The Relationship Between Society And The Individual

The Relationship Between Society And The Individual New ValuesIn Brave New World Everyone else is belongs to everyone else is whispered to humans ears during their sleep in Brave New World; from the very beginning of their lives until their last day human creatures are designed to think and live as society wants them to do so, they do not have individual choices and freedom. In order to make society run smoothly, human beings are conditioned to think, make choices and live according to superior orders, which alter the real nature of humankind and abolish uniqueness. In the first chapter, Bokanovkys Process is described in details, how human beings are made, how Gammas, Epsilons, Deltas brain are stopped by chemicals not to develop as cleverly as in Alfas. One egg, one embryo, one adult-normality. But a bokanovskified egg will bud, will proliferate, will divide. From eight to ninety-six buds, and every bud will grow into a perfectly formed embryo, and every embryo into a full-sized adult. Making ninety-six human beings grow where only one grew before. Progress. ( 1st chapter) People do not have choices over their mental capability, they are created by other people when they are only embryos. Human beings act like the Creator, God. These sub-human people, namely Gammas, Deltas, Epsilons, are only capable of working and not capable of thinking, therefore, these people are the controllers of the society, who are contributing to maintenance and materialization of the social system. We also predestine and condition. We decant our babies as socialized human beings, as Alphas or Epsilons, as future sewage workers or future He was going to say future World controllers, but correcting himself, said future Directors of Hatcheries, instead. Making them sub-human is a necessary way to maintain society, because clever people may question the necessity of the system, which could be a danger for civiliation. As I mentioned before, people act like God in the novel, create people and make decisions over them, thus God as a word and phenomenon is unknown for the citizens of the new world, God is replaced by Ford. They celebrate Fords day and people say Oh, Ford! and His fordship will be down in a moment. However it is questioned by John, the savage: The Savage interrupted him. But isnt it natural to feel theres a God? Even reading plays, books, dramas is forbidden for the residents, because they are full with emotions which cannot be understood by others: Call it the fault of civilization. God isnt compatible with machinery and scientific medicine and universal happiness. You must make your choice. Our civilization has chosen machinery and medicine and happiness. Thats why I have to keep these books locked up in the safe. Theyre smut. People would be shocked it It also could be a threat to social civilization, if people started to discover how their ancestors live, their soul would be changed if they started to read poetry, for instance. When the individual feels, society reels. Lenina warned Bernard. In a uniformed world like in Brave New World, even love is a danger to social stability, because loving a particular man or woman is a unique identity, which is a threat to the social system. Instead of loving one particular man or woman, everybody loves everybody, which is in a way means loving no one. However, there are some characters in the novel, for instance Bernard, who fails to follow the rules, perhaps loving someone is a capability which is so deep in us, that is hard to abolish. Instead, there is a an alternative way which replace love which is the pure physical relationship between the two opposite sex, which is practiced by children from an early age. Go away, little girl, shouted the D.H.C. angrily. Go away, little boy! Cant you see that his fordships busy? Go and do your erotic play somewhere else. These organised sexual games undercut passion and do not allow the individual to love one particular man or woman. Individuals even subordinate their own sexual pleasure to the supposed joy of the society. Most of the people in the novel are even not aware of the real meaning of friendship, love, marriage and parenting, because they have never experienced it. These values, which are so familiar to us, are dead in Brave New World. These values were sacrificed long time ago, because they surely make people unique. Instead, people grow up in communities, which is very similar to the way orphans grow up without a family. Being old and looking different is also dangerous for the civilisation. Old people are different from younger ones, their skin is wrinkled and some of their teeth are missing. So hard for me to realize, Bernard was saying, to reconstruct. As though we were living on different planets, in different centuries. A mother, and all this dirt, and gods, and old age, and disease He shook his head. Its almost inconceivable. I shall never