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Thursday, August 21, 2014
True Happiness
Brave New World is about a society who is so technologically advanced they have been able to eliminate emotions, family, religion, and other traditional aspects of life. The World State believes that by eliminating a persons ability to feel pain and sadness they are more happy. I would have to disagree with this statement because how can you know what happiness is if you have never felt the opposite of it, pain and sadness. I think the World State has created a false sense of happiness in society's minds by convincing everyone they are happy and don't want to be anything else. If negative feelings do come onto people, the World State tells them to take a gramme of soma and their problems will go away and they will be "happy" again. I know this sort of sounds like one of our essay questions but I'm interested to know what everyone thinks about this subject. Can you truly be happy without ever feeling pain or sadness? Or is feeling pain and sadness necessary to be truly happy?
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You're right Daria. A person cannot know what happiness is if they've never felt sadness and pain. One cannot exist without the other. How do you know that you're ever really happy if you've never been sad? I believe the World State eliminates these emotions because these emotions cause conflict. Utopian societies are supposed to be conflict free.
ReplyDeleteI skimmed over your post first, then read it thoroughly. I'd have to agree with you, where "how can you know what happiness is if you have never felt the opposite of it, pain and sadness." Just like how Jocelyn said, "One cannot exist without the other." If there weren't any emotions, how would we characterize one if we can't explain the difference from the other? Would it even be considered as an emotion?
ReplyDeleteYou cannot be truly happy without ever feeling pain or sadness, whereas these feelings are necessary to find the truth of ones happiness.
Daria, I agree with your point. I believe that when you don't have something or have never experienced it then you don't have a way of knowing what it feels like. Also it's true, the World State provide their citizens with soma in order to help them forget about unpleasant moments so in reality, people just think they are happy because they don't remember ever being sad.
ReplyDeleteDaria, you are correct. I believe that true happiness can't be achieved without any effort. To gain happiness, people need to go through a struggle to value happiness. If somebody has never felt sadness, they can't value happiness for what it is. If people haven't felt sad, they can't compare their happiness to anything, and they can't know if they've ever felt better. Handing out happiness without any sadness is pointless.
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