Brave New World

In discussions of Brave New World, it is pretty safe to say that their society is very hmmm...different. Probably my favorite source in comparison to this book is the video of Sir Ken Robinson and his lecture on our society and education. I like when he talks about ADHD and how people are saying that it is an epidemic that is spreading across the country uncontrollably, and that they are handing out pills and medications like no other. Pretty much, when a child is either bored, distracted, or not able to concentrate, they diagnose them with ADHD and start the medication. This is similar to Soma in Brave New World. Whenever they are having a "difficult" situation taking place in their life, they pop some Soma and everything becomes all dandy. Another idea that stands out to me in discussion of the type of society in Brave New World is the topic of morality and social norms. Sure we think their society is wrong and weird, but to them, that's normal. That's all they've known. The question is, who decides what these social norms are? What makes people "normal"? We tend to forget what we people are about. What makes us human. The society in the book as well as our society, I believe, is somewhat taking away the humanity and individuality of people. Each society is based on something different, and has their own social norms, but in reality, they're both controlling and disabling humans from what makes them human. For example, in the novel, their whole population of humans come into existence by machines and formulas and industry. They put their people into groups and the people in each category of human are all the same, with the same interests and the same intelligence level. They have different rules or guidelines on what's okay in their world and what's not. In our society, the media is telling us what is good or acceptable in the world. Sure it's not as extreme as Brave New World, but it's the same concept.