The Problem of Happiness...
In my mind at the moment is the following quote from Brave New World, combined with my refreshed memory of temp slavery and the realisation that business news is full of conversations about unhappiness at work, frustration and stress and the medical profession is still pumping the population full of anti-depressants.
"The most important Manhattan Projects of the future will be vast government-sponsored inquiries into what the politicians and the participating scientists will call 'the problem of happiness' - in other words, the problem of making people love their servitude. Without economic security, the love of servitude cannot possibly come into existence; for the sake of brevity, I will assume that the all-powerful executive and its managers will succeed in solving the problem of permanent security. But security tends very quickly to be taken for granted. Its achievement is merely a superficial, external revolution. The love of servitude cannot be established except as the result of a deep, personal revolution in human minds and hearts." [Aldous Huxley]
His 'suggestions'?
1) The development of suggestion, through drugs and conditioning.
2) A science of determining which people should be doing what and in
what part of the social and economic hierarchy.
3) Something 'less harmful' and 'more pleasure-giving' than gin or
heroin.
4) A foolproof system of eugenics, designed to standardize the human
product and so to facillitate the task of the managers.
Comments
Please stay on-topic, informative and polite. I reserve the right to remove comments for whatever vague capricious reasons seem reasonable at the time.