Thread:Forum:Literature/George Orwell on utopia/reply (3)

If I may comment, I have to agree that allowing devotion to enlightenment to be the be all/end all does sound rather frightening.

In fact, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World covered this theme, showing what would happen if Man surrendered all impulse for creativity for a world where almost every conceivable worry was replaced by literal happy pills, hedonism, and a rigidly defined structure of chattel slavery in practice if not in name (driven by a frightening plausible combination of biological, psychological and sociological engineering).

The upside was a worry free world, for the most part. The downside was a world devoid of creativity or free will, and I found myself agreeing with John the Savage that sacrificing all of that just to be as free from any sort of pain was too high a price to pay, even if Mustapha Mond's arguments were scarily convincing.

In reality, I don't believe we'll ever make a world like that anytime soon, since reality is far more complex than fiction, but regardless, while I consider myself a devotee of rationalism and a supporter of progress, I would not be happy with a world where I have to cash in my free will and creativity for simulated happiness.