Old Lives

2020 ◽  
pp. 61-88
Author(s):  
Maren Tova Linett
Keyword(s):  
Old Age ◽  
Disability Studies ◽  
New World ◽  
Thought Experiment ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Old People ◽  
World State ◽  
The World ◽  
Brave New World ◽  
Age Reading

Chapter 2 takes a disability studies approach to aging by viewing Brave New World (1932) as a thought experiment that explores the value of old age. Reading the novel alongside Ezekiel Emanuel’s claim that it would be best for everyone to die at around age seventy-five, before their abilities begin to decline, the chapter reads the absence of old people in the World State as an aspect of its dystopia. The chapter first argues that the persistent youth embraced by the society robs life of its narrative arc and thereby of an important aspect of its meaning. It then explores the reasons suggested by the novel that such a sacrifice of life narratives is not worthwhile, even to avoid periods of possible disability or frailty. Brave New World makes clear that the excision of old age has significant political, moral, and emotional costs.

scholarly journals SOCIAL AND POLITICAL IDEAS OF ALDOUS HUXLEY THROUGH BERNARD MARX’S CHARACTER IN BRAVE NEW WORLD

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Muh Haris Zubaidillah
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
New World ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Aldous Huxley ◽  
Happy Life ◽  
World State ◽  
Political Ideas ◽  
The World ◽  
Brave New World ◽  
Descriptive Method

Social and political ideas have important role and influence in society life. Because, it can change human's thought or mind. In this case, Aldous Huxley as author constructs a character in the novel Brave New World and it is his ideas. He includes his ideas through one of characters in his book. It is seen in character Bernard Marn's feeling, such as; Bernard Marx's feeling as nature of human, Bernard Marx's Feeling to Soma, and Bernard Marx's Feeling to the concept of happy life in The World State. So, the researcher feels a necessity to analyze political ideas of Aldous Huxley through Character Bernard Max in Brave New World. Based on the problem above, the researcher needs to analyze the political ideas of Aldous Huxley through character Bernard Mar in Brave New World by analyzing the character dialogue used the descriptive method. The descriptive method on the research involves a collection of technique used to specify, delineate or describe naturally the occurring of changing characterization without experimental manipulation. The researcher needs to analyze about what are the social and political ideas of Aldous Huxley through the character Bernard Marx constructed in the novel Brave New World. The researcher analyzed it by using Historical Literary Criticism. All the data are taken from the novel Brave New World written by Aldous Huxley. The analysis of data deals with the descriptions social and political ideas of Aldous Huxley through the character Bernard Marx constructed in Brave New World containing: Bernard Mary's feeling as nature of human Bernard Marx's Feeling to Soma, and Bernard Man's Feeling to the concept of happy life in The World State. The literary work is very dominant to socialized ideas, opinion, and massage as values to the society. Therefore, it has great influences to deliver values to the society through the reader. So, it can be concluded that author has power of his work and can include his ideas, opinion, and massage also values in his work as like Aldous Huxley. Then, political ideas of Aldous Huxley through character Bernard Marx in Brave New World are author's politic (Aldous Huxley), he attempted to express his ideas in a work.

A Foucauldian Reading of Huxley’s Brave New World

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 12
Author(s):  
Bilal Tawfiq Hamamra
Keyword(s):  
New World ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
World State ◽  
Production And Consumption ◽  
The World ◽  
Mind And Body ◽  
Human World ◽  
Brave New World ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Systematic Control

Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932) is a nightmarish depiction of a post-human world where human beings are mass-produced to serve production and consumption. In this paper, I discuss the manipulations of minds and bodies with reference to Foucault’s biopower and disciplinary systems that make the citizens of the world state more profitable and productive. I argue that Brave New World depicts a dystopian systematic control of mind and body through eugenic engineering, biological conditioning, hypnopaedia, sexual satisfaction, and drugs so as to keep the worldians completely controlled, collectivized and contented in a totalitarian society. The world state eradicates love, religion, art and history and deploys language devoid of any emotions and thoughts to control the mind that judges and decides. I argue that Brave New World anticipates the Foucauldian paradigm of resistance, subversion and containment, ending in eliminating the forces that pose a challenge to the ideology of the world state.

