IdIOcRaCy

Out of the multiple dystopian societies that we have learned about, I must say that the futuristic society featured in Idiocracy seemed the most frightening. Not only was the world environmentally annhilated, but the entire population were the most unintellegent people ever, who seemed to focus on sex and advertisment in order to decide how they should rule the world.

In all honesty, I think that I would rather live in the society presented in Handmaid's Tale than the future of America as presented in the film. I don't think that I would be able to live in a world where the people who run the hospitals are barely mentally capable to press a button that diagnoses the patient's illness. The fact that the population had resorted to a language mixed of the languages "hillbilly, valleygirl, inner-city slang and various grunts". Not only is this vile civilaztion out right stupid, but they seem to have forgotten what emotions and feelings are as well. In the relationships shown, there is no love, no thoughtfulness, no aspects of the emotional-mental capacity that we as humans cherish. You know that the world has truly hitten rock bottom when you walk into Costco, and not only is it the size of Chicago, but the greeter at the front addresses everyone as they walk in with "Welcome to Costco, I love you. Welcome to Costco, I love you. Welcome to Costco, I love you. Welcome to Costco, I love you."

However frightening this movie was for me, it did lighten the mood of the rest of the films and books we watched throughout the course.

upgrayedd

Language in Handmaid's Tale

Throughout the book, the use of language is often pondered, changed to give a new meaning, or adapted from alternate sources in order to further the author's point. Even the most simple of words that are not thought of by many people when spoken in our society today have very complex and deep connotations to the characters.

One way in which the author changes the language is using Offred's thoughts to create a dichotomy to the meanings of different words. For example, we talked briefly in class about Offred's thoughts on the words "lie" and "lay", and later Offred musing that "lay is always passive". It was brought to attention that "lay" is the stem word of the saying "getting laid", which is most likely not coincidental considering that one of the major issues in this book is sex. Before reading this book, I never thought about the differences between those two words, and never really considered their connotations. After reading the sentence in which she mentions this, I thought about it for a while and realized that it was through her musings such as these that even more meanings are brought to this book.

Take "lie" and "lay", for example. Each of these words has meanings and sayings that can either correlate directly with one another, or have completely different connotations. One way that I looked at it was the fact that "lie" can be used to express the act of laying down, but it can also be used to used to explain when someone is not telling the truth. In this book, I feel that lying is a major role for many of the characters. Moira, for example, lied about feeling ill so she could escape the life of beinga  handmaid. The commander often lies, or doesn't tell the entire truth, while spending time with Offred outside of the "ceremonies". One could argue that the entire society is based off of lies and "untruths" that created the handmaid process ro begin with.

"Lay" has an even stronger significance in this book. Offred muses that lay is always passive, which if one should take the example "getting laid" and refer it to the book, then Offred is really implying that in the society they are now a part of, there is no more choice to have sex, but is rather a duty that one is expected to carry out in order to procreate and maintain society. It is in this way that she expresses her displeasure with the entire handmaid process, and the "duties" that come with. Because of the fact that she says "lay is always passive", it led me to think about if "lay", including our society today, is passive. Can it be that still today the choice to "get laid" is a passive decision?

first connection to handmaid's tale

link

Although the events occurring in the book are not dubbed as prostitution, the events in the book and the basis of the sex slave trade have many of the same foundations. In both, the women have little to no say of what happens to their bodies and men have the ultimate control.

In the book, the handmaids are used as vessels to carry children for other families and are not given the option to leave their "compound" so to speak, unless authorized to do so in order to go to the hospital or carry out their duties as a child bearer. In the sex slave trade, the women are transported to and from their sellers and buyers to "preform their duties". The article discusses this issue and how prevalent it still is in today's society, and how it often goes overlooked. The difference between these two things are that typically, to most, the sex slave trade is extremely frowned upon, and is illegal. However, in the book, the handmaids are an accepted part of life that all sorts of people use in order to live a "normal life", and are looked upon gloriously.

In the class discussion the other day, the question was asked of who had it the worst in the situation between The Captain, Serena Joy, and Offred. At first, I answered that Serena Joy for sure had it the worst, and that she had most of my sympathy. While I still stand by my first statement, while reexamining this situation, it occurred to me that Offred is put into a horrible situation, and is treated much like a sex slave. The situations are slightly different, however she has no say in what she has done to her and is living in horrible conditions. While she can think for herself she cannot express her beliefs and cannot carry them through without suffering horrible consequences (which through implication, I think is death). She is treated like an item, not a human being, and her wants are completely ignored by all who have control of her life.

