Towards the end of the utopian-dystopian modern novel, Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, there is a profound conversation between John the Savage and Mustafa Mond, one which resonates with rich philosophical import. John has been raised outside of the World State. The latter is under the control of Mustafa Mond, one of the ten Controllers of the World State. John argues for creativity, freedom, pain, joy of adventure and poetry, music and art. Mustafa Mond, on the other hand, as controller of the World State is for stability and happiness. In an engineered world where, ‘everyone belongs to everyone else’ he abhors the presence of ideas and things that John espouses. As the two debate for and against the presence of the World State with all its pleasures and stability, the reader tilts from one end of the scale to the other. John claims the right to have a degree of pain and unhappiness in order to be truly and ‘humanly’ happy. Mustafa Mond has eliminated all unhappiness from the state, all disease, all flies and the pangs of old age are out of the brave new world. Just in case anyone falls into despair or gets bouts of unhappiness, there is a quick remedy for that. And the remedy is soma, a drug that is given to the one in despair, a few grams of it, and, lo and behold, he’s happy. Mustafa Mond calls soma, ‘Christianity without tears’. John, ironically, called the savage, has with him complete works of Shakespeare, which he often quotes, and asks Mustafa Mond about the, ‘slings and arrows of time.’ To which Mond replies that all slings and arrows are a thing of the past in the brave new world. The symbol of the cross in this world is........

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