scholarly journals The Midlife Crisis of the Network Society

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 107-110 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nikki Usher ◽  
Matt Carlson
Keyword(s):  
New World ◽  
Middle Age ◽  
Digital Technologies ◽  
Vantage Point ◽  
Network Society ◽  
Present Moment ◽  
Midlife Crisis ◽  
News Organizations ◽  
The World ◽  
Brave New World

The network society is moving into some sort of middle age, or has at least normalized into the daily set of expectations people have for how they live their lives, not to mention consume news and information. In their adolescence, the technological and temporal affordances that have come with these new digital technologies were supposed to make the world better, or least they could have. There was much we did not foresee, such as the way that this brave new world would turn journalism into distributed content, not only taking away news organizations’ gatekeeping power but also their business model. This is indeed a midlife crisis. The present moment provides a vantage point for stocktaking and the mix of awe, nostalgia, and ruefulness that comes with maturity.

Womb with a View

2020 ◽  
pp. 187-206
Author(s):  
Ally Wolfe
Keyword(s):  
New World ◽  
Significant Part ◽  
Duty Of Care ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Working Through ◽  
Brave New World

This chapter conducts a close reading of Lois McMaster Bujold’s ‘problem’ novel Ethan of Athos, in which an all-male world, Athos, is posited, reliant for reproduction on the ‘uterine replicator’ or artificial womb. Close reading demonstrates how the novel proves more complex than initial readings might suggest in its careful working-through of the ramifications of the uterine replicator for parenting, motherhood, and the duty of care towards the young. The chapter argues how the existence of Athos with the wider Vorkosigan series is significant, part of an ongoing and series-wide project by Bujold to demonstrate the range of possible futures that the uterine replicator might permit. At various points, Ethan of Athos is brought into conversation with Huxley’s Brave New World to contrast Bujold and Huxley’s visions of reproductive futurities. The chapter shows how Bujold’s saga-length project of creating a diverse science-fictional heterotopia involves a thorough working-through of the ramifications of the uterine replicator, of detaching reproduction from a gestational body, in which Ethan of Athos plays a necessary part.

The historical origins of old-age pension schemes

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Aline Grünewald
Keyword(s):  
Social Security ◽  
Old Age ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Eligibility Criteria ◽  
Political Incentives ◽  
The World ◽  
Colonial Legacies ◽  
Old Age Pensions ◽  
Coverage Rates ◽  
Historical Origins

Abstract Old-age pensions are the most widespread social security programmes around the world. While many case studies have focused on the historical origins of old-age pensions, global and comparative studies are limited mainly due to missing data. To address this shortcoming, this article introduces the novel PENLEG dataset (Pension Legislation around the World, 1880–2010), which comprises data on: (1) the timing of the first pension introductions; (2) the pension design; (3) the mode of financing; (4) eligibility criteria; (5) benefit generosity and (6) coverage rates for all independent countries. Additionally, the article describes global pension patterns and highlights case evidence. It shows that economic development strategies, political incentives to bind citizens to the state, administrative reasons as well as colonial legacies and the Soviet model of social security have strongly affected the origins of old-age pensions.

scholarly journals Feminist Perspective in the Novel of Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (12) ◽  
pp. 114-127
Author(s):  
Hari Lal Kori ◽  
Dr. Vipin Kumar Pandey
Keyword(s):  
Old Age ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Equal Rights ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Boundary Wall ◽  
Full Control ◽  
Religious Books ◽  
The Family ◽  
The World ◽  
Long Time

Men and women are the two best creation of nature. She has provided both equal rights but it is man who is too clever and has full control over woman. From a very long time he has limited her freedom and rights. That is why, they have been victims of inequality and exploitation for a very long time. The society which is of traditional mindset believes that a woman should live in boundary wall, give birth to children and to look after them. Most of the religions of the world emphasize that women should be subordinate to and dependent on men. In childhood they should be in take care of father, in youth by her husband and in old age by her sons. The Hindu philosophy, the religious books of Hindu as the Vedas, the Bhagavad-Gita, the Muslims the Christians and others also have same views about the position of women in the society. All of them impose on women strict rules of discipline and prohibit them from the rights equal to men. The women’s position in the family has been that of a servile creature, a playing thing an object of lust and pleasures. Commenting on the position of females in the society Shantha Krishnaswany Writes :

scholarly journals Les âges de George Sand

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 8
Author(s):  
Fredrik Westerlund
Keyword(s):  
Old Age ◽  
Male Body ◽  
The Novel ◽  
George Sand ◽  
Cultural Perspective ◽  
Old People ◽  
The Troubles ◽  
Age Gap ◽  
The 19Th Century

