Idealism In Brave New World

Modern Idealism USA, since it's foundations, has called itself the land of the free, holding the values of freedom and democracy close to heart. Since everyone in the USA is free, you can work hard to earn a comfortable life, such as a nice car and suburbian house for your family. Then, you can marry a beautiful woman. This model has developed today into a systematic worship of celebrities who are able to reach this dream. Yet this ideal is an illusion that dresses a fallacy, a materialistic consumption society, and a life in isolation. This would make the American Dream nothing more than a superficial ideal. In Aldous Huxley Brave New World, Huxley denounces how society organizes itself in a hierarchy and pretends to be happy, even though

He claims that governments maintain their authority by conditioning the population, teaching the higher classes to feel superior, and conditioning the lower classes to conform with their position. This is evidenced by Henry Foster when he tells Lenina that not even Epsilons (lowest caste possible) even mind being epsilons. “And if you were an Epsilon, your conditioning would have made you no less thankful that you weren’t a Beta or an Alpha (second and first castes respectively)” (75). This hierarchy is designed to measure the worth or importance based on the caste and identifies the caste someone belongs to by their body mass. Bernard is a character who is self-aware of this circumstance, thinking “Gammas, Deltas, and Epsilons had been to some extent conditioned to associate corporeal mass with social superiority” (75). Huxley provides a ton of subtle criticism of his contemporary society, like Epsilons wearing black clothes or the only female characters in this book being female. This book was published in the 1930’s, so I wouldn’t be too

Yet Huxley explores an interesting concept in his novel. The problem with society's happiness being bland and simplistic is precisely that happiness itself is bland and simplistic. Happiness would be a simple feeling of satisfaction that can make you feel uplifted. It precisely can be filled with materialistic things like Soma, sex, and socializing. Huxley would be making a distinction between happiness and beauty. Beauty is reached through adversity and conflict, making its overcoming and accomplishment after going through suffering and frustration incredible. That's why beauty is perfect, and that’s why we precisely call it “Beautiful”. This is confirmed by Mustapha Mond when he lets out all of this brave new world’s secret on to John, saying “stability isn’t nearly so spectacular as instability. And being contented has none of the glamour of a good fight against misfortune, none of the picturesqueness of a struggle with temptation, or a fatal overthrow by passion or doubt. Happiness is never grand” (227). There seems to be a good reason why society may prefer happiness over beauty. With beauty there is instability, and with instability the world is unpredictable. You cannot sustain a stable system of which to gain power and maintain order in an unpredictable world. Mustapha Mond explains these when he says “Our Ford himself did a great deal to shift the emphasis from truth and beauty to