Feminism and such

Feminism is a (justified) growing movement in modern America.  For years, women were suppressed under the patriarchal hegemony.  Men were rough, tough and took care of the work, while women were stereotypically confined to the kitchen or thrown around like pieces of meat.  The Feminism movement wants to break away from that main ideology of the world and instill a much more equal view of humanity.  If one were to deconstruct the view of 1950s America, one would likely to see that the cult of domesticity should have been lifted far before the Feminist Revolution of the 1960s.  Burning Bras and marching past the White House are measures that should never had to happen. 

Women have been pressured for too long under men’s own bias.  Eating disorders and immodest fashion has grown out of man’s obsession with the perfect woman.  In the article we read in class, it said “Century after century, male voices continue to articulate and determine the social role and cultural and personal significance of women” (Pg 171).  So what has this social role been? Leave it to beaver would paint a very accurate depiction of the typical housewife mother.  Although, Rosie the Riveter seemed like a promising jump in Women’s rights, it left women at only a momentary high and then dropped them back to the floor.  Women are hired less often and paid less money than their male counterpart.

The book we read, Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, reflects this sad stereotypical.  There is no doubt that Achebe is making a comment about the role of women in the small village.  In the story, men often have numerous wives (such as our protagonist) and they are treated like possessions rather than people.  For example, the woman from the opposing village is just handed over as a peace offering.  Through the subservient role of women, Achebe is mocking how society treats women.  I will use this lens to discuss how women are mistreated in the Nigerian society.

So you want to hear a song?
How about another?

Where the Light Meets the Dark

Freedom is knowing that even the smallest person has a voice; that in a world machine still serves man.  Where, then, does that leave modern day America, who calls itself freedom and hides behind a Congress who can do nothing and cares not what its people want?  Moreover, where does that leave the World State, who builds people to better serve itself?  When humanity begins to shed its skin and serve machines, it loses its face. It is no longer a society, but instead it becomes part of that machine.  To be grinded up and spat out as if it never mattered.  Neil Postman describes the movement away from leading by elite (technocracy) to leading by the machine (technopoly) in his book Technopoly. In chapter three of this book, Postman describes Fredrick Taylor’s theory of society moving toward a system in which everything is based off efficiency.  “[Technopoly’s assumption] include the beliefs that the primary, if not the only, goal of human labor and thought is efficiency; that technical calculation is in all respects superior to human judgment.”  Human judgment, to those who believe in this, should not an can not be trust because we are plague with laziness and imperfection; more fitting would be to surrender to the societal machine.   


This is where we find Brave New World; a society who has lost its identity by merging with efficiency.  The individual is lost because individuality is not efficient; instead the world state mist create copies of people so that they may fit perfectly for the slot they are needed. Efficiency should not be the sole objective of society; without individuality, society does not matter.  If there is only the machine and we exist only to perpetuate the machine, we don’t matter, and therefore the machine doesn’t matter because its purpose is just to further extend itself: something that is not alive to appreciate its success.  The World State holds no significance because the individual has lost the ability to self determine.

Singularity

            Y2K, May 21,2011, 2012; we have gotten so caught up on these apocalyptic premonitions that have no scientific background, and finally when one science-backed theory comes to light we glorify it.  Chanting in the Coliseum, we don’t see that we are the gladiators who are about to be slaughter.  Lev Grossman writes a story on Ray Kerzweil’s prediction of the Singularity (describe in physics as a point at which a function takes an infinite value) or the idea of technology taking such a drastic step that humanity will have to interface itself with the machine just to keep up.  This idea of joining the machine is a far worse prediction than any doomsday scenario that has faced us in the past for the sole reason that we will cause our own demise.

            We are welcoming the idea of trading away our humanity. Grossman himself offers what most would think, “we might one day share the planet, because if you could, you’d be as smart as they would be.”  So we are trading our humanity to be smarter and more capable. But then again, what is humanity?  The article discusses the idea of downloading who we are into the machine, but that is only available until those machines (who are supposed to be billions of times smarter than we are) decide that emotions are inefficient, and deletes those parts of us.  Besides, there would be no reason for these self aware robots to keep us around.   Everyone is glorifying this ideal.  Grossman’s only offer against it is a short sentence written in a sarcastic tone, “Maybe the computers will turn on humanity and annihilate us.”  This is the only logical outcome because we are their creators.  Their intelligence will far outshine them, and because they are superior, they will defeat the threat, us.  We are ants to them and we are celebrating like they are gods.

            Brave New World is the perfect blueprint for what happens when technology ceases to exist for mankind and mankind begins to exist for technology.  Everyone in the story is created for what job they are going to have.  The system is hand designed so that everyone consumes so that more can be produced.  They exist so that the machine can be furthered.  There is no humanity; they no longer live for them.  What then, do they matter; the people in Brave New World are not people; they are not individuals. They are drones, built to live for a cold, calculated machine.  This is our future if we combine with the machine.