letter

(This is, of course, a fictional letter -- written as an assignment in a political philosophy class. Mustafa Mond is a character in Alduous Huxley's Brave New World, and this won't make much sense if you haven't read it.)

Plato
The Academy
Athens, Greece

Mustafa Mond
Headquarters, Western European World Controller
London, England

Dear Mustafa,

How are you, my dear friend? I thoroughly enjoyed my recent visit to London, and I greatly appreciated the time and effort you put into acquainting me with your society. As I’m sure you know, I did some exploring on my own after our meeting, and I only just returned. Before we parted, you asked me what my thoughts were of your society in light of the level of peace, happiness and stability you had achieved. If you recall, I was hesitant to offer my opinion until I had seen more, but I promised to write them down for you. This letter is a fulfillment of that promise.

I was initially very impressed with your state, my friend, because we both appear to be pursuing the same thing, namely happiness. However, after spending some time there, I came to realize that we are fundamentally opposed to one another. Most significantly, we differ on the definition of happiness, the value of reason, the importance of pursuing truth and beauty, and the perception of reality.

To facilitate our discussion, I’ll assume that somewhere in that safe of yours is a copy of my book, The Republic, because I can’t imagine why I would have been treated so well during my visit if you were completely unacquainted with my ideas about society, truth, and so forth. So if you don’t mind, I’d like to draw some comparisons and contrasts between my ideal state and your reality.

At first glance, our two states seem similar. You have managed to apply science and technology in some very useful ways. I admire how you engineered a strict set of classes, and this has certainly helped you to achieve a peaceful state. If you recall from our discussion, I believe that humans possess an inherently selfish nature, and only a select few are capable of rising above this base condition.

Your class structure addresses this effectively. Your "alpha" and "alpha-plus" classes bear some resemblance to my Guardians, though in your state, the warrior/protector role has become redundant. In fact, your role as an "alpha double-plus" is very close to what I envisioned as a "Philosopher-King," since you have been allowed the highest level of education and the most freedom of thought. Ironically, however, I feel that your society has turned my Philosopher-King into a tyrant, as I will explain later in this letter. Regardless, my first impressions were positive.

Your citizens seem genuinely happy with their state, and do not seem troubled by the common problems that plague other peoples. Remove the veil, however, and certain things are revealed that disturb me deeply.

Let us begin by discussing the first two fundamental differences between our two states: our definitions of happiness and the values we place on reason. As I stated previously, we seem to share the same goal of happiness, so the question is in which society would the citizens be happier?

Now it is true that your citizens want for nothing, appear to be content with their stations in life, and conflict between them has been virtually eliminated. For the sake of expedience, we can sum up these things by defining happiness as the absence of discomfort. If this is your definition of happiness then I commend you, for it has certainly been achieved in your society.

I propose, however, that true happiness is only possible when reason is in control of each part of the human soul. This balance, as I outlined in my book, is the meaning of justice. Now it is clear that the human soul has three characteristics, namely appetite, motivation, and intellect. When reason is in control of these things, a person’s appetite is tempered, their motivation is characterized by courage, and their unguided intellect becomes wisdom. If temperance, courage, and wisdom are the standards by which we measure happiness, then the truth of the above argument is self-evident, and can be plainly seen by observation alone.

A man possessing these characteristics can be said to have a just soul. One cannot find a man who can be described as truly happy, and yet not possess these characteristics at least in some small measure. True human happiness, therefore, is mutually exclusive to barbarism, which is the absence of the rule of reason. This is what separates us from the animals, since the rest of the world’s inhabitants do not possess reason.

Now Mustafa, I wonder what you would say to such an assertion? When we met, you told me that your citizens are happy. If the above is true, however, then what they experience is not happiness. If you agree that a just soul must be governed by reason, and it follows that only a just soul can be truly happy, then you must also agree that what you have accomplished is nothing more than the removal of unhappiness. It is important to recognize that the removal of unhappiness does not create happiness, just as it does not follow that the removal of a vice alone creates a virtue.

If this argument is true, then you must agree that in creating your perfect state you neglected all that is good and beautiful about human nature. You have deprived your people of the opportunity to obtain temperance, courage, or wisdom. Instead, you have promoted their base appetites with "feelies," medicated their motivations with "soma," and genetically programmed their intellects.

Rather than applying reason to create an ideal state, you have removed the need for reason itself, and engineered the internal chemistry of its citizens so that they will have no future need for it. My friend, can you see the fallacy in this? You have not achieved happiness. You have merely lowered its definition to that of an animal. You have either suppressed or removed nearly every element of humanity in your humans.