Children of Men

While the movie, Children of Men was quite honestly extremely disgusting (showing a woman give birth in the back of a shack, which was inexplicably repulsive) at times, it did portray an interesting take on what will be the fall, or shall I say the alpacalypse, of the modern world. The movie never explicitly names what caused the entire population to die off and start a modern warfare between literally every single person on the planet earth and infertility.

In my opinion, the most shocking, and sadly fairly realistic, event that occurred in this movie was the concentration camps for the "fugees", aka illegal immigrants whose homes were destroyed. In the world we live in today, we tend to be afraid of what we don't know, which in the case of this movie, were the people from other towns. Instead of allowing the immigrants to move into England and attempt to live a normal life, they hunted them down and made it nearly impossible to enter the country unless taken into one of their camps. Instead of putting the prisoners into a jail that we today put criminals in, the government had decided to put the illegal immigrants into camps where they were usually either killed, tortured, or both. One of the reasons that I am assuming they did this is because in a prison system like we have in America, the prisoners are clothed and fed because majority of the time the imprisoned have a release date to be sent back into society. In the movie, however, the government killed or was the cause of the prisoners' deaths because then there would be no risk of them entering the country.

It seemed to me, throughout watching the film, that the government didn't even want to help the current citizens of England alive. On multiple occasions in the film there would be propaganda of some sort for a pill that would kill whoever had taken that pill in their sleep. This form of assisted suicide was endorsed by the government so they wouldn't have to assist anyone in their country besides themselves. While I was watching the film, I wondered if the cause for the infertility and the warfare and destruction of all of the nations was caused by either multiple governments or the government of England itself. To me it seemed strange that if the disaster had been environmental or natural, there would only be one country left standing on the entire planet. Also, the midwife in the film said that the infertility started out through women having miscarriages all of the time, and eventually resulted to infertility. It seems strange that there would be this type of situation that would just occur on its own, and not planned by anyone.

All in all, this movie definitely made me think, and I would recommend it to anyone who not only enjoys literature and films that are dystopian, but anyone who enjoys films in general.

Life as we knew it

page 297

"My family has it," I said. "Don't you have any kind of medicine? There must be something." Linda shook her head. "It's the flu, hon," she said. "It just runs its course. Only thing is no one has the strength left to fight it off."
"It's a bad strain," Maggie said. "Like in 1918. The kind that would kill you anyway."
"But my family," I said. "What should I do for them?"
"Make them comfortable," Maggie said. "And don't bring them here when they die. We're not taking any more bodies."
...
"Honey, listen to us," Maggie said. "It doesn't matter... But whatever's going to happen is going to happen. And it'll happen fast."


first link.
link.



In the Democratic Republic of Congo, there has recently been an Ebola outbreak. Out of the 52 reported cases,  35 cases have been scientifically confirmed. The death rates are rising at an exponential amount, and although the authorities are doing as much as they can in order to try to control the spread of the disease and stop the amount of deaths, the disease is so contagious that this is near impossible. Not only is it incredibly contagious, but since the conditions of the people living in the town are not as "modernized" as those in the United States, it is even easier for the people of Congo to contract the disease. Also, this disease is able to mutate itself quite quickly, which makes people harder to become immune to the disease as once they develop some form of immunity to one strain, another one may be in effect.

I connected the passage from Life As We Knew It to this passage of this epidemic because the passage discusses the flu that is going through the town that seems to be killing everyone that it infects. In the selected passage, the nurses are telling Miranda converses with the nurses of the condition of her family and asks what should be done in order to help them survive. The nurses tell her that not much can be done in relation to the actual curing of the disease, however she could give them aspirin and alcohol rubs in order to diminish the side effects of the disease, which is exactly what is being done for the Ebola victims.

In both of these instances, the victims are being treated the same way; diminishing the symptoms, removing the victims from the "healthy" people, and making the victims as comfortable as possible.

mY fEeD

If in our society we were to have feeds, I believe that the one created for me would have a lot of commercials for music, clothes, and books, and also a lot of news about politics and current events. Since they are able to purchase right from their feeds, I would most likely be in huge debt, and also want to buy even more because of the convenience. I imagine that my feed would include something similar to iTunes and the app Shazam combined, but in my brain. I would be able to find out what a song was as it was playing, and buy and download it right away. There would also probably be an iPod built into my feed. There would be some kind of Kindle-esque creation in my feed, and definitely some sort of television/DVR. Since I am very interested in politics, I would receive current event updates in my feed and various news channels and newspapers.