understand, unless you explain. In Fords world, people are drugged to look like young forever, however they have to pay a big price for that, they die earlier. When Bernard went to a holiday, he met Linda and John, who live outside of the community. They are mother and son, Linda look old and some of her teeth are missing, her only dream is to go back to the perfect world from where she was expelled because of her pregnancy. However, when she and her son returned, Linda was deliberately overdosed, because she does not fit into the society, she is different. In the novel, people are capable of killing for order without even realising it. When Johns mother, Linda is dying, John goes to the hospital to see, where he is told that she is only left a few hours to live. When she dies, John outbursts in his pain which is not understood by other people. For them, people are only replaceable, interchangable units of the society, being loved and loosing that particular person are so out of their rich, they cannot imagine. In Huxleys Brave New World, people take somma which is a drug subscribed for everyone. By swallowing a few tablets, people feel themselves better; disappointment, shame, bad feelings disappear in a minute. People take a few of it after work, or go to somma holidays for recitation. Sommatized people are half conscious they are industrialised to feel happy about themselves, however this is not true happiness, the reality blurs with the imaginations. There are only two people in the novel, who completely fail to fulfil what is expected from them, namely John and Bernard. Both of them are Alfa+, thus they are very cleve, but John was raised up by his mother, while Bernard was conditioned. Bernard only questions the systems inhumanity, while John reject the system altogether. Probably, John who was raised up by his mother is more human! than his fellow, Bernard. There is one solution to escape where one can live as he or she desire, to go to an island. Around the modern World there are islands, where people are deported, if it is necessary for the sake of civilization. They live there as people lived before, having children, getting old. For instance, Bernard has to go, although, he is not satisfied with the decision. Bernard started and looked horrified. What would the Controller think? To be labelled as the friend of a man who said that he didnt like civilization-said it openly and, of all people, to the Controller-it was terrible. But, John, he began. A look from Mustapha Mond reduced him to an abject silence. The decision itself is good for Bernard, although he does not know it yet, he is disappointed. The controller he himself question the system and almost escaped but finally he decided to stay. Perhaps, he was afraid to start a new life completely own his own. To conclude, every human value, which makes us individual is dead in Brave New World by Huxley. Individualism is defeated in the dystopia and only society lives. Who does not fit into the society is either killed or deported. A society where people do not have choices and ruled by others is called dictatorship. The only way to resist the power of tyranny is keeping ones mind active and free. Peoples freedom is always limited, but should be constantly exercised to avoid tyranny.

Nick Carraway Essay

Nick Carraway, the narrator and important character in the novel The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, is deeply characterized through what he says, thinks, and is seen as by others. Many different perspectives of Nick are evident throughout the novel. He is judged and characterized by himself, his friends, and other strangers that he meets in the novel. Fitzgerald uses more dialogue to characterize Nick than other mediums. In the beginning of the book, on the first page, Nick himself declares that he is the narrator of the book. He states that he is â€Å"inclined to reserve all judgements† (Fitzgerald 1) because he has had many advantages which the average person would not have had. This is the first bit of character that we see developed in Nick’s character. He is not quick to judge people simply because he knows that if he was, he would be trying to understand a life which has not been a part of him. It could also mean that Nick is conscious of what other people tell him, because his father told him â€Å"Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone, just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had† (Fitzgerald 1). Clearly, Nick is an observant person based on the fact that the novel is narrated in such great detail by him. â€Å"Every friday five crates of lemons and oranges arrived from a fruiterer in New York—every Monday these same oranges and lemons left his back door in a pyramid of pulpless halves† (Fitzgerald 39). Nick is super observant, as observations just as detailed as that are told on most every page in the novel. Nick is not always as forgiving and understanding as he