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Advertisers really are shrewd people to get people to swallow that kind of thing hook, line, and sinker on a daily basis. It's quite amazing how much this paradoxical mindset has perpetrated society, because apparently choosing between mass produced products with different names slapped on them is the ultimate expression of liberty and freedom.
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It also appeals to a person's desire to be liked, which combines ultimately with a desire to be interesting.
Meh. It still beats being limited to a uniform.
The hard part is finding a place that still has pants that aren't fucking jeans. Dammit, I don't like jeans already.
I am reminded of The Story of Stuff project...
Still. This kind of thing is why I've come around to the idea that Brave New World was in fact a utopia, in a manner of speaking, regardless of what Huxley thought...
...Oversaturation of corporate products over individual artisanship leads to thinking a hollow existence deliberately sucked dry of all meaning in a hideously exploitative turnkey police state kept pacified through drugs and sex is actually a good thing?
If you're an Alpha Plus and you've never known anything different, it's goddamn paradise compared to a world on the edge of collapse or destruction at every turn. For god's sake, we're one Republican presidential administration away from nuclear war at this point. Well, not really, but it certainly seems that way sometimes. Compared to that, the Brave New World of debauchery and free-spirited cartwheeling through life without a care in the world seems far, far better.
Well of course it's cushy (if still meaningless) if you're an Alpha Goddamned Plus, but you've got like a 99% chance of being a retarded ape with your brain pumped full of development-stunting chemicals instead.
Occupy Feelies.
It's only bad if you realize that it is.
From an outside perspective, the setting of Brave New World seems oppressive. But if you actually lived in it, you'd probably like it a whole lot.
I firmly believe that being oppressed is only a bad experience if you're being made aware of it. Ignorance is bliss, after all, and you can't be dissatisfied if you don't know that it could be better.
Of course, there's another old saying, that information wants to be free. And in the age of the internet, where anything you want to know is at the tip of your fingers, it's basically impossible to not know that it could be better. Since we can't remain unaware of oppression, the only option left is to fight it.
Please tell me I'm misinterpreting you, but are you saying you think it's okay for people to get screwed over as long as they remain ignorant of it?
So what? Even if you end up an Epsilon Minus, you still have a great life. As Zennistrad pointed out, ignorance is the greatest bliss. As Huxley notes in the novel, every caste has been conditioned to love their lot in life, and love it they do.
And this, I believe, is the curse of our generation. Our parents and grandparents had the gall to take away the ignorance they enjoyed from us, and in giving us the greatest gift humankind has ever created, cursed us with the awful, horrific blight that is knowledge. From now on, we cannot simply sit around and be content with what little we have. We have seen what the land of plenty should look like, and now we have no choice but to fight, futile as it is, until we either die or reach it--in a world where reaching said land is almost literally impossible.
I'm saying that it's not "screwed over" at all. The people in Brave New World are happy because that is their world, and it is as they have always known it, and it is, for their personal wants, satisfactory and always will be, because it in fact exists to satisfy them.
We could not live there as we are, because we know what it could be like. But if we had been born there, it would be better, I think, overall, than having been born here.
...
Dude, you would be hilarious to talk to if you were drunk or stoned.
PS dude, I was talking to Zennistrad. And protip, stop going back to edit your posts so much. It makes the flow of conversation confusing as hel.
...why?
Though I couldn't say for sure. I've never been drunk or stoned.
This site's format is rather different than anything else I've used before. Sorry.
Why?
If your wording is this melodramatic when sober, with even less inhibitions it would just be pure comedy gold.
Ha! I dunno. I liked that paragraph. Granted, however, I didn't actually read it after I wrote it. It's really just stream-of-consciousness rambling, to be honest.
You should know, just so I can burst your bubble, that I'm actually rather quiet and shy in real life, unless I've known you for a long time. Even then, I'm not nearly so eloquent on the spot, most of the time.
I've had some really fun political debates at two in the morning with one friend though, and according to him I make great speeches when I'm falling over from being so tired. So, who knows? Maybe you're right. :P
I think it's kinda ridiculous to think that the only reason we wish for more is because we envision more.
Quiet and shy in real life, with big ideas and speeches going around in your head? Man as long as you don't get overly horny, angry or weepy, you would be a hilarious drunk.
hey, who says that a weepy drunk can't be a good speechifier.
Experience.
"That which can be expressed in fifty words while sober will invariably be expressed in a thousand when drunk." - I just made that up
Humanity is a species of complex creatures with deceptively simple needs, it seems.
...is that good or bad?
Being an amusing drunk is generally positive, as long as you don't take it too far. People like humour, after all.
My experience contradicts your experience, then.
So, um, how do we make them fight to the death
At dawn we will meet at the courtyard, each carrying a boxset of the complete Buffy series. We will proceed to throw DVDs at each other until one of us falls down.
are we allowed to use the cases
Wouldn't that one anime... Legend of Galactic Heroes... work better?
More DVDs to throw at each other...
We are not nerds, man. Jeez.
Being screwed over doesn't really affect your own happiness unless you know you're being screwed over. When bad things happen to people and they don't think anything can be done about it, they'll accept it as a fact of life and move on. But when people know that it could be different, and they suddenly realize how much it sucks for them.
I honestly wouldn't mind living in an oppressive world as long as I could reasonably be happy with my own life there. If I had no way of knowing I was oppressed, then I wouldn't feel bad about it. If I did know, I'd feel compelled to fight an uphill battle for my own freedom, and I'd probably be dead by the time anything significant had changed for the better. Call it selfish, but I find it hard to care about a future I know I won't live to see.
"Call it selfish, but I find it hard to care about a future I know I won't live to see."
*the horrible sound of people apathetic to climate change ringing in my mind*
You don't give a damn about the people of the future?
That kind of attitude permeates American society (I read an article in TIME magazine that claimed that a recent study of attitudes revealed--pathetically--that this generation is actually the least concerned about the environment in recent memory) and is basically the reason why it doesn't really mean shit what we do in any given political sphere, because we're all fucked anyhow because global warming.