‘Happiness’: Why Censorship Should Never be Allowed
‘I don’t want comfort. I want god. I want poetry. I want real danger. I want freedom. I want goodness. I want sin.’
- John the Savage, Brave New World (Page 276)
The day we are born, we bleed to censorship.
Constantly being tracked, emotionally repressed, and bent to live under expectations; governments and corporations extinguish individuality through a ravenous ocean of censorship, lulling us with an illusive sense of happiness.
We are puppets to autocracy.
Fahrenheit 451 (1966) directed by François Truffaut, and Brave New World written by Aldous Huxley explore how governments condition and censor society to conform to expectations; burning the bastions of democracy to create deceptive utopias.
Fahrenheit 451 is a dystopian narrative that entails the government employing firemen to burn books; condemning novels for their ability to ‘make people unhappy’ (Fahrenheit 451, 0:11:42). Montag, a fireman, is a pawn to the state, as he parallels their perception that condemning books makes people ‘alike[, and that] the only way to be happy is for everyone to be made equal’ (Fahrenheit 451, 0:59:48). Clarisse, Montag’s neighbour, questions him about ‘why he [chose to be a fireman, claiming that his choices] don’t make any sense’ (Fahrenheit 451, 0:49:09). As the film progresses, Montag explores literature; finding a sense of identity before his wife turns him in to the state.
The film paints a narrative where society are pawns for the government, as their minds are twisted to believe that books ‘are evil filth that hurt people’ (Fahrenheit 451, 1:09:15); illustrating how autocracy pulls the strings of censorship upon their puppet that is society.
Autocratic censorship is a cancer that spreads from governments to society as a whole, causing oppressed people to become pawns that fuel the same oppression they are subject to.
When Montag reads an excerpt from David Copperfield to his wife and her friends — hoping to see gratitude for the beauty of literature — they demonise him for being ‘cruel[, since] novels are a sickening’ (Fahrenheit 451, 1:09:10) and sadistic appropriation of the world.
In Fahrenheit 451, censorship causes society to internalise the