claims in the beginning of the novel, however. There are times, although only a few, when Nick is judgemental towards others. One quote stands out as a popular, recognizable line that Nick says on page 160. â€Å"‘They’re a rotten crowd,’ I shouted across the lawn. ‘You’re worth the whole damn bunch put together’† (Fitzgerald 160). This quote is an indirect insult and criticism toward the neighbors and residents who attended a party at Gatsby’s house. He shouts this to Gatsby after talking about Gatsby’s past and how he ended up where he is now. Nick can be characterized in that quote as being either extremely appreciative of Gatsby or being extremely judgemental of the crowd at the party. Likely both, Nick is going against what he said about himself in the beginning of the novel, which also says that he sometimes makes false statements. Fitzgerald also uses physical descriptions to characterize Nick. â€Å"Dressed up in white flannels I went over to his lawn† (Fitzgerald 41). Although not much is described, only his clothes that night, we can still see character development within that description. The fact that he’s wearing simple, white flannels, although fancy and expensive, are also very neutral and humble. Even though West Egg is considered to be â€Å"New Money†, Nick is more observant and in the background. It seems as though he would rather watch something than be watched by something. He could have worn flagrant colors and flaunted himself, but he chose to do the opposite. Another somewhat physical description of Nick is that he’s not a city-born character. He was born in Minnesota, not New York, and because of this, it could be implied that he grew up in a simpler place, where it did not matter what you wore or looked like. This can be considered while characterizing Nick’s physical traits. Fitzgerald exemplifies Nick’s characteristics in multiple ways throughout the novel. The evidence Fitzgerald provides for the reader is clearly given and shows how Nick is not always what he wishes he could be from a personality standpoint. What Fitzgerald did to show the different sides of Nick’s character is a major reason he is considered among the top American novelists; and The Great Gatsby is by far his best work.

Governments and corporations Essay

There was no question of ownership of oil, water and other resources freely available in the environment before governments and/or private companies claimed ownership of these resources with the pronouncement that they would process and distribute these resources fairly. Poverty is a result of unfair distribution of resources. Moreover, environmental degradation ensues when governments or corporations are too greedy for immediate profits to consider the environmental impact of their business decisions. Surely environmental degradation accompanies loss of life. On the other hand, sustainable development is defined as â€Å"development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs† (â€Å"Adaptation to Climate Change in the Context of Sustainable Development†). The United Nations Economic and Social Council reports the following as an illustration of the ill effects of unsustainable development: †¦[The] rate of agricultural production growth at the global level has been about 2. 3 per cent between 1970 and 1990 and thus has exceeded population growth so that per capita supplies of food have increased. However, wide regional disparities remain: the situation improved greatly in East Asia but worsened in sub-Saharan Africa. There still remain large numbers of under-nourished people in developing countries†¦ The relentless exploitation of the natural resource base to achieve an increased level of agricultural production has resulted in increased natural resource scarcity and environmental degradation (â€Å"Promoting Sustainable Agriculture and Rural Development†). The following case of the Aral Sea sheds greater light on the fact of natural resources being exploited when governments and/or corporations refuse to consider the trade-off that the concept of sustainable development is built upon. Situated southwest of Kazakhstan, northwest of Uzbekistan, and east of the Caspian Sea, the Aral Sea is presently a salt lake. Until the 1970s, the Aral Sea was the world’s fourth largest lake, fed by the Syr Darya and Amu Darya rivers (â€Å"Aral Sea†). When the dictator Josef Stalin rose to power in 1941, and right up to his death in 1953, he desired to make the Soviet Union self-sufficient in cotton, which is used for both gunpowder and clothing. Hence, the successors of Stalin during the 1960s and 1970s allowed an unlimited amount of irrigation water to be tapped from both the Amu Darya in the south and the Syr Darya in the northeast – to quench the thirst of the cotton fields (â€Å"Dike Built To Revive Aral Sea; Soviet-Era Policies Turned World’s Third-Largest Lake into Saline Hazard†). According to environmentalists, cotton grown in a desert is sure to