Freedom And Happiness In Aldous Huxley's Brave New World

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Freedom is one of the pillars on which modern society is built upon. Our society, though filled with sadness, contains a truer pleasure and quoting Walter Wangerin Junior, “The difference between shallow happiness and a deep, sustaining joy is sorrow”. Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World describes a society deprived of its freedom in order to pursue a shallow happiness. Huxley’s representation of the future shows a conditioned consumerist ideology forced upon their denizens. This ideology gives direction to people’s actions, by forcing them to pursue monetary gain; however, by being conditioned to believe this, citizens lose free will in the pursuit of a false joy. Brave New World showcases forced dependence of recreational drugs. Other than being …show more content…

After the arrest of John the Savage, Helmholtz Watson and Bernard Marx, John questions Mustapha Mond regarding the values of society and prompts Mustapha to reply, “Our Ford himself did a great deal to shift the emphasis from the truth and beauty to comfort and happiness. Mass production demanded the shift. Universal happiness keeps the wheels steadily turning; truth and beauty can’t” (Huxley 201). Mond comments that society cannot be happy with the truth and that universal happiness is the key to economic stability, and thus likely to lead to the eventual conditioning of the consumerist ideology. However, in controlling the shallow happiness Brave New World citizens have, they have also sacrificed their freedom and sorrow. After dictating that happiness and truth are incompatible, Mond goes to say that people want to be controlled, “People were ready to have even have their appetites controlled for them. Anything for a quiet life. We’ve gone controlling ever since” (Huxley 201). Huxley’s dystopian society has willingly sacrificed their own freedom in order to achieve a shallow happiness. Humanity can also be describe as the ability to make conscious decisions, and by giving up control, people in Brave New World have essentially given up their humanity. In relation to the quote mentioned in the introduction, these people …show more content…

Forced economic stability causes the social body to loses control over their individual lives and will only feel shallow happiness. The abuse of recreational drugs also provide shallow happiness; but, its conditioned use and negative addictive after-effects act as a form of control in itself. Lastly, the caste system was built in order for individuals to feel contented with the role they would fulfill however cheapens life by setting everything out for you. Aldous Huxley, through these elements, cautions against universal happiness and control as they don’t, in fact, cause people to be

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