horrible to traumatize children like that. People who do things like that to children should go to prison for a lifetime.

The little Beta children also learn ‘Elementary Class Consciousness’: “Alpha children wear grey. They work much harder than we do, because they’re so frightfully clever. I’m really awfuly glad I’m a Beta, because I don’t work so hard. And then we are much better than the Gammas and Deltas. Gammas are stupid. They all wear green, and Delta children wear khaki. Oh no, I don’t want to play with Delta children. And Epsilons are still worse. They’re too stupid to be able .” They repeat these lessons forty or fifty times more before the children awake. Again and again. A hundred and twenty times three times a week for thirty months. After that they go on to a more advanced lesson. This method sleep teaching is for me like brain washing. I dislike very much that they manipulate children’s minds.

Day 4

I read about two Beta women (Fanny Crowne and Lenina Crowne). They talked about going out with men. Fanny says to Lenina she must be careful because it is bad behaviour at her age to go out with the same man (Henry Foster) for four months. That is normal when you are 35 or 40 years old. When affairs go too long it makes the Director very angry. Have somebody else from time to time is her advice. The ‘perfect gentleman’ has other girls. Touching the bottom of a woman you don’t know is an example of correct manners, a model of strictly conventional (normal) behaviour. In the Brave New World they are not into romantic relationships. Women carry belts with ‘the official supply of contraceptives’ (pills for birth control). It is not normal to spend his life with one partner.

The women tell more about normal behaviour: you have to do State sports, you must not spend time alone. They talk about Bernard Marx (Alpha Plus of the Psychology Department). He has a bad reputation. He does no State sports, he spends time alone and Fanny says he is ugly and has a bad reputation.

Day 5

When I read further Bernhard Marx is different than the others. He feels horribly uncomfortable when Lenina Crowne (Beta) talks in the lift about their week trip to the savage reservation in New Mexico. For him it is special and private. The lift is crowded with men from the Alpha changing rooms. Lenina had spent a night with almost all of the men in the lift. That is normal in the Brave New World. She wants to show in public that she is not only with Henry Foster (Alpha Plus). Bernhard Marx is more from our times, how he feels and what he thinks.

His friend is Helmholtz Watson (Alpha Plus). He is a lecturer at the College of Emotional Engineering. They both feel as individuals and that they don’t belong to the group. Bernhard Marx feels an outsider because he likes to be alone and because he is physically not a normal Alpha man. He is 8 cms too short for the standard Alpha height and too thin. Bernard Marx’s body is not really better than that of the average Gamma man. People talk behind his back. They say that by accident alcohol came in his blood-surrogate when he was an embryo. Helmholtz Watson finds life boring. He wants to do something important. He feels alone in the Brave New World because he has too much ability. He took part in the group stuff but found out it was not important enough in his life.

Day 6

I read about Slough Crematorium. There the dead people are burned. The phosphorus that is is left over after burning the bodies they recover 98% of it from the air. It is more than a kilo and a half per adult body. So even dead people are socially useful. They use phosphorus to let plants grow.

Every two weeks people in the Brave New World have to go to the Unity Service. 6 men and 6 women must sit around a table in a unity circle, man, woman, man,.. They listen to artificial music, take ‘holy soma‘ tablets. They all drink from the same ‘loving cup of ice-cream soma‘ and say ‘I drink to my end’. They sing 3 Songs of Unity. It is a little bit like a church service. But they pray to Ford, not to God, they dont have a priest but a president, he makes the sign of the T and not the cross, the cup goes around like with the ‘Holy Communion’ but they drink more often and take drugs. When they are drugged they hear the feet of the’Greater Being’ and shout ‘I hear him’and ‘He is comming’. Then they start to sing children’s nonsense songs like ‘Orgy-porgy’. ‘Ford and fun, kiss the girls…’. The Unity Service ends as orgy.

Bernhard Marx fakes all of the time. He behaves like the others but doesn’t feel anything. He lies and says that it was wonderful. The rest feels united but he feels seperated, alone and unhappy. I think I would feel like him.

Day 7

When I read chapter 6 I could not understand why Leninia Crowne wants to go on the New Mexico holiday with Bernhard Marx. She can’t understand him and thinks Bernhard Marx says the most awful things, dangerous nonsense, and is odd: strange, upsetting, doing things in private, spending an afternoon with walking and talking, saying that Obstacle Golf is a waste of time and not want to eat soma ice to cheer up, preferring to be himself and unhappy.

He doesn’t want ‘to be so completely a part of something else’, he says he is ‘a slave to his conditioning’, he wants to be free and happy without soma drugs. He wants to feel strongly. I understand what he means. Bernhard Marx is not a group person that is clear. He wants to do his own things. He doesn’t want to drug himself to feel better.

The Director has to sign Bernhard’s papers because the controller already gave permission for the trip to the savage reservation. The Director tells his own story then when he was there 25 years ago. The Beta woman he took with him got lost there. After that he regrets that he told Bernhard his story. He is negative about Bernhard and gives him a warning. ‘If I ever have any complaint again about your failure to submit to our rules for social behaviour, I shall ask for you to be moved to a Sub-Centre, perhaps to Iceland.’ I think that Bernhard will get trouble because he doesn’t want to live according to the rules for social behaviour.

