Free Essay Brave New World:Total Happiness Compenstation for Repression

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�The promise of total happiness is a more than adequate compensation for the repression of the New World.�

To what extent do you agree with the statement.

�In order to have great happiness, you have to have great pain and unhappiness-otherwise how would you know when you're happy?� (Joseph Addison)

Aldous Huxley�s satirical novel Brave New World presents a government-controlled society that places restraints upon its citizens, resulting in a loss of social and mental freedom. These methods of limiting human behaviour are accomplished by social conditioning, the categorical division of society, and the censorship of art and religion. This dictatorial government suppresses difference and individuality, breeding a type of conformity, which is death in life rather than living. The inhabitants of this society avoid facing truth at all costs through the use of hallucinogenic drug �soma�. The consequence of this is a nation of deliriously happy individuals with no point to living.
The authoritarian government referred to as the �World State� use the motto of �Community, Identity, Stability� to create a society able to achieve solidarity and stability in the removal of individuality in citizens. Huxley creates criteria that must be met for the stability of the society to remain constant: the ostracism of art, science and religion. These cultural pursuits lead to emotional, physical and spiritual unrest potentially causing a threat to society. At the time of Huxley�s writing a powerful movement towards a welfare state was feared causing social instability. This fear in the possibility of radical change is mirrored in �Brave New World�. As quoted by Oscar Wilde "Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known.� Individualism is restricted in the Brave New World as �everyone works for everyone else�. The elimination of literature and censorship of all cultural pursuits is relied upon to attain stability. Without any pain and suffering in the New World, Art is not an issue, �You�ve got to choose between happiness and what people used to call high art. We�ve sacrificed the high art.� In removing these cultures the possibility of knowledge of history is removed, �History is more or less bunk�. Without these ideas, there is no knowledge of an alternative life eliminating an uprising.
The removal of religion eradicates the problem with death and an afterlife, God �manifests himself as an absence; as though he weren�t there at all�. By not allowing the ability to believe in a greater being removes the ability to dream and believe, �God isn't compatible with machinery and scientific medicine, and universal happiness.� In the New World there is no place for God, people turn to God because he is something that will never play them wrong; religion will compensate men for all their losses. However, In the utopian world created there are never any disappointments.
The control of science is essential to the success of the New World. Despite being integral only orthodox science is acceptable. The research and questioning of this implemented science is prohibited in case one was to find out a conclusion. These when published could potentially cause change, endangering the community foundation motto, �Truth is a menace, science is a danger�. Science has created stability, but also can be destructive. The Controllers limit the investigations that are undergone �Every discovery in pure science is subversive�. Scientific knowledge was the world�s truth, so scientific research was unlimited. This reflects the society in which Huxley was writing �Brave New World�. Writing in a period of time when the cultivation of small mammal embryos �in vitro� was a revolution to science, science was predicted as changing the face of the world. This changed with the Fordian era, because, as science develops and brings newer truth with each discovery, it contests stability. Unorthodox science was made illegal. One has to pay the price for happiness, so truth and discovery were suppressed.
In expelling these cultural pursuits, the World State is abolishing the chance of happiness in comparison to the lives of others. The result of this is a nation blissfully unaware of the choices available in other societies. The stable world of a government controlled society appears to be a utopia. Everyone is happy and lives in harmony, but the happiness the inhabitants receive is superficial. Without the ability to know alternative methods of living, the inhabitants can not be truly happy. They cannot compare their own lives to others and feel satisfaction.
In �Brave New World� the society created is imperfect in its ability to create a world of equality. Thomas Jefferson�s belief of �All men are created equal� coupled with Aristotle�s proposition �Equality consists in the same treatment of similar persons� shows the imbalance of the social classes created in �Brave New World�. This reflects the society Huxley was living in at the time of writing the novel in which classes were dependent on wealth. Constituents of the New World are bred into different social classes (Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta and Epsilon) depending on the predicted needs for workers in each division. Each of these divisions relates to a standard of intelligence. Humanity does not have a choice of which class to follow as from birth they are taught to their own level of selected intelligence. Through the use of hypnopedia they are taught to accept and prefer only their class, �All conditioning aims at that: making people like their inescapable social destiny.� In introducing these social classes they are removing a type of happiness. Abolishing the possibility of �total� happiness. By being unable to strive to achieve a higher place within the hierarchy removes the prospect of happiness in achievement. By having the ability to better ourselves one can complete goals and get a type of happiness only available by personal goal attainment. This sense of pride is lost in the Brave New World.
In creating a hierarchical society akin to our own society a level of prejudice is introduced. The social caste system, along with the conditioning of the citizens, creates prejudice among those who represent difference. Bernard Marx has a physical deficiency being �eight centimetres short of the standard Alpha height� and is often neglected for his deformed figure. Self-denial is condemned as being bad for economy. This ability to feel discriminated in a world which boosts total happiness shows that the world is flawed. The New World has the ability to create unhappiness in the malfunction of science �they say they made a mistake when he was still in the bottle�. The repression of the New World often causes unhappiness, which is not alleviated by artificial methods of happiness such as soma.
In our society �Religion is the opium of the masses� (Marx). In the New World soma is used to avoid facing human truths, �Christianity without tears�. The use of soma is primarily to cloud the realities of the present, �a gramme is always better than a damn�, and replace them with happy hallucinations, �soma played no unpleasant tricks�, and is used as a tool by the government to promote social stability, �everybody�s happy nowadays�. The human truths of love, friendship and personal human interaction are removed as they could potentially cause resentment and unhappiness between people. As a result, the happiness available in the New World is only artificial as it is only one level. There is not the possibility to be deliriously happy or pleasantly happy. Different amounts of soma control the length of the hallucination rather than the intensity of the happiness.
Huxley�s overall message of the book is to show the danger that �you could dominate people by social, educational and pharmaceutical method�s (Brave New World Revisited). The most effective way this is implemented is through Neo-Pavlovian process and hypnopaedia.

