Tobermory Explained?

So the last line, German irregular verbs. Well this line comes right after we learn that Appin was killed by an elephant who was being, according to the newspaper, bothered by a man.(Appin) I thought that there was a distinct parallel between Appin and Tobermory. Appin was directly characterized as having cleverness and Tobermory was definitely clever. So the people, just as they only saw Appin as entertainment and not a person, that's how they saw the cat.

Huxley Essay

In Aldous Huxleys prologue to Brave New World, he gave his character two choices, "an insane life in a utopia or the life of a primitive in an Indian village." Huxley decided to give his character only these specific choices. But Bernard personifies the equivocation of both these choices. 

So what does that mean? Well the first choice given by Huxley represents the person who knows what's going on in the middle of the so called utopia. The other represents the man decided to leave the utopia, but has a harder life socially, economically, etc. So Bernard represents the middle ground of theses two ideas. Bernard is characterized as queer and melancholy by Lenina and given the excuse of "alcohol in his embryo." Which is very situationally ironic. Because when we hear Bernard's thoughts about Lenina's promiscuity, "like meat, so much meat." So we know that Bernard knows. So he epitomizes this outward conformity and inward questioning. Because Bernard also participates in an orgy and soma thing. But again he exhibits inward questioning. During the main ritual he could only think about some lady's eyebrows, and doesn't participate. 

So what is Huxley tying to say? Well I think that Huxley used Bernard in this way to make a connection with readers who who can identify with it, hopefully inciting a desire to change the real world.

Are cell phones the new "Opiate of the Masses"?

Karl Marx once said that "Religon is the opiate of the masses." But the purpose of this post is not to argue for or against Religon but to apply that idea to our present day. I think that Marx and Huxley saw many of the same things in this aspect. We know this because of the prevalence of "soma" in Brave New World, a drug that makes you "happy".(however artificial that happiness may be) In Brave New World soma is described very specifically, by its chemical contents, which for the majority of his audience, probably made no sense at all. I think he did this deliberately, to give soma a little ambiguity. And I think that he gave it this open endedness to make it applicable to any other type of "opiate." So I was thinking today about Marx's quote at school today and if it applied to our present day. And then I looked around. Not everyone but a lot of people Seem to be on their cell phones a lot at school. And I know it's just one perspective at one school but I imagine that it's pretty widespread. So then I thought, 'that's it, that's our device to escape and be 'happy'. And some people might say, 'well it makes me happy, so who are you to say what I can and can't do, ...etc.'well I'm not the only one who thinks this. There is a great video called Louis Ck hates cell phones,

Louis CK Hates Cell Phones - YouTube

m.youtube.com/watch?v=5HbYScltf1c

Now I think that this so called happiness is fake, and like Holden Caulfield, I don't like goddamn phonies. No but really, when people are on their phones at school ( in my own personal experience) they are on twitter , snapchat, instagram or something similar. And I mean that's all good and great but like some Greek philosopher said,"everything in moderation." I see some people with over 70,000 tweets, that's kinda sad. And that's an extreme example but I hope you see the point and how I'm trying to tie this all together. And the other thing about being on your phone constantly is that it creates a social barrier. I see it all the time. And again I'm not the only one. I'll cite Louis CK again because I think he's a genius. In one of his comedy sets he says," and the guy was on his personality killing phone." And the context is that he saw some newly married couple at store and the guy was just on his phone, and his wife was trying to talk to him. That, to me is the perfect example of what I'm trying to say, phones give us a certain comfort zone, but at the cost of isolating ourselves. So maybe we should try to work on it.