Happiness in Brave New World :: Brave New World Essays

Happiness in Brave New World     Huxley implies that by abolishing nastiness and mental pain, the brave new worlders have got rid of the most complicated and sublime experiences that life can offer as well. Most notably, they have sacrificed a mysterious deeper happiness which is implied, but not stated, to be pharmacologically ungetatable to the utopians. The metaphysical basis of this presumption is obscure.   There are hints, too, that some of the utopians may know an ill-defined sense of dissatisfaction, an intermittent sense that their lives are meaningless. It is implied, further, that if we are to get wind true fulfilment and meaning in our own lives, then we must be able to contrast the good parts of life with the bad parts, to feel both joy and despair. As rationalisations go, its a good one.   simply its still wrong-headed. If pressed, we must concede that the victims of chronic depression or pain today dont call for interludes of happine ss or anaesthesia to know they are suffering horribly. Moreover, if the mere relativity of pain and pleasure were true, then one might imagine that pseudo-memories in the form of neurochemical artefacts imbued with the texture of pastness would do the job of contrast just as well as raw nastiness. The neurochemical signatures of deja vu and jamais vu provide us with clues on how the re-engineering could be done. But this sort of stratagem isnt on Huxleys agenda. The clear implication of Brave New World is that any kind of drug-delivered happiness is false or inauthentic. In convertible fashion, all forms of human genetic engineering and overt behavioural conditioning are to be tarred with the same brush. Conversely, the natural happiness of the handsome, blond-haired, blue-eyed Savage on the Reservation is portrayed as more real and authentic, albeit transient and sometimes interspersed with sorrow.   The contrast between true and false happiness, however, is itsel f problematic. Even if the notion is both manifest and potentially referential, its not clear that natural, selfish-DNA-sculpted minds offer a more authentic consciousness than precision-engineered euphoria. Highly selective and site-specific designer drugs and, ultimately, genetic engineering wont make things calculate weird or alien. On the contrary, they can deliver a greater sense of realism, verisimilitude and emotional depth to raw states of biochemical bliss than todays parochial humor of Real Life.