�Books and loud noises, flowers and electric shocks-already in the infant mind these couples were compromisingly liked; and after two hundred repetitions of the same or a similar lesson would be wedded indissoluble. What man has joined, nature is powerless to put asunder�

The conditioning of the children forms a barrier in their minds so that they are unable to make decisions for themselves but are always bounded by the instructions of the World State. Phrases are repeated thousands of times throughout childhood �till at last the child�s mind is these suggestions, the mind that judges and desires and decides��The psychological conditioning limits the mental freedom of the citizens so that they are never at liberty to decide what they want for themselves. As a result of this limit of mental freedom the emotions they feel are only those executed to them by the World State.
Within the New World sexual relations are encouraged. In particular the young are encouraged to pursue these interactions to discourage any sense of love. With sexual relations from infancy, the citizens can never appreciate the act of love and the emotions that parallel it. In this utopia, what would be considered as normal sexual relations would be regarded as neurotic passions and the establishment of family life. Both of these would interfere with the community and stability, there is �No social stability without individual stability �As a result of this the family unit is abolished.
The result of the New World is a nation of content, happy individuals who see the purpose of living as maintenance of well being, not as �some
intensification and refining of consciousness, some enlargement of
knowledge�. However, these individuals in the New World are missing a main element in their humanisation. The main component of what makes a person human and unique are the emotions that inhabit their minds, which they alone can control. The individuals in Brave New World have no focus or point to existence. Their everyday lives have no substance as very few are completing goals that could not be managed by science or those higher in the hierarchy. The character of John the Savage is able to accept and understand this lack of emotions as a result of his reading of Shakespeare and his time within the reservation. He alludes to the emotion he felt during the only time he was happy after completing a project with his own hands. The savage was able to understand his own self worth rather than being part of a collective. The repression felt in the New World is not worth the artificial happiness given, as there is no point to existence.
The happiness shown in the New World is not �total� happiness as a result of its lack of being �true� happiness. The happiness is only given in doses all of the same mediated strength and does not have different emotions integrated such as pride and ambition. The Controllers accept the happiness is artificial �Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the over-compensations for misery� and as a result creates happiness that does not occur out of anguish. The result of this happiness is the ability not to be able to appreciate happiness. One cannot tell that one is happy, as one cannot feel any other emotions. In the New World happiness is given in the form of an escape in soma rather than an emotion felt. As the individuals in the Brave New World are not in possession of a soul able to aid them in making decisions for themselves, they are not able to understand the basis of happiness.
Huxley�s message throughout �Brave New World� is that true happiness cannot occur in a world where one does not have the freedom to make choices. The character of Bernard shows how although he has been educated to accept servitude, he understands the true happiness in freedom the savage can feel. He envies his possession of �true happiness� gained out of being able to accept freedom, �I�m claiming the right to be unhappy�. True happiness is gained out of the ability to understand unhappiness, feel pains of every kind� and �live in constant apprehension of what may happen tomorrow�. The price for Utopia is freedom and with that comes �true� happiness.