I read that the Savage Reservation is surrounded by an electric fence and that there is no escape. About 60.000 Indians and people of mixed blood live in the reservation. Children are still ‘normally’ born. People spend there their whole live and die also there. According to the Brave New World they have ‘shameful habits and customs’ there: marriage, families, no conditioning of embryos and little children, Christianity, awful old belief systems, dead languages such as Spain, priests, infectious diseases, savage wild animals, poisonous snakes… This sounds very normal to me how they live but not to Lenina. She finds everything ‘very strange’ and ‘I don’t like it’ that doesn’t please her. I dislike that the people have to live in a prison with a fence around it and that people can visit them like in the zoo.

Day 8

When they are in the reservation it is clear that they don’t have people who look old in the Brave New World. Bernhard and Lenina are shocked to see an old Indian: toothless mouth had fallen in, long untidy white hair, his body nothing but skin and bone. In the Brave New World they preserve people from diseases. With scientific treatment they keep bodies in good condition and they give them young blood at regular intervals. They keep their body system working perfectly. For them two young women giving their breasts to their babies is a ’disgustingly animal scene’.

Bernhard and Lenina watch a dance ceremony. The Indians are wearing masks or have painted faces, throw with snakes and hit a boy with whips until he is bleeding a lot and falls on the ground. What they do makes no sense to me.

The boy’s name is John. He has white skin, yellow hair and pale blue eyes. He and his mother Linda are strangers in the reservation. He tells a strange story. Linda came with a man who was his father to this place and lost him in the mountains. She fell and hurt her head. The man left. Linda was pregnant and got John.

When they meet Linda she tells the whole story. The man who left her is the Director. Linda tells about the horrible life in the reservation: she as a Beta woman got a baby, became a mother, had no soma, was beaten by the Indian women because of her behaviour. I can understand that the life in the reservation must be horrible for her. It is so different to the Brave New World where she comes from.

Day 9

I think it is a good idea to bring Linda back to the Brave New World. But for John I don’t know. Linda brought him up in another culture, with stories from the Other Place (the Brave New Wold) and the works of Shakespeare. John doesn’t belong to the group. He is an outsider in the reservation. How can he survive in the Brave New World? Bernhard offers to take them back to London and gets permission for it.

When Bernhard is back the Director says in front of all people that Bernhard ‘has failed to honour the trust which had been placed in him by his sinful views on sport and soma, … by his refusal to obey the teachings of Our Ford, he has proved himself an enemy of Society, a danger to all Law and Order, a man sworn to destroy Civilization itself ’. The director wants to punish Bernhard and send him to a Sub-Centre of the lowest order in Iceland. When the Director asks Bernhard for a reason not to do that Bernhard let Linda and John come. In front of all people Linda said that the Director is the father of her child. John fell on his knees in front of the Director and calls him ‘My father!’ The people around are laughing about it. They can’t stop.

I think it is strange that they are only laughing. The Director of Hatching and Conditioning gets pale, wild-eyed, ashamed and helpless. He ‘resigned immediately afterwards and never set foot inside the Centre again’. Before he wanted to punish Bernhard for his behaviour and now he himself ‘has failed to honour the trust which had been placed in him’. They should send him to Iceland because of what he said.

Day 10

People in the Brave New World find it a big joke what happened. Linda is an outsider for the society. She is a mother ! That is disgusting. She is fat, lost her youth, has a discoloured skin and bad teeth. They don’t want to see Linda because ‘they couldn’t look at her without feeling sick. Linda was only interested in soma. I read that taking soma is like going on holiday. Linda is taking holiday after holiday. She took 20 g a day. That is many times more than the usual quantity. The doctor tells Bernhard that it will finish her off in a month or two. Then she will just stop breathing. The doctor is not able to make her young again.

John and Linda live in Bernhard’s apartment. People want to meet John the Savage. Because they can only see him through Bernhard he becomes a popular person the first time in his life. For the first time he feels very important.

Lenina and John go to the movies. I think don’t like what the film is about: a young black man with a head injury lost control of his feelings, falls in love with a blond Beta woman, kidnaps her with a helicopter for three weeks and wants that she also falls in love with him. She is rescued by three Alpha men and has sex with them one after the other and that is the end. John finds it disgusting and shameful. Lenina can’t understand him. But I can. I also think what a horrible film.

Day 11

John can’t get used to the habits and how people behave in the Brave New world. He fell in love with Lenina. When he tells her she takes her clothes of. He finds it disgusting and is disappointed. For him love is special. For Lenina love does not exist. She can’t understand John. I think that they will never understand what the other means.

John is with his mother in the hospital when she dies. She told him that the Other Place is beautiful, ‘a heaven of goodness and loveliness’. John is disappointed of the real Brave New World. A group of noisy children come. They must see dying people as part of their conditioning to get used to death and dying people. That is horrible to be disturbed like that when you have the last minutes with your mum. When Linda thinks John is Popé her boyfriend from the reservation John is angry and unhappy. When she dies and John cries the people find his behaviour not properly and disgusting. I don’t like it how they all react. People in the Brave New World have no real and deep feelings. I would feel very lonely there. I think that life in the Brave New World is horrible for John. He can’t live there and he can’t go back to the reservation. He is an outsider in both. John doesn’t want to take soma as his mother. When he kills himself at the end it is no surprise for me. There was no other way out.