16/06/2008

Application for sex

Am reading an interesting book: We, by Eugene Zamiatin. Written in Russian, first published in translation, in English in 1924, We is set in a Utopian society where citizens’ every action is planned to the minute detail, everyone lives in a glass apartment, eats, sleeps and works at the same time, and files an application to have sex with a citizen (Number) of choice. Freedom is an unwanted concept that leads to unhappiness.

Every morning, with six-wheeled precision, we wake up, millions of us at once. At the very same hour, millions like one, we begin our work, and millions like one, we finish it. United into a single body with a million hands, at the very same second we carry the spoons to our mouths, at the same second we go out to walk, go to the auditorium, to the hall for the exercises, and then to bed.

Not as Utopian as it might have seem almost 100 years ago, We was an inspiration for Orwell’s 1984.

No comments:

Post a Comment