I recently finished "Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley. This book seems to be the last on everyone's list to read so I'll try not to say too much. I had a hard time getting into this book at first but near the end it started to make me think. In this perfect world people only have one emotion: happiness. Everyone always says they just want to be happy but emotions are what makes us human. One character explained that "In a properly organized society like ours, nobody has any opportunities for being noble or heroic. Conditions have got to be thoroughly unstable before the occasion can arise... But there aren't any wars nowadays. The greatest care is taken to prevent you from loving anyone too much." (213) I can only think of how boring it would be to live in such a perfect world. No sadness or anger. No love or passion. Nothing but happy, empty shells.
Many questions come to my mind after reading this. What will our world look like in the future? How messed up will it be or what sacrifices will we make in order to achieve a "perfect society"? Our world is constantly changing so what's next? When will we know where to draw the line?
I totally agree with you Halla that emotions are what makes us human. I know everyone strives to reach that state of happiness in their life but they have to acknowledge the obstacles of sadness and disappointments as well because that is what shapes us as a person. In Huxley's novel nobody has ever experienced any emotion other than happiness. However, they have never experienced what it is like to fail or lose someone they love. That's when I came to a conclusion that if a person doesn't have emotions, then they aren't living. It's normal to experience grief and disappointment because we can learn from these events. And how we recover from them defines us as an individual.
ReplyDeleteI support both of these statements, I would just like to add that emotions are neither good or bad, it depends on how they are used. In Brave New World, they experience unpleasant emotions, particularly Bernard Marx, but through their sleep-conditioning they do not deal with these unpleasant situations and take soma instead of solving, or fixing problems. Granted, the characters do not experience as many emotions as ourselves do, but they do experience different emotions other than happiness. All in all, the predominant emotion is happiness for these people.
DeleteI guess I did forget to mention that so thank you for bringing it up Randall. Like you said, they did deal with other unpleasant emotions but never dealt with them, which is what bothered me. Their goal was to only achieve happiness so they took soma to do so. If anyone expressed any other emotion they were seen as crazy or I'll and extremely judged for it.
ReplyDeleteI agree a society with nothing but happiness is not exciting, there are no risks, struggle or pain. Everything is given to you from the start to make you happy and if you are not happy they give you drugs to feel happy, it's messed up because arguably the best part of life is enjoying the happy moments after suffering the struggle to achieve them, it gives the happy moments more value and more happiness.
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