The World State society brings happiness to the masses, but not individuals. The children of the World State are conditioned, from birth and beyond, to be happy in the World State and not seek truths. This means the State is ill-equipped to deal with individuals who are not pleased with the mass happiness. These individuals would rather have truth than the facile facade presented to them. There is nothing wrong with the State, as it is meant to keep people happy. It succeeds, but once the system is exposed to an individual, someone cynical and disillusioned enough to look past the veil, the system begins to fail.
Every citizen of the World State is programmed from birth to be a perfect piece, someone who is entirely content in their position
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Once an individual begins seeking truth in the system, it falls apart, and the happiness is uncovered as completely unsubstantial. These people, like Bernard and Hemholtz, are ostracized and mocked due to their strange ways. Society cannot process them, so it chooses to reject them. The society of the World State is not designed to handle individuals who question the happiness they are given.
Once someone tries to find the truth, they are disillusioned with the society. Truth can make one cynical, and remove happiness from their life. In the pursuit of truth, one will find the happiness they once had is harder and harder to achieve. In the World State, few are supposed to care about the truth, and so they are left happy. Inversely, if someone does begin seeking for enlightenment, the society’s happiness can no longer sate them.
The World State’s society is perfect in form, and fully fulfills the roll it’s given. It is formulated to bring happiness to the programmed masses, and it does this superbly. The problem lies in the individuals who attempt to find truth in the system, and become disillusioned. Once someone tries to discover truth, they will no longer accept the vapid entertainment force fed to them, and it throughs society out of balance. The World society does it job, but individuals will poke holes in
Christian Nestell Bovee, a famous epigrammatic New York writer, once said, “No man is happy without a delusion of some kind. Delusions are as necessary to our happiness as realities.” This quote ties in wonderfully with the book Brave New World by Aldous Huxley and the concept of control. In the novel Brave New World, Aldous Huxley captured the true essences of a perfect dystopia. With people living seamless happy lives, and not knowing they are being controlled. How does one control entire nation? The World State does this by hatching, conditioning, and a synthetic drug called soma.
Different societies have risen and fallen in the common search for the “perfect” civilization. In the books 1984 by George Orwell and Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, both authors portray a dystopian society with some troubling similarities. Orwell and Huxley each stress the use of power to control the masses. This influence is always situated with a small group of individuals that uses it to control every aspect of the people’s lives. Using such a method brings to mind a severe totalitarianism of rigid control that terminates individuality. Each society makes use of a caste system. Each caste has certain tasks and rules it must follow. Any sign of individuality is immediately disciplined and the societies are set up so the people will never question the morals or humaneness of their situation. Such concepts have been stopped from common thought so the people in power remain in power. Religion has been eliminated and logical thought have been destroyed. The days are continuously filled with worthless everyday jobs and a wish to be alone is considered a dangerous. In both books the...
The situations that Goodman Brown and Armand face show that the fear and trauma that is experienced in learning the truth can lead to negative consequences and not being able to accept the truth for what it undoubtedly exists to be.
First of all, The World State takes away individuality and forces its people, through conditioning, to conform to the society’s motto of Community, Identity, and Stability. The most effective way the World State conditions its people is through
Imagine a world where everything is controlled by the government. Imagine a world where science, literature, religion, and even family, do not exist. Imagine a world where citizens are conditioned to accept this. This is exactly how the world is portrayed in Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. The focus of the World State is on society as a whole, rather than on individuals.
Although our world is not extreme as the World State, we are closer than we have ever been to Aldous Huxley’s future prediction of the world. In this dystopian novel, people want what they want, but never what they can’t have. They live through meaningless relationships, extreme censorship, and a substantial amount of soma. Writer, Frances Tapon, says, “Psychologists believe that there are seven factors that influence your happiness: wealth, education, personal freedom, equality, health, social position, and positive life events.” The only difference between what makes us happy and what makes them happy is conditioning. In the World State, people are conditioned from the day they are decanted with chemicals, hypnopaedia, and Neo Pavlova. Humans today have always been told “money is power” and “go to college, get a good job, then you will be happy.” Even though we feel emotions, people will do anything to feel happy just like the World State. Brave New World is our world with a surplus of drugs, sex, and people conditioned to think that their life is happy and
The World State also uses controlled groupings of people to brainwash them further into thoughtless people with no sense of individualism. Lastly, the World State uses drugs to create artificial happiness for people, leaving no room for intense emotion which causes people to revolt against the World State. Within the novel Brave New World, it is seen that the World State eliminates individuality through social restrictions, government controlled groupings and the abuse of drugs to maintain control of the population. Social restriction robs individuals of their creative personalities by preventing freedom of thought, behavior, and expression; but is vital to the World State for maintaining complete control over the society. Social restriction’s purpose is to enforce obedience, conformity and compliance out of people.
