Monday, July 23, 2012
Pursuit of Happiness
During the duration of the novel Brave New World we see many of the various characters dosing themselves with tablets of a drug called soma. It seems to stimulate the mood if a person and make them much more happy. They are also kept away from the negativities and flaws from the outside world. Is it moral to keep all individuals happy 24/7 through means of drugs and no clear knowledge of the flaws of the real world? It is said that soma shortens an individual's lifespan, but lengthen your eternal bliss and happiness out of time. I think it's obviously not in our power to control other individuals and their emotions. As well as, keeping knowledge of the real world away from others. Once a person finds out knowledge of the real world they would not know how to react to it. When this occurs, others will hear about and then chaos will eventually erupt in society, and society will eventually come to it's end.
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ReplyDeleteIs it moral to decide the destiny of a person before they develop a brain? Ford's society is exactly the perfect example of morality. They manipulate people in order to make them easier to work with. The main goal in developing such a world was to end conflict. The best way is to answer this question: Why do people fight?
ReplyDeletePeople clash because they are defending something they strongly believe in, or rejecting something they strongly disbelieve in. There's a quote that says, "Your thoughts become your words, your words become your actions, your actions become your character, and your character is everything." Emotion drives people to do hideous things. To get rid of the hideousness, you must get rid of hideous emotion. That is where the somas come in.
To directly answer your question, I find it to be extremely immoral to use somas to drown out the realities of the world and escape.
One of the main questions that dawned on me while reading the book at first was if the society was trying to replicate a utopia. One of the main reasons that I thought a utopia could not happen beforehand was because you would never be able to make everyone happy. When I found out about the pill soma, that completely changed my thoughts on a utopia actually existing. Although the soma does have the effect of shortening your life span, I believe that being constantly happy would make it not matter. Being happy all the time would take away the negative emotions including hatred, fear, and sadness. When it does come time for you to go, no fear would come across your mind only happy thoughts on how you lived your life. Although all the emotions we take in as human beings do shape us as an individual, I believe that happiness is hard to come by.
ReplyDeleteYou see your diving into two different things, the issue of individual drug inducement, and the inducing of a society.If individuals where in a drug induced happiness, they wouldn't be concerned with the "outside world". They would be in their own world, enjoying the bliss that comes from being unaware. For the others it's just a matter of dividing up the world from those who choose to be drug induced and who choose not to be. Then there would be no chaos because there would be organization, and understanding of the situation. In Brave new world not everyone is drug induced though, many just take the drug to avoid feeling anger or sadness, this doesn't effect the order of things, but creates stability in my opinion. There are certain times to be drug induced and certain times to be sober, and in this Brave new world they have found the balance to be perfectly, mechanically, and incredibly happy all the bloody time.
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