Avoiding misery is always going to appeal to the masses.so that’s what I find so interesting about this book, is that it captures that fear of unhappiness and demonstrates an example of the potential consequences of capitalizing on that fear.I need to parse my rating of this book into the good (or great), the bad and the very fugly because I thought aspects of it were inspired genius and parts of it were dreggy, boring and living near the border of awful. So when they finally post about something happy, it seems like huge progress, garners more reactions, and the cycle continues.
And on the other hand are people who are miserable, or appear to be miserable, and post about it constantly, because it garners attention and makes them seem more interesting if it appears they are constantly battling something. People who are truly happy with their lives typically don’t post about it every day on Facebook because they’re too busy living their lives, and they don’t need to prove their happiness to anyone else. The society is “emotionally engineered” for maximum consumer profitability.īut I also liked this quote because, throughout my reading of the book, I kept thinking about how its concepts are relevant today, and I thought about social media of all things.
I took this quote to mean that the society in Brave New World would rather have a population of content, but emotionally dead and unexcited, people, who have never felt a wide range of emotion, instead of a population who has felt struggle and strife and can appreciate happiness more for it. This is stated during a conversation about the sensation-based movies and superficial writings that are produced for the masses, and how John thinks they are quite horrible in comparison with the Shakespeare he read. 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. And, of course, stability isn't nearly so spectacular as instability. Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the over-compensations for misery. This quote stood out to me when I read it:
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