Essay about Brave New World: Is Truth More Essential than Happiness?

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Brave New World

Aldous Huxley’s book, “Brave New World”, contains questionable subject matter, yet it also poses some very interesting questions. Possibly the most crucial question posed is, “Is truth more essential than happiness?” Well, this is quite an interesting philosophy, considering you would expect most people to pick the truth. Well, that is not the case whatsoever. In reality, well over half of general society easily picks happiness over the truth. Now that poses another interesting question, “Why would people not be happy with the truth, and rather accept blind happiness over the truth?” And the answer lies in the general human psyche that happiness is the solution to all their problems. Those of us who have a higher ability to discern what is essential and how to actually use our brains properly would most likely indicate that seeking truth, instead of superficial happiness, will lead us to being happy with a true reasoning behind it. But in a superficial society such the one in Brave New World, they place little to no value on genuine connections and conclusions due to the reality that all they could ever perceive to want and need is already there. As there is a saying, “If one were to live in a prison all their life, and then leave their prison, they would wish to recede back to their cell as it is safe.” Thus forth, indicating that the weak of mind are trapped by their own designs. I know this is supposed to be primarily about the book, but I see the opportunity to go beyond the book and actually apply this question to modern western society, and I will do so, with your approval or not. I will include the book as the premise, but I will go on quite extensively.
Within the book, the authoritarian liberal society is kept, inflexible machine. Designed to be perfect, yet is built upon the principle of neo-fascism. This is quite illustrated throughout the book in several places, some of the topics quite nauseating. And this society is so geo-politically widespread in culture and philosophy, that even far outside of it, people still conform to its ideologies. The society’s ideologies are of the crude and uncivilized kind: the rampant sexuality, the self-drugging, the glorification of self-satisfaction, removal of human emotion from the equation, the genetic subordination of human youth with indoctrination and servitude, and the thought that this society is actually the dream society of many liberals. The following quote exemplifies the fact that the society is built around lies and is inherently empty and unstable in the progression of human kind, "’And that,’ put in the Director sententiously, ‘that is the secret of happiness and virtue— liking what you’ve got to do. All conditioning aims at that: making people like their unescapable social destiny.’”(Pg. 16) As shown, this quote shows the power of the government officials, and how much power they have in controlling the affairs of the state and people, all for the primitive emotions of greed and dominance. Now to target the paramount question that has been affecting people for millennia, hence the development of religions and organizations: “Truth or Happiness?”, and this question is relevant, and will most likely still be relevant until the last human stops breathing. Happiness is the state of well-being, of being content. Truth is facts, the actual state of events that occurred. The problem is, most people would rather appease their sense quickly and seek only a superficial purpose to life, as long as they are content and feel no doubt, nor pain. People who tolerate, and embrace, the truth are far greater people as they can stand up for themselves and at the least attempt to adapt to what is necessary. “Till at last the child's mind is these suggestions, and the sum of the suggestions is the child's mind. And not the child's mind only. The adult's mind too-all his life long. The mind that judges and desire and decides-made up of these suggestions. But all
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