We, as human beings, tend to think that the truth is what we believe to be true. But the truth is the truth even if no one believes that it is the truth. We also think that the truth brings unpleasantness, and that we hate telling the truth. “The challenge of the sage is to decode the clues and solve the underlying riddle of existence, our own and that of the cosmos.” (The Sage). The relation between this quotation and my life is that, I always want to search for the truth, and telling the truth is another
...ome very valid points. I think he wrote it to help the reader out. He wanted to open the reader's eyes to these issues so they wouldn't be searching for happiness in the wrong places. But, is there a "right" place to look for happiness? This is never clearly answered in the essay but we are left with some helpful insight.
It has been said that ignorance is bliss and if we do not know that something more exists, we do not yearn for it. It has also been said that the door to enlightenment and inner wisdom, once opened, can never be closed again. Many great philosophers and teachers have dealt with the idea of whether it is better to live a life of servitude and submission, or are we to pursue a life of personal happiness and emotional freedom.
In conclusion, in Naguib Mafouz’s Fountain and Tomb, we are faced with a central theme of Truth. It can be reasoned that most of the time the Truth (or knowledge) isn’t always something that it is necessary to know. The Truth can bring about happiness, prosperity, or a positive affect, but that seems to happen much less frequently. Sometimes being ignorant of the Truth is better because it makes lives easier and happier. People don’t necessarily need to know everything (the whole Truth), because what they don’t know can’t really hurt them. Truth comes with excess baggage, and it sometimes leads to conflict, hurt feelings, alienation, or broken hearts. As the old saying goes, “Ignorance is bliss.” Fountain and Tomb does an excellent job of illustrating that cliche.
In this paper I will present and critically assess the concept of the principle of utility as given by John Stuart Mill. In the essay “What Utilitarianism Is” #, Mill presents the theory of Utilitarianism, which he summarizes in his “utility” or “greatest happiness principle” # (Mill 89). Mill’s focus is based on an action’s resulting “happiness,” # pleasure and absences of pain, or “unhappiness,” # discomfort and the nonexistence of contentment, rather than the intentions involved (Mill 89). After evaluating Mill’s principle, I will then end this essay by discussing my personal opinion about the doctrine and how I believe it can be altered to better suit real-life situations.
Cypher seems to suggest that there are times when ignorance is bliss, and one is better off maintaining a positive illusion than facing a hard truth that one is not ready to accept. His statement could also be viewed as rigid close-mindedness, a non-willingness to see reality for what it is; a refusal to consider conflicting ideas based on a desire to maintain one’s beliefs. Generally, The Matrix raises a profound question as to why human beings want to know the truth. This paper will argue why one cannot be justified in choosing the “bliss of ignorance.”
On the contrary, a main reason why we struggle to find happiness is the fact that we are often blinded from its true definition, and convinced to seek it in places where it can’t be found. In today’s society, false pictures of what this concept really means have been painted in our minds by outside sources. One of the major causes of these fabricated characterizations is blamed on the media. When we watch the television and see someone who is well known walking around in a suit with a supermodel next to his side, we jump to the conclusion that he is a happy person. But, that isn’t always the case. Fame and fortune do not automatically guarantee happiness. It is such an intangible subject that it makes it hard for someone to fully grasp its true concept.
For our Economics subject, we watched The Pursuit of Happyness, a movie based on Chris Gardner, a salesman who was not making that much money and eventually experiences homelessness with his five-year old son. He faces problems when his wife is unwilling to accept his goal to become a stockbroker and leaves him. However, he perseveres even under all this stress.