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The society presented in Brave New World differs drastically from that of our own. Real life is not smooth, it has its ups and downs. The tranquil calm of a summer evening owes some of it’s appeal to the contrast between it and the harsh winter winds, both are beautiful in their own way. The joy of reunion is only possible after the sorrow of parting. That’s life, a rich and varied tapestry, which is something the inhabitants of Brave New World sadly don’t have.

Brave New World is a dystopia. The book suggests that the price of such “happiness” is the sacrifice of many things that we hold dear, family, home, freedom, motherhood, and love. It is not a price that I would be willing to pay. I never had the feeling for even a second, that everyone was happy in Brave New World. It seemed more to me to be a lobotomised society, and “happiness” that was not chosen, but was an enforced norm. If a society were created where everyone had to be beautiful, after the last surgery was performed, or the last genetic manipulation completed, would there be any beauty? Is not every value a contrast to another?

In monkeys given free access to cocaine, they will no longer eat, hold, or feed their young, and will take the cocaine until they die. There is a big difference between this and living. Happiness is certainly one goal, but I believe a bigger goal than happiness is fulfilling the expression of each individual’s potential. The kind of happiness that is ubiquitous in Brave New World is merely the “vulgar” kind of pleasure. It comes at the expense of realizing other forms of happiness, eudaemonia and meaning. It is the equivalent of gorging yourself on junk food. Perhaps the junk food is enough to satisfy your hunger, give you the taste equivalent of cheap thrills, and ultimately keep you alive, but what you miss out on are the more sophisticated pleasures of an exquisitely cooked dinner or a subtle and complex wine, as well as the quality kind of nutrients you need for optimal health.

If everyone were happy, or even sad, all the time, wouldn’t there be a kind of social “heat death”? Without differences of affect from person to person, or from time to time, how could any social change at all ever happen? Uniformity of human temperament would lead to stagnation. If universal happiness requires uniformity of humans, then I won’t have it, even if that uniformity can be achieved through peaceful means.

Also, the society presented in Brave New World is extremely materialistic. Brave New World is the ultimate throw-away consumer state, “better to end than mend” is one of their mantras, after all. Therefore, the problem of promoting happiness then simply reduces to reliance on material competence. The feelies do not provide actual happiness, they do not provide “actual” anything, since they are just a virtual experience. A person who goes to the feelies knows they are going to the feelies. It is not reality, although it is a state-prescribed normality. A virtual experience is just that. it is real in one sense, but only in the sense that a picture of an apple is real. The picture is real, but I can’t eat it.
If happiness is the only goal, what would be wrong with killing everyone in the world except one person, if that one person is irrepressibly happy? If you painlessly kill everyone in the world but that one happiest guy, the average happiness increases.

The inhabitants of Brave New World do have negative thoughts and feelings, but they just stuff them back down with soma. Should we just start dishing out heroin then? In the words of the Resident Controller of Western Europe, “No pains have been spared to make your lives emotionally easy, to preserve you, as far as that is possible, from having emotions at all.” This tells us something about how this society came into being, it alludes to a blood-soaked past in which no pain was spared. Those who have no emotions certainly cannot be happy.

In Brave New World, individuals are conditioned to think, act, feel, believe, and respond the way the government wants them to. Youngsters are terrorised with electric shock torture. Is that a price worth paying for happiness, even “true” happiness? I defy anyone to say it is, unless they are prepared to undergo it themselves, and put their own children through it.

In other words, I believe that everyone is not happy in Brave New World. No-one is happy, no-one is really unhappy, that’s the point. John the Savage has a conversation about this topic with Mustapha Mond. John is bemoaning the loss of real human emotions. Mustafa Mond explains to John, “You’re confusing happiness with the over-compensations for misery”, in his defence of the state prescribed and enforced soma dream of happiness. The artificial happiness they experience is nothing more than the ultimate method of social control.

For example, if you need to keep someone imprisoned for a very long time, you either need to have them under constant surveillance or make them so comfortable they won’t attempt to escape. It’s hard to keep an entire population under surveillance and it is not very effective, peasants have a nasty habit of revolting. So, if you want to keep the people in their places, you must make their lives comfortable.

The World Controller and his predecessors have gone even further, they have conditioned the populace to “enjoy” their lives. Remember the words of the hymn, “The rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate.” That’s what this is about, keeping people in their places. It’s why John’s mother speaks of getting pregnant with John, “Imagine it, me, a Beta.” It just isn’t compatible with her station, and she cannot accept it.

Do not mistake Mustafa Mond as the revealer of truth. He is defending a sytem in which he is the supreme ruler. In fact, he himself admits the sterility and joylessness of the Brave New World society, when he talks about Bernard Marx’s reaction to being exiled in Iceland.

“You’d think he was having his throat cut! If he had any sense, he’d appreciate that, far from being punished, he’s being rewarded. He’s going to an island filled with the most interesting people. Anyone worth talking to or with an ounce of independent thought will be there. Everyone who rejects orthodoxy, who has any individuality, is there.”

To suggest that there is no ruling elite in Brave New World is laughable. The Alphas and Betas are a deliberately engineered elite, who occupy all the positions of power and make all the decisions. They rule. To suggest that they are not a ruling elite because they are themselves a part of the system is plain daft. The MP’s in our current society are part of the system and are just as human as you or me, but they’re still a ruling elite. The upper classes perpetuate a system which inflicts deliberate brain damage upon the lowest caste of Brave New World, just to keep them satisfied with drudgery. It is an horrific nightmare of a society.

Therefore, at heart, Brave New World is a state prescribed and enforced dream of happiness, designed to keep people in their places, not for their own good, but for the good of the ruling elite. It also has parallels to keeping people in comfortable slavery, it’s still slavery. Even a velvet cage is still a padded cell. I’d rather be free to pursue happiness, than forced to live out what someone else has decided is happiness, and if that means taking the negative aspects with the positive aspects, so be it. I would rather live in a world where my life is surrounded by mystery, where independant, unfettered thought is not outlawed. Therefore, I would prefer to live in our current world rather than the dystopian society presented by Brave New World.

“Espariato gwambustrio de bundre de kiritashi yomatoizo”

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I think she’d rather we all forget about this video, I’m sure. ^_____^

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That said, I really dislike this girl. She’s a bratty little punk who really let fame go to her head. *ick*

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