"After those weeks of idleness in London, with nothing to do, whenever he wanted anything, but to press a switch or turn a handle, it was pure delight to be doing something that demanded skill and patience" (Brave New World, 247).
I was under the impression that John was never happy in his life until I went back and reread this excerpt. When he lived in New Mexico, he was never included in society and he always heard about how civilization was better than the Reservation. When he lived in England, he was constantly included in society and became upset with the systematic happiness of everybody. When John was alone in the lighthouse, he was at peace with himself.
This, I think, is the primary theme of Brave New World. Stability is not happiness. The civilization in Brave New World ended John's life because he couldn't be at peace among maggots who were hypnotized to be constantly happy. Occurrences of happiness are crests among many troughs of pain and trial. In order to be truly human, humans need to suffer. Then, we can fully appreciate our amazing consciousness through art, science, history, literature, and religion. Those things aren't obstacles to happiness -- they are gateways to achieving happiness. Also, those things remind me of part of a certain theme song . . .
Guaranteed stability sort of makes everything pointless, I guess. The civilized people don't care about purposefulness.
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