The truth about goodbye

Sometimes, I don't really understand goodbyes. They always feel awkward and like things are unresolved for some reason. Maybe its because you don't notice someone or something is gone until you can't see them again anymore. I guess its just hard for anyone to believe beforehand that something or someone who was present almost everyday in your life will just go away.

Anyway, the reason I think goodbyes are awkward sometimes is because it's difficult for me to really be genuine about it all. I mean even though I know someone is leaving and I might not see them again its just hard to me accept or try to emulate how I'm going to feel once I realize they are really gone. It's very different I guess knowing something is true and experiencing it on your own.

Brave New World

"Happiness is never grand" 
 - Brave New World

I want to apologize to all you anonymous readers out there (if you even exist) for not blogging in a while. It wasn't that I had much going on in my life, I probably had quite a bit of free time. I've been trying to remedy this lately and make my days more meaningful by filling them with such things as gaming, hopefully doing some organic chem and finishing several books. I worry about having these meaningless days that I won't even remember, sometimes. Either way, I'd like to really apologize to myself. I was re-reading my older blogs at work yesterday and they gave me the motivation I needed to get out of this non-blogging rut. Of course, this post is supposed to be about a book. I'll ramble on about memories and the past later.

A few weeks ago I finished reading the classic novel Brave New World by Huxley. Coincidentally, Huxley (the author) is also the half brother of the Huxley who won the Nobel Prize in Physiological for coming up with mathematical models that dictate how action potentials travel down neurons. Pretty cool piece of trivia, I thought.

At first I was expecting Brave New World to be similar to the classic 1984 by Orwell. I was wrong on most accounts. While they are definitely about a future setting, they share little in common. Overall, I found Brave New World felt more like a scientific/philosophy paper that didn't really devote enough time to the story or development of the plot. You didn't really feel anything for the characters and it was basically like the story was only a mechanism for Huxley to express his ideas about a future society. Which, in retrospect, it probably is.

So, I'm going to try and not talk about the actual plot of Brave New World too much, since I didn't think there was anything that interesting there. But I would like to discuss the ideas. Brave New World portrays a society where people are controlled by "happiness" rather than fear as in 1984. People are divided into classes at birth with Alphas being the highest (the intellectual thinkers) and Epsilons being the lowest (factory workers). Other classes include Beta and Gammas whose intellectual abilities are determined, as you might've guessed, by their position in the Greek Alphabet. The society of BNW aims to make people happy in two ways. For one, they eliminate the feeling of closeness or intimacy between individuals. There is no such thing as a family, or significant other. As a mantra in the book goes "Everyone belongs to everyone else". Thus, people can have sex with whomever they like and as many people as they like. The book implies that people usually date for maybe a week or a bit more and then move onto someone else. Without such a feeling of intimacy between individuals it greatly reduces the probability that one will feel grief or pain upon seeing another person leave.


The second way people are made is through a new drug called Soma. Soma is basically like getting high without any of the negative side-effects. It's used to make one fall into a sleep (sometimes) where they are happy. However, it is shown that taking TOO much Soma will kill you. Of course, this threshold is far beyond what the average citizen takes. Soma also offers a release from physical pain, thus eliminating another way of feeling sad. The other interesting aspects of their society is that conditioning of very young children make everyone happy with their social class. Also, aging does not occur for the citizens at BNW. Everyone is young forever, until 60 where they are automatically killed. Also, the book implies that there is very little scientific research or updates that will ever be made to the society as it seems pretty stable as it is now.

It's pretty obvious to see that BNW tries to blur the line between dystopia and utopia. Whereas the denizens of a 1984-esque society are constantly impoverished, underfed and have poor living conditions, people in a BNW kind of society are, essentially, content with their lives. But this contentment only stems from the stability that they have. Is content through stability enough? Or is this society actually more of a nightmare due to the fact that everyone is TOO stable? Throughout the course of the novel, this is realized by some of the Alpha Plus citizens (the most intellectual thinkers). Many of them are not happy with their lives even though they realize they are free from at least emotional or physical pain. They want a type of intimacy with others or something more than what society can give them now. In a way, is this selfish? Can society never fill the void of not having an intimate relationship with another? What about religion? Drugs?

But the society of BNW is interesting because, to me, it shows that people can be happy without experiencing sadness or pain. For a long time, I use to think that happiness could only be achieved through experiencing rough times in your life as well. But, I feel now that happiness can come from stability. However, for a person who is truly a thinker, this kind of happiness through stability will never be enough. There needs to be something more. Maybe its some selfish intimate relationship you have with another that no one else does, or maybe it's some other passion for science/nature/people.

But this brings me to the question of Soma. What about drugs? Do we underestimate their ability to make us happy? I've been reading a lot of neuroscience lately and, at the end of the day, all the feelings, emotions, and thoughts we have are just a product of electrical connections in our brain. Well, along with neurotransmitters. What if people had access to a drug which simply made them feel happy all the time? What need then, for even living a life as we see today? Of course, I doubt this will ever happen. But it's curious to think what if drugs were to evolve and become more like Soma and have less detrimental side effects. Of course, its described in the novel that Soma only brings about a "shallow happiness". It's a comforting thought to think that there is still something special about attaining happiness through our life and in our own unique way. It's always a nice feeling to think that we are unique and we live our lives in a unique way. But are we? Are we bold enough to say that the way we find happiness is so special that it can't be replicated in any other way? I wish this were the case, sometimes but maybe it's just as easy as tweaking some synapses in your brain.

I think I'll end off this discussion by saying that stability is a very useless thing in the long term. While it can bring about a shallow kind of happiness, I don't feel like it makes life worth living as much as change does. I'm not talking about a radical change everyday. But I just don't see the point in wanting my life to be stable for as long as I'm alive. It's like the difference between just standing beside a treadmill and running on a treadmill at a constant speed. Sure, in one scenario you're moving faster than the other, but relative to YOURSELF, you aren't changing your speed on the treadmill at all. You might be moving, but nothing is changing. So why does it even matter that you were running the first place?