Brave New World

One of my friends told me that the previous post was incomplete and has actually drifted away from the core problem. So here I am, with a post, which will dig deeply into that problem. (I wish I don’t move away from the topic this time)
My contention was that the government is playing an important role in creating an irrational feeling, an inflated-ego in the name of patriotism. Patriotism is as much irrational as religion, caste, love etc… Patriotism is taking pride in someone else’s accomplishments and feeling hatred towards those who are different from you. In the case of SL, the politicians have managed to create an illusion (I say illusion because few Tamils will actually be patriotic and very much believe in SL) that the Sinhalese are patriotic and the Tamils (mainly LTTE) are against the country. So, any Sri lankan will feel hatred towards those non patriotic Tamils, who are bent on creating a separate land for themselves. Tamils, on the other hand demanded for a separate land, as they were racially discriminated by fellow Sinhalese. Again, racism is irrational and has done enough harm to human society.
As KG said, the superior feeling is not just the result of the government’s propaganda or religion or any thing created by human being. Even if these things were removed from the society, the feeling would continue to exist. As I said, our brains are engineered to hold such irrational beliefs. For example, even if religion is removed from the society, human beings would move towards something similar. So, it appears that these things are inherent traits of human beings. So, only way is to surgically remove such thoughts from human beings. If it is possible to do so, we would really move towards a utopia.
Though I don’t have scientific solutions to propose to create a utopia, I would like to recollect few lines from a great Utopian novel, Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. In the novel, set in 2500s AD, human beings live in a hedonistic society and are created using scientific methods (not through reproduction). The human brain is conditioned to believe only in certain things through an indigenous technique called hypnopedia. (The unwanted things include religion, race, love and all other human emotions). Here is the words of the Controller of the brave new world,
“It’s curious, to read what people in the time of Our Ford (Yes, its Henry Ford) used to write about scientific progress. They seemed to have imagined that it could be allowed to go on indefinitely, regardless of everything else. Knowledge was the highest good, truth the supreme value; all the rest was secondary and subordinate. True, ideas were beginning to change even then. Our Ford himself did a great deal to shift the emphasis from truth and beauty to comfort and happiness. Mass production demanded the shift. Universal happiness keeps the wheels steadily turning; truth and beauty can’t. And, of course, whenever the masses seized political power, then it was happiness rather than truth and beauty that mattered.”
The novel will really make us think whether we really need such a utopia. To read the complete novel, click here