Dystopian novels and their uses

I remember reading 'Brave New World' in junior high and hating it, mostly because I was hoping for a good story and did not understand dystopian novels and their warning to those who think to somehow create a Utopian society here on earth.  I personally prefer the 'happily ever after' genre but anti-utopian novels certainly have their place and purpose and now that no one is forcing me to read them, our paths can safely bifurcate.  But one thing that still stands out, even twenty years later, was society's insistence that the government could raise and educate children ever so much better than their parents, that the family had outworn its necessity to society and its usefulness thereto.  I remember a bad version (bad in that it was unfaithful to the book) made for television back in the 90's with a scene with babies growing in gallon jars or something like that; people were no longer born but made or grown like so much corn.

At the time I really did not 'get it.'  Family was a concept foreign to me, though I didn't know it back then.  What was so scary about the government taking over the raising and nurture of children?  I was technically one such myself after all.  At home I basically got fed and had a corner to sleep in like some stray dog, but for anything important or vital to my knowledge of humanity and society, that was left to the day care and public school to impart.  I was a content little automaton, mostly because I was completely ignorant of what I was missing at the time.  The main problem with this little equation is that there is very little of humanity left to it.  Humans are not robots that absorb information and then go out into society to function for the benefit of all.  We are living, breathing, feeling, thinking, creative, social beings and need to be treated as such.

The government wasn't there to congratulate me at my graduation or to celebrate my wedding or condole with me while we languished on an adoption wait list.  And anytime I have tried to interact with it, it has been an impersonal, confusing, frustrating, inefficient disaster (yes, I just filled out my health insurance stuff!).  If they can't manage the post office, they definitely shouldn't be in the childcare business.  People to them are not people but problems, more work, a nuisance, a number.  But a number is by definition not a person, it is a unit.  If we were automatons or sheep, we could be mass produced but we are not, we are unique and feeling individuals with unique needs and wants, which is where the family comes in.  Your mother (in general, in situations such as mine, it is not true) knows and cares about you far more than any teacher or day care worker and thus is far more likely to produce a happy, healthy, and well adjusted person than any government program.

I had an education, I had knowledge, I was relatively healthy, but I sure wasn't happy or well adjusted. I wasn't even human.  Then came love and sorrow and suffering and waiting and frustration and joy.  And now I'm human.  I have a soul.  I am a person.  I'm broken and I cry sometimes, but I don't have to pretend to be perfect because I'm not and I'm loved anyway.  That's what it is to be human.  We need love, joy, hope, purpose, not just an education and food and clothes and a job and an iPhone.  Otherwise we are just automatons.  I think that's what that whole book was about (Brave New World): a man finding that he had a heart, discovering what it was to truly be human.  Strange that it took so long for me to discover such a parable about my own life.