Although many people feel that the feed controls way too much of people's brains and gives corporations too much control, I believe that there are positives to having a feed. To be completely honest, and I am not proud of saying this, I would probably get a feed solely for the reason that "everyone else is getting them". Lame, I know, but I feel that if everyone else around me had this new technology that "totally changed their lives", I would want to know what they were talking about. Also, the feed does have some things that are good. For example, having education that is centered around your needs and what you are interested in is not a bad thing; I know that I could have lived a very happy, successful life without ever having to take a physics course. Furthermore, the feed allows people to stay updated with what is going on in the world and be informed. Considering majority of people in America have zero idea about what is going on in politics, maybe having the news sent to them wouldn't be a bad thing.

2nd 1984 blog

ARTICLE!!!!!!!!!

This article reminded me of some of the events that occurred in 1984, especially the message of an, in most people's opinions, innocent girl being shot for doing the right thing. From the international community, the girl in the article was awarded for her actions and verbalization towards equality. However, since the Taliban, the ruling "government" of her country felt that her ideas were corrupting towards the people and the ideology of their party, they hired a gunman to attack her in one of the most unsuspecting of places; the school bus.

Although many people are aware of the atrocities the Taliban has committed, they are the government figure of Pakistan nonetheless, and are supposed to be there to protect the people, not try to kill children on their way to school, the place where they can learn and feel safe.

In 1984 the government uses someone that Winston trusts, O'Brien, in order to inflict the greatest act of betrayal. Winston literally puts his life and all of his trust with O'Brien, thinking that he is doing what is right not only for himself, but for society as a whole, but in the end is killed, figuratively speaking (and possibly literally...?) by him and those who he was working for.

The point is, that in both of these situations someone has had faith in their actions and what they are doing to not only feel good about themselves, but to better society as a whole, only to be stabbed in the back by someone who is, in theory, supposed to be their leader.

Truman Show vs. 1984

Truman Burbank was created through television show producer Christoph. His life was created by s series if events that were all planned and predetermined by the same man. While he was able to control his reactions and responses to this events, most of what happened in his life was out of his hands.

In 1984, Winston Smith was born into a "regular" society (regular meaning it was not created by a television producer), and yet he shared the same issue of privacy as Truman. While Winston was able to enjoy the luxury, so to speak, of having serendipitous and random events occur through the course of life, he had the opposite situation as Truman in that he could not freely express his reactions.

While both of their lives were intently watched 24/7, Truman had no knowledge of it and therefore had genuine, public reactions to whatever was thrown at him. Winston had to be careful of every little thing he did, as if he were to act the wrong way his life would be in grave danger.

Both of these characters were deprived of ther basic human instincts along with the rest of their societies and all that goes along with them.

Is the year really 2012?

"The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command. His heart sank as he thought of the enormous power arrayed against him, the ease with which any Party intellectual would overthrow him in debate, the subtle arguments which he would not be able to understand, much less answer. And yet he was in the right! They were wrong and he was right. The obvious, the silly, and the true had got to be defended. Truisms are true, hold on to that! The solid world exists, its laws do not change. Stones are hard, water is wet, objects unsupported fall toward the earth’s center. With the feeling that he was speaking to O’Brien, and also that he was setting forth an important axiom, he wrote:

Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows."

1984, Part 1, Chapter 7, p. 81

In 1984, the government controls the people of Oceania. Not just what they do, but how they think, what they say, how they feel, and what they see. The presence of such control may not be as publicly present in the United States (although it certainly does occur in some ways), other countries face actions such as the ones in the book on an every day basis. North Korea controls everything that their people hear and see, and deprive them from "real" news. In an article investigated by Benjamin Insail, he explores the depth to which censorship is taken. 

Not only does the North Korean government censor what the people hear and see, but they also make it quite dangerous for those who try to expose the truth. One would think that this would act as a deterrent, however Insail writes that "more and more foreign journalists are actively seeking information about the regime." 