result in immense wastage of water. On the other hand, smaller quantities of water may be used to produce abundant food. Moreover, it has been claimed that the Uzbeks use a rather wasteful procedure to irrigate their cotton from the Amu Darya. Even after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the independence of its republics, the government of Uzbekistan has continued its old ruinous policy, as cotton happens to be the principle hard-currency earner for the landlocked republic in west central Asia. Hence, the world’s fourth largest lake that once supplied approximately fifty thousand tons of fish every year or one hundred pounds of fish per acre has lost a staggering ninety percent of its volume. And, this has happened in the past half century alone. Most of the fish in the Aral Sea have died because the water has turned too salty to be inhabitable (â€Å"Dike Built To Revive†). The Soviet policy of using unlimited water from the rivers that fed the Aral Sea has been referred to as a bad one because the successors of Stalin, and now Uzbekistan’s government, failed to take into consideration the science behind dried former sea beds. As though the death of fish is not a big deal, a dried former sea bed also spawns dust storms spreading salt, pesticides and fertilizers. This is exactly what happened in the case of the Aral Sea, as the area’s already fragile semi desert was ultimately damaged, turning its people into some of the unhealthiest on the planet. Here, anemia figures top ninety percent (â€Å"Dike Built To Revive†). Of course, the Aral Sea disaster is a typical illustration of governmental policies gone astray. Then there are corporations that refuse to consider that the natural environment is built on cause-and-effect relationships just like business management. In early September 2006, a toxic waste dumping scandal of truly globalized proportions came to light in the Ivory Coast. The Probo-Koala, a tanker chartered by the London-based shipping company, Tranfigura, set off from Amsterdam carrying four hundred metric tons of petrochemical waste to dump in Abidjan, the port city of the Ivory Coast (Vidal; â€Å"Ivory Coast Toxic Tanker Impounded by Estonia†). Tranfigura informed the Amsterdam Port Services that the waste was absolutely â€Å"conventional† (Vidal). However, it was later discovered that the waste contained hydrogen sulfide, which happens to be a poisonous gas, smelling as rotten eggs (â€Å"Ivory Coast Toxic Tanker†). At least ten people lost their lives in the weeks immediately following the incident in the Ivory Coast (Vidal). Moreover, seventy five thousand people sought medical treatment with complaints of nausea, nose bleeds, breathlessness, vomiting, diarrhea, skin damage, headaches, and swollen stomachs (Vidal; â€Å"Ivory Coast Toxic Tanker†). Undoubtedly, if the corporation responsible for sending toxic waste to the Ivory Coast had been conscientious to begin with, lives would have been saved. Even so, maximization of profits is the goal of all producers. Depending on the moralities of their owners and managers, they may or may not believe in the need to behave ethically. Unfortunately, many for-profit businesses around the globe are known to engage in unethical practices, which is the reason why the government must step in to regulate markets and the practices of various business ventures when it is believed that doing so would be of benefit to society. Governments have the right to charge corporations for the damages they inflict upon people and their environment. Then again, as the example of Aral Sea shows, even governments may fail to understand that the environment, like business, is built on cause and effect relationships. As expected, governments that make bad policies or wrong choices may only profit in the short run. In the long run, everyone must pay for faulty policies. Those who are subjected to such governments have to pay through the disastrous effects of bad policies on an immediate level. Their fault seems to be that they did not protest soon enough the bad policies of their governments. Regardless of whether they are able to do so, the fact remains that unbridled profit seeking behavior at the expense of the environment costs lives. Works Cited â€Å"Adaptation to Climate Change in the Context of Sustainable Development. † United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs Division for Sustainable Development. 8 May 2009. . â€Å"Aral Sea. † The Columbia Encyclopedia. 6th edition. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004. â€Å"Dike Built To Revive Aral Sea; Soviet-Era Policies Turned World’s Third-Largest Lake into Saline Hazard. † The Washington Times (1 Oct 2005), p. A08. â€Å"Ivory Coast Toxic Tanker Impounded by Estonia. † Environmental News Service. 28 Sep 2006. 8 May 2009. . â€Å"Promoting Sustainable Agriculture and Rural Development. † United Nations Economic and Social Council. 11-28 Apr 1995. 8 May 2009. .