The second most significant difference is closely associated with this argument, namely the pursuit of truth and beauty vs. the pursuit comfort and happiness. In our conversation, you said that truth was a "menace," by which I presume you meant that anyone in your society who pursues truth creates instability.

I have less to say on this subject, as much of it has been dealt with already. However, it must be pointed out that if true happiness is defined as the rule of reason over the human soul, then pursuing happiness above truth is clearly unreasonable.

Truth must come before happiness, for happiness is never achieved through the possession of false or evil things. Happiness, even in its most base and degraded form, must still be characterized by the possession of good things. Since it is obvious that false things are never good things, and that good things are never false, it follows that obtaining good things must be the result of pursuing truth.

Therefore, it is unreasonable to value anything above truth. I maintain that happiness and truth are intermingled, and that one achieves true happiness only in the pursuit of truth.

This is why your society cannot achieve true happiness, Mustafa. Your state has been corrupted in this sense, and a tyranny of comfort is in control. Truth cannot be pursued. Hence, beauty is also absent. Reason is sacrificed on the altar of comfort, and since this is contrary to human nature, you must go to great lengths to preserve stability.

Whereas tyrants in the past have used cruelty and death as weapons of control, so you now use soma and hypnopaedia. The effect is the same, and those of you who are in control have not absolved yourselves of responsibility simply by suppressing the will of the people more effectively than the tyrants of the past.

As I have mentioned previously, I am presuming that one of your personal privileges as World Controller is access to such writings as my Republic. So as my final point, I would like to draw another comparison between our two states, namely the differences between our two perceptions of what is real and how we arrive at them.

During our meeting, you mentioned that you believe that there is a God. Now, if you believe that there is a God, you must also believe that the nature of this God is transcendent in comparison to our natures and the world of our senses, since we cannot see or touch God. If this nature is not more "real" than our own, then there is no reason for a God to exist. It follows that this nature must possess certain qualities, or what I call Forms.

Do you recall my description of the educated man vs. the uneducated man? In what has come to be called the "myth of the cave," I presented the idea that our sensory perceptions of reality were as different from true reality as a man’s shadow is from the man himself. This transcendent reality is what I mean when I am discussing the world of the Forms.

Now it is logical to assume that the Form of the Good is the highest of these Forms. Since truth is good, the knowledge of truth is also the knowledge of good. Because "good" is not something we can see or touch, we can deduce that none of the Forms are things that we can apprehend with our senses. We know they exist, however, because we can distinguish between good and bad.

Therefore, we can apprehend the Forms with our reason, and we apply our reason by searching for truth. You admitted to this truth when you claimed to believe in God, but you said that despite your personal beliefs, you do not encourage this among your people. In fact, your citizens have no comprehension of any kind of God that I could see, nor do they appear to see any value in discovering anything beyond their senses.

When you added that God was "manifested by his absence," you revealed the crux of your fallacy. Can you see that you have become like the man in the cave who is freed from his chains and ascends to discover reality? Yet, rather than descending once again to share your discoveries with those who are still chained, or even dwelling outside the cave and forsaking your comrades, you have chosen an entirely different path.

You have chosen to dismiss reality, descend into the cave, and keep silent about what you know to be true. Nay, you have gone one step further and used your newfound knowledge to reinforce the chains that bind your friends, condemning them to perpetual ignorance of reality and truth. You defended this by claiming that this condition promotes stability, but my dear Mustafa, stable misery is still misery.

Now if what I have written here is true, then the misery of your citizens is an objective state of being, not merely a subjective perception. Is it not unjust to sacrifice truth in order to preserve stability? Is it not true that a people’s happiness or misery is directly related to their government’s justice or injustice? Because you medicate and condition them to be ignorant of their misery does not eliminate it. Rather, it only means that your tyranny is that much more complete.

We must strive to "play by the rules," as you might say. There is no halfway point where mediocrity suffices in the place of justice, dear friend. We must not change the rules to fit our desires. We must, instead, strive to create a truly just state through the application and governance of reason.

Instability must not be avoided as if it were a plague. Indeed, instability leads us to apply our reason in solving our problems, thereby allowing us to progress that much further out of the cave. Is it not infinitely preferable, Mustafa, to allow some instability if it means that your people are free to pursue truth and beauty, apply their reason in search of reality, and know the meaning of true happiness?

Sincerely,
Plato