a. sex, monogamy, and romance: Well, in the World State, children played games that involved sex, even at very young ages- like 7 years old. This is totally different than in our world in 2009, because children that young never ever have sex. The earliest people in our world start to have sex is through their teenage years, but even then it is frowned upon by our culture. Also, they believe that everyone belongs to everyone else, which is different than our world in 2009 where we believe that we belong to one person.
b. sports: Their sports are completely different than ours, because they don't believe in competition like we do. We only play sports to compete, and to "win" in the end. However, they play sports just to play- also, they only view sports as things that involved a ball. In 2009, anything that involves physical activity is considered a sport... swimming, cheerleading, cross country- all of those things are huge sports and they don't involve a ball. Also, they mention something about "bumble-puppy" which we don't play here in 2009, I'm not even sure exactly what it is. I remember it was in a book that we read in English class though, A Room With A View.
c. entertainment: I'm not really sure what they did for entertainment. They talk about "soma" which was a drug that they basically always took... I guess this could be considered an enterntainment of some sort, because they did it for fun. On holidays, they would have two grammes of soma, rather than the nomral amount that they would have which is less. I guess people nowadays use drugs to have fun as well, except their whole life isn't based around it. When I think of our society's view of entertainment, I think of television, or video games. People go to see movies for entertainment, they don't sit around taking drugs all day.
d. parenthood: It talks about how in the World State center, mothers act similar to the way cats act towards their babies- they are very protective of them, always saying "my baby." I think that this is a little bit similar to how we feel in our world during 2009, however one thing that took me by surprise here was that the mothers were fascinated by breast feeding. I don't think that mothers nowadays talk about how wonderful it feels to breast feed, so that's the only difference I saw.
e. materialism: It seems as though people in the World State center are very materialistic; some of the things that they repeat are phrases like " I love clothes." Also, they are talkinga bout the new "Ford T Model," and someone claims that they have had it for nearly three months, as though that they are better than the other person considering that they have had it longer. I guess in a sense this is similar to our world today in 2009, because we constantly want to have the newest thing out there. If we get something new, our culture constantly updates things to make us want more... I think this is the one thing that we are similar to each other in. The only difference is that it appears as though these people are brainwashed to want more than what we have, where we sort of do it on our own.
f. religion: They speak about how in the past (which would be now, more or less) there were religions. They speak of Christianity, which they believed was absurd basically. They also mention democracy, liberalism, and the caste system. They basically don't believe in any of these sorts of things, because they believe they all belong to each other. They only thing they do believe in a little is the caste system, because they rank everyone in their own social status- however there is no moksha or dharma as there is in today's world.
g. intoxicants: The intoxicants which are mentioned in the World State Center are chemical drugs that I have never even heard of, I don't even know if they even exist. However, when I think of intoxicants in today's world, I think of alcohol, marijuana, cocaine, etc. Therefore, their basis of drugs is much different than ours.
Finally, to the best of your ability provide a brief history of how the World State Center came to be.
The World State Center originated with Ford, who was basically their leader in a sense. He created the World State Center so that the populations could be controlled- so that everyone would be created equally, and nobody would feel left out. By creating everyone equally, and controlling their life completely, he was able to eliminate people from having fears, because they were totally brainwashed. When they slept, tape recordings were played in their head, which forced them to have certain thoughts, and elimate others. By doing this, the population was muc more emotionally steady because everyone thought the same exact things. Although this may not have been the best idea, to eliminate emotions, it is what they did, and Ford thought it would be better this way.
Awesome Katie! You are a star!! I am very impressed with your respones.
ReplyDeleteMr. S