Semiotics Definition and Examples

Semiotics is the theory and study of signs and symbols, especially as elements of language or other systems of communication. Common examples of semiotics include traffic signs, emojis, and emoticons used in electronic communication, and logos and brands used by international corporations to sell us things—brand loyalty, they call it. Semiotics Takeaways Semiotics is the study of signs and symbols, in particular as they communicate things spoken and unspoken.Common signs that are understood globally include traffic signs, emojis, and corporate logos.Written and spoken language is full of semiotics in the form of intertextuality, puns, metaphors, and references to cultural commonalities. Signs are all around us. Consider a set of paired faucets in a bathroom or kitchen. The left side is almost certainly the hot water tap, the right is the cold. Many years ago, all taps had letters designating the temperature of the water—in English, H for hot and C for cold; in Spanish, C for hot (caliente) and F for cold (frio). Modern taps often have no letter designations or are included in one tap, but even with a single tap, the semiotic content of faucets still tells us to tilt or turn left for hot water and right for cold. The information about how to avoid being burned is a sign. Practice and History A person who studies or practices semiotics is a semiotician.  Many terms and concepts used by contemporary semioticians were introduced by the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (1857–1913). Saussure defined a  sign as any motion, gesture, image, pattern, or event that conveys meaning. He defined langue as the structure or grammar of a language and parole as the choices made by the speaker to communicate that information. Semiotics is a key study into the evolution of human consciousness. English philosopher John Locke (1632–1704) tied the advancement of intelligence to three steps: understanding the nature of things, understanding what to do to achieve whatever you wish to achieve, and the ability to communicate these things to another. Language began with signs. In Lockes terminology, signs are dyadic—that is, a sign is tied to a specific meaning. Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914) said that signs work only if there is an intelligence capable of learning from experience. Peirces conception of semiotics was triadic: sign, meaning, and interpreter. Modern semioticians look at the entire network of signs and symbols around us that mean different things in different contexts, even signs or symbols that are sounds. Think of what an ambulance siren communicates when you are driving: Someone is endangered and we are in a hurry to help. Pull over to the side of the road and let us drive by. Textual Signs Intertextuality is a type of subtle communication in that what we write or say often is recollecting something shared between us. For example, if you mimic James Earl Jones deep baritone saying Luke, you can transmit a raft of Star Wars images and sounds and meanings. Knowing the semiotics you are, Grasshopper, is a reference both to Master Yoda and to Master Po in the 1970s Kung Fu television series. In fact, you could argue that Yoda was a semiotic reference to Master Po. Metaphors can act as meaningful stand-ins to people who are familiar with the culture: He was a rock to me in my hour of need and That coffee is hotter than Hades are intertextual references to the Judeo-Christian Bible, and theyre so common that it doesnt matter whether youve read the Bible. Metonyms can, too: The Smoke is a metonym for London, a reference to its once-prevalent smog, which still means London even if the smog is less prevalent. Writing William Shakespeares and Lewis Carrolls writings are full of puns and cultural references, some of which, sadly, are no longer meaningful to modern speakers. The master of intertextuality was the Irish writer James Joyce, whose books such as Ulysses are so dense with snippets of different and invented languages and cultural references that the modern reader needs hypertexts—live weblinks—to get them all: Stephen closed his eyes to hear his boots crush crackling wrack and shells. You are walking through it howsomever. I am, a stride at a time. A very short space of time through very short times of space. Five, six: the nacheinander. Exactly: and that is the ineluctable modality of the audible. A hypertext supports semiotic understanding. We know what a hypertext means: Here youll find a definition of this term or this phrase. Nonverbal Communication Many ways that we communicate with one another are nonverbal. A shrug, a roll of the eyes, a wave of the hand, these and thousands of other subtle and unsubtle body language memes communicate information to another person. Vocalics is a type of nonverbal communication embedded into speech: the pitch, tone, rate, volume, and timbre of spoken language communicate  additional information about the underlying meaning of a group of words. Personal space is also a form of semiotics that is specific to a culture. A person approaching too close to you in Western culture might seem a hostile incursion, but in other cultures personal space dimensions are different. Simply touching someone can calm an angry or sad person, or enrage or offend them, depending on the context. Sources Chandler, Daniel. Semiotics: The Basics.Klarer,  Mario. An Introduction to Literary Studies.Lewis,  Michael. The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine. Craig, Robert T. Communication Theory as a Field  in Theorizing Communication: Readings Across Traditions.