While Orwell wrote and satirized about a government in which the people have no control, not many people expected for the world of Oceania to become a living reality in the modern days of 2012. It would seem that people are more knowledgeable of their oppression, and are aware that their rights are alienated, but choose not to act on it. It seems that those who are acting on it are those who aren't facing the oppression firsthand.

Why is it that as soon as rights are taken away, and made secretive, everyone wants to expose the truth? Is this just human nature or is it simple curiosity that stems from lack of spontaneity in life?

My "handicaps"?

In the story "Harrison Bergeron" by Kurt Vonnegut Jr., the government handicaps the people that they feel are "above" or "superior" to other citizens. They feel that in order for everyone in the society to be equal, they, in a sense, must dumb everybody down to their weakest link. Some of the handicaps that they use consist of sashweights to hold people back physically, earpieces that prohibit long thoughts that could corrupt peoples' minds, and ugly masks that conceal people's beauty underneath. This story made me think about what I would have if I were to live in this society and obtain handicaps.

The first thing that jumped out at me were the earpieces that transmitted a loud, obnoxious, disruptive sound every twenty seconds that disallow people from thinking too far into their thoughts. Considering my anxiety, which causes me to unwillingly think a million thoughts at a mile per minute, and often over analyze most situations, my earpiece that I would most undoubtedly have, would probably emit a sound every 10 seconds, at least. It's not even that my thoughts are revolutionary, they just cause me to think of any and every possible outcome that could arise from any given situation.

Secondly, I would most likely be handicapped by some sort of vocal inhibitor. When I disagree with something, everyone usually finds out about it. It isn't because I am strident or anything about it, I just like my opinion to be heard and discuss my opinions with people whose opinions differ from my own. Just like the newscaster that Vonnegut wrote about, I believe that I would have some sort of device that causes me to stutter or become unable to speak the words that I am trying to say.

Propaganda... good or bad?

Whether we like it or not, propaganda is everywhere we turn. It's not only on tv and in the commercials that consistently interrupt our viewing pleasure, or plastered on billboards and sides of buses in the city, but from the words of our leaders, and teachers, and favorite celebrities and even our best friends.

As much as I would love to not have any propaganda for myself, and to live in a world where everyone can speak their own thoughts, it is not the case. It sadly seems that if there weren't any propaganda in the world, many people would not be able to form their own opinions, and inevitably latch on to what somebody else said because they had the human need to have their thoughts on an issue. Maybe the forms of propaganda today aren't as straightforward as that of the propaganda from the years of the World Wars, but that makes propaganda both much more dangerous and much more reliable. It has the negative capabilities to spread a rumor quicker than ever, and allow people to buy into ideas that have no affect except for a negative one on people. But at the same time, propaganda can be used in a way that allows people to do what's right.

Although there was much dispute over the course of action that was to be taken by the charity group, the KONY 2012 videos had such an extreme impact in such a short amount of time that not only caused people to think about people other than themselves and focus on other problems going on in the world besides their own, it also caused people to band together and try to do something for the greater good. While some of the things that were said in the video were exaggerated and untrue, which is why it can be categorized as propaganda, the outcomes of it spread had a positive impact on society.

My Version of Utopia

What is content without knowing longing? What is satisfaction without knowing discomfort? What is happiness without knowing pain? I would love to write a post about a land where children can eat cupcakes for breakfast and everyone marries their soul mate on their first try and where death wasn't looked at as sad, because we knew we'd all get there eventually. But I don't call that happiness, I call that ignorance. If people never knew what feeling hurt was, how would they ever know how much better it feels when that stabbing pain finally removes itself? You see, I don't think my Utopia would be that different from the world that we live in today. There are definitely a few things that I would change, but all of the bad things that seem to find their way into my life wouldn't be annihilated.

The things that I would get rid of? Well, that's pretty easy. I would get rid of the people who look at themselves as better than others; in my Utopia we don't have room for arrogant jerks. I would get rid of cruelty- cruelty to humans and nature and animals. Nobody would be  enslaved or live in bondage.

I remember when I went to Younglife camp one year, and they showed us a music video that portrayed all of the horrible things that happened in the world, and told us that we needed to be the ones to try to change that if we wanted it gone, except how would we know that those things were wrong if they never happened? To me it seems like not knowing what evil looks like would only create breeding grounds for people to become unaware of its underlying existence.

When it comes down to it, in my Utopia I would have it so people have more courage, more hope, more strength, more intuition, and more love for themselves and for others.