Brave
New World - Lk B Englisch 13,1 Test No. 2 30/11/92
Task:
Comment:
Creating
happiness through community/stability/identity is the alleged aim of
BNW. Would the Brave New Worlders´ notion of happiness
correspond to your own?
In
my opinion this artificial happiness cannot be the aim of human
civilisation, nor can it really be called happiness. Like anything in
this "Brave New World" it is only a chemical substitute.
Life
in all of its aspects is controlled by soma, the Drug that keeps
people happy.
Because
this drug has no bad physical consequences (or almost none, because
Linda showed quite drastically what happens if you take too much of
it) it would seem to many people to be an alternative to their boring
life. But for me drugs never are an alternative, because even if they
don’t harm physically, they harm mentally by taking away the
possibility of free thought, which is not acceptable.
There
also is not enough freedom in BNW, even if the inhabitants think it
to be free, because mankind is divided into castes, which is sheer
racism, and because anybody who does not behave like he is expected
to is exiled, including those who try to think freely and also dare
to say what they think.
Furthermore
life would be quite boring in this “perfect” society
because life is reduced to four aspects: work, sex, sports and soma.
I don’t consider it possible to lead a satisfying life in this
society, where anybody is happy, where nothing changes and nothing
ever happens.
Another
important point is the total absence of Love in this society. Love is
reduced to sex and some chemical passion substitutes. But there is no
substitute for real romantic emotions, and there simply can’t
be one, because these emotions differ from person to person. This is
the reason why love is banned in this society: because it makes
individuals out of people, which of course cannot be tolerated
because individualism endangers any totalitarian government. But Love
could not be abolished completely (like in 1984) and therefore sex
has taken over its part. But real love is not only sex. It
also is the challenging task to start and keep a close relationship
to the partner in all spheres of life and in all situations from
everyday matters to life-and-death decisions. It is this challenging
task that makes life worth living.
Last
but not least I want to mention that not happiness is the aim of the
BNW, but to keep up the status quo, that is the state of dictatorship
on a global scale. The main device of securing the dictatorship is by
taking from mankind the possibility of thinking freely about their
situation, which is achieved by conditioning, soma and deportation of
those who are still able to think.
To
me the purpose of life in this kind of society would not be the
pursuit of happiness, but to fulfil one’s ethical duty to
restore human freedom at all costs.
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