The article discusses ageing and old age in three of George Sand’s texts: Indiana (1832), La Mare au diable (1846) and the first part of the novel Consuelo (1842). I use the first two parts of Pat Thane’s subdivision of age into a corporal, a cultural and a chronological component. In Sand’s fiction, the ageing female body withers, while the male body is worn. There are various reasons behind the decline. If the characters age of worries and trouble, the process can be reversed, and the persons can regain youth – at least partly – when the troubles go away. In a cultural perspective, the living conditions vary substantially between classes, specifically if the characters need to work for their living or not. Among peasants and workers, the tolerance for the age gap between spouses is narrower than in the bourgeoisie. The former risk to encounter poverty and need if the husband grows old sooner than the wife, while an elderly man of the bourgeoisie can marry a young woman in order to preserve her social status. In both classes, characters considered as old, while wise and experienced, do not longer interest anyone. Death is their future, and they ridicule themselves if they initiate long-term projects. Another stereotype, the old fool, appears as well, but in the case of Madame Carjaval, it is a role she plays to protect her niece. Many of the attitudes towards old people still exist today. The main difference vis-à-vis George Sand’s time is that, due to the development of longevity, old age arrives to people later now than in the 19th century.

On Humanism and Transhumanism

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (1-1) ◽  
pp. 166-180
Author(s):  
Sergey Piletsky ◽  
Keyword(s):  
New World ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Aldous Huxley ◽  
Technological Opportunity ◽  
The World ◽  
Brave New World ◽  
Historical Tradition ◽  
Technological Bias

The paper raises the problem, quite widely discussed not only in the frame of modern philosophizing, but in the whole complex of socio-humanitarian knowledge – the problem of the perspectives of the formation of the epoch of transhumanism. What is it - the epoch of transhumanism? What are the peculiar properties of it? And what are the specifics of that technological bias which would allow put it into practice? Is there a genetic bond between transhumanism and the sources of the traditional humanism? And why the majority of not only philosophers, but all humanitarians speak out against ‘the unprecedented advantages’ and ‘the good’ of transhumanism, considering its realization as the era of ‘dehumanization’ of a human being? These and similar questions worry millions of intellectuals all over the world. The author of this paper tries to give his answers. He analyses the definitions of humanism, given in two authoritative philosophical dictionaries. Then he reinforces his analysis with not only his own reasonings and extrapolations, but with the positions of three outstanding thinkers and famous humanists of Renaissance – Lorenzo Valla, Pico della Mirandola and Erasmus Roterodamus. However the author tries to consider the historical tradition not isolated but to link with the technological opportunity of its transformation into those perspectives of transhumanism. That’s why the author draws attention to a remarkable writer-philosopher Aldous Huxley with his anti-utopian novel ‘Brave New World’. The author concludes the paper with offering to the reader’s attention his author’s speculative model how it can be.

Popular Music and the Modernist Dystopia: Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four

2021 ◽  
Vol 90 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-41
Author(s):  
Alex MacDonald
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Popular Music ◽  
New World ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Popular Songs ◽  
Post Modernism ◽  
Brave New World ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

This essay explores musical references in Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four, including music imagery and allusions to popular songs of the 1920s and 1940s. Huxley used the popular music of the Brave New World as an indicator of its emotional shallowness, represented by such immortal songs as “Hug Me Till You Drug Me, Honey.” Brave New World’s scorn for popular music, and for popular culture in general, situates Huxley’s famous dystopia as a high Modernist work. In Orwell’s case, implicit references to World War II hits such as “We’ll Meet Again” and “I’ll Be Seeing You” reflect ironically upon the relationship of Winston and Julia and their terrible situation at the end of the novel. His treatment of the musical thrush and the singing Prole laundrywoman plays a more hopeful note, and a positive attitude to popular songs and popular culture situates Nineteen Eighty-Four on the cusp of Post-Modernism. With respect to the critical discourse about hope and despair in these dystopian texts, the essay suggests that signs of hopefulness in Brave New World are very slight, although they do exist. The music of Nineteen Eighty-Four, and some other factors, lend support to the view that Orwell’s novel is not so despairing as it is sometimes made out to be.

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