Happiness Is Never Grand

Seen at the Happiness Deli & Grocery 

on Delancey Street in New York City

Photograph courtesy Pak So and Anna Tan 

Following is an excerpt from Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, first published in 1932 by Chatto & Windus, London:


"Because our world is not the same as Othello's world. You can't make flivvers without steel - and you can't make tragedies without social instability. The world's stable now. People are happy; they get what they want, and they never want what they can't get. They're well off; they're safe; they're never ill; they're not afraid of death; they're blissfully ignorant of passion and old age; they're plagued with no mothers or fathers; they've got no wives, or children, or lovers to feel strongly about; they're so conditioned that they practically can't help behaving as they ought to behave. And if anything should go wrong, there's soma. Which you go and chuck out of the window in the name of liberty, Mr. Savage. Liberty!" He laughed. "Expecting Deltas to know what liberty is! And now expecting them to understand Othello! My good boy!"


The Savage was silent for a little. "All the same," he insisted obstinately, "Othello's good, Othello's better than those feelies."


"Of course it is," the Controller agreed. "But that's the price we have to pay for stability. You've got to choose between happiness and what people used to call high art. We've sacrificed the high art. We have the feelies and the scent organ instead."


"But they don't mean anything."


"They mean themselves; they mean a lot of agreeable sensations to the audience."


"But they're ... they're told by an idiot."


The Controller laughed. "You're not being very polite to your friend, Mr. Watson. One of our most distinguished Emotional Engineers ..."


"But he's right," said Helmholtz gloomily. "Because it is idiotic. Writing when there's nothing to say ..."


"Precisely. But that required the most enormous ingenuity. You're making flivvers out of the absolute minimum of steel - works of art out of practically nothing but pure sensation."


The Savage shook his head. "It all seems to me quite horrible."


"Of course it does. Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the overcompensations for misery. And, of course, stability isn't nearly so spectacular as instability. And being contented has none of the glamour of a good fight against misfortune, none of the picturesqueness of a struggle with temptation, or a fatal overthrow by passion or doubt. Happiness is never grand."