Lenina also demonstrates that even though they are conditioned not to know the truth they also do not want to know it as it is unfamiliar and confrontational. Hypnopaedia is an example of the Controllers’ need for technology to “enslave” its citizens through brainwashing, where they are trained exactly what to think and how to behave. Bernard is an example of some whose advanced Alpha minds let them distinguish individual thoughts, yet society deems it unsafe to let them be heard for fear of exile. Lenina illustrates this by resorting to hypnopaedic phrases to cope with Bernard’s venting about his own freedom by wishing he was “not enslaved by my conditioning” (Huxley 78). They are not able to distinguish what is true from what they are told meaning that there is no other alternative to what they are conditioned to believe so the very thought of it is unfathomable. In this society the citizens are living someone else’s truth and idea of what is best for them as a community and they are actually “incapable of the thought or feeling required to question the models provided for them” (Booker 57). However this individuality of being different from each other does not cooperate with the World State’s vision of community. Humanity is built upon the foundations of individuality, where everyone has different ideas of what is true. World Controller Mustapha Mond’s idea of happiness is one made of material pleasures and commodities, yet happiness for most humans is the knowledge of truth as well as their individual pursuits for inner wealth such as love and friendship, things that are all absent in this engineered society.
Emotional and scientific realities are sacrificed for a fake happiness in order to keep society stable. The citizens are made to be happy and content with superficial entertainment and material lives so they do not understand, or ever consider the mere possibility, that they are trapped and controlled as puppets of the Controllers’ strings. In Huxley’s World State the Controllers provide comfort, safety and stability to the people by protecting them from the supposedly harmful realities of the truth. Truth and happiness are complex notions in Huxley’s Brave New World and it asks us: can one truly exist without the other?
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