The Definition Of Happiness In Huxley's Brave New World

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For thousands of years, man has been contemplating how to obtain true happiness. The
Dalai Lama once said, “Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions” ( Dalai Lama). A key word in this quote is “own”. This word implies that happiness is something that comes from within and cannot be forced on an individual by others. Another key component of happiness is being given the agency to choose one’s course through free will. No power should have the right to take away a person’s right to pursue happiness. That being said, there are moral boundaries only in which true happiness can be found. These boundaries include selfless love, service, and fidelity. Another important aspect of happiness is being able to overcome adversity
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In this novel, society defines happiness as not having a say in how one’s life is going to turn out because the government claims to know what is best, and in having temporary relationships that bring instant pleasure, but that don’t involve love, sacrifice, or service. The government also tries to teach that sorrow should never be experienced and instead tries to give a false sense of happiness by means of a chemical answer in the form of the drug Soma. Each of these false suggestions from Brave
New World can be refuted, thus showing that true happiness is a do­it­yourself project.
In Brave New World, society believes that happiness can be obtained through total stability. While it is possible some stability can lead to happiness, the “stability” to which they refer in the story is a false stability, one that is fabricated by those who claim to know what is best for everyone. A person should have the right to choose his or her course of action and should not be forced into a certain way of living by the government or any higher power.
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In the society of Brave New World, marriage and fidelity are foreign concepts, yet
Bernard begins to realize that true love and happiness come to those who value each other for who they are and not based solely on sexual impulses. Another reason why relationships in this society do not produce true happiness is because relationships and life in general are completely self­centered. In the society of Brave New World, people don’t help other people. They are conditioned to work for themselves, eliminate sorrow for themselves, and use others for self satisfaction. In the documentary Happy, it says that some of the happiest people in life are those that devote their time and energy to helping others and trying to make other people feel genuinely happy. True and happy relationships are those founded on genuine love, sacrifice, and service to one another and none of these elements are found in Brave New World.
One of the final reasons why true happiness can’t be felt in the society of Brave New
World is because in order to keep everyone “happy”, all sorrow is strictly prohibited. This concept is a complete oxymoron, because just as the yin exists to prove the yang, one

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