Brave New Bliss

Am I ridiculously shallow or something?  Whenever I read a book that depicts what is meant to be an ironically utopian future, one where everyone is happy, I fail to grasp the irony.  Books like “Brave New World” and my most recent read “Uglies” or even a more familiar piece of art to most of you, “The Matrix” trilogy, simply fail to make me believe the overriding morality that the author seems to be making, which is that even if there are no discernable drawbacks, it’s bad to use artificial means to ensure the happiness of the masses.

In “Brave New World”, briefly, everyone is bred into classes.  Reproduction is accomplished in labs and chemicals are introduced that will determine if you’re an Alpha (the highest most beautiful class with the most privileges, who are encouraged to have fun, buy lots of toys and have insane amounts of sex with as many people as possible) on down through the Epsilons (who are the squat ugly “worker bees” of the future).  At the outset that sounds sick.  Great for the Alphas, but what a horrible existence for the Epsilons.  But here’s the thing: EVERYONE is happy.  Their brains are designed to automatically accept and ENJOY their station in life.  And whenever somebody does manage to get depressed in a life that is biologically designed to feel perfect, there’s always “soma” a relatively harmless drug that puts you into a blissful little coma until you’re ready to be happy again.

In “Uglies” when you turn sixteen you undergo an operation that makes you the absolute pinnacle of physical perfection.  It makes you “Pretty.”  But not just pretty.  (SPOILER ALERT.  SKIP THE NEXT SENTENCE IF YOU DON’T WANT A MINOR PLOT POINT REVEALED)  The operation also puts a lesion on your brain designed to stop all jealousy and anger and capacity to rebel against authority.  You are sublimely happy, spending your days and nights partying and having fun with other Pretties.  There’s no war.  No unhappiness.  Why should there be?  Everyone has plenty to eat and every day is as fun as the one before.

And of course you know “The Matrix”.  While it’s not a utopian world by any stretch, the world you “wake up” to when Morpheus gives you the red pill is worse than any drug trip gone bad.  You live in a dark, cold cave, constantly at war with sentient machines, the mere sight of which would drive any normal person insane.  Yet it’s considered a victory whenever they can pull somebody out of their comparatively blissful digitally created dream state.

WHY?

What is supposed to be so bad about any of these circumstances?  Now, mind you, “Fahrenheit 451” explored a similar theme where the entire world is kept in line by a neverending series of toys, TV shows and mindless entertainment.  But in THAT utopia, all that happiness was merely used to distract the public from an impending nuclear war.  So in THAT reality, yes, the happiness was all a farce designed to keep the public in line to their ultimate destruction.  But in “Brave New World”, “Uglies” and “The Matrix” there was zero downside to all this happiness.  Sure it was artificial, but so what?  If you’re happy (ignorantly but sincerely happy) and this happiness doesn’t actually pose a danger to you or cause the suffering of others… why are we supposed to think that’s a bad thing?  Frankly the more I read stories like these, the more I wish we had those capabilities in this world.  Yet each of these stories seems to indicate that happiness is actually a prison and that every person should have “the freedom to be miserable.”  Nobody wants to say it, but the real hero of the Matrix films was Joe Pantaliano who, after making a deal to be plugged back into the system, say, “Ignorance is bliss.”

I suppose this whole mentality goes hand-in-hand with other aspects of the way my brain works.  You all know I lost my faith in God about two years ago now.  It wasn’t a willful decision, or even REALLY a decision.  It was simply a matter of not being able to believe what I now understand to be a happy and comforting but wholly artificial fairy tale.  And yet I’d be lying if I said this “freedom” of thinking has actually made me a happier person.  In fact for a solid year after my initial realization it made me a downright miserable sonofabitch.  I honestly went through those five famous stages of grief with a very long and punctuated ANGER phase.  Man was I angry.  Angry at God, which was pointless because He wasn’t even there to be angry at.  So that meant I was angry at anyone who came from that same faith I’d just left.  It was irrational, I know.  But goddamn it I was angry and the one person I wanted to yell at wasn’t even real.

I still go to church.  For my wife.  For the kids.  And as I look at the people around me, people singing with their hands flung in the air, lost in the rapture of devotion and worship, you’d think my knee-jerk reaction would be to scoff at and make fun of them.  But I don’t.  Well sometimes I do.  But mostly I envy them.  I KNOW they are wrong.**  I KNOW there’s nobody really listening to their praises and supplications.  I KNOW they are trusting their faith and future to the metaphysical equivalent of Santa Claus and unicorns.  And yet I wish I were like them.  I wish I could take such deep comfort in something so clearly artificial.  I wish I could find that pure “Brave New World” happiness.  So what if it’s not real?  It’s real to them.  Like genuinely real.  As far as their senses are concerned it’s as real as the heat of the sun is to me.  And if it truly makes them happy, and isn’t actually hurting them or anyone else, who on earth wouldn’t want that? (Yes, I know there is a whole discussion involving Prop 8 and denial of other people’s rights and happiness brought on by religion that we could get into, but lets leave that for another time)

Is artificial happiness (whatever that means) really a prison? Is the freedom to be miserable really such a noble virtue?  As far as I’m concerned this life is all we have, so why spend it whiling away in misery just because it’s more “free” and “natural”?  If faith in an imaginary friend makes someone happy, great.  If some future society develops an alternate reality machine that allows you to spend all your days in perfect bliss, yet somehow still allows productivity and the human race to go on and endure, how awesome would that be?  And if you can safely become drop dead gorgeous and enjoy every shallow pleasure in sublime happiness without ever needing to think deeply, and this didn’t lead to yours or somebody else’s harm, holy crap, sign me the hell up!

Anyone else with me?

** This isn’t intended to ignite an argument over whether God does or does not exist.  For anyone who has religious faith, just understand that I “know” God is fake in the same way that you “know” He is real.  In my head, my certainty is equally as certain as your certainty is in yours.  I mean and insinuate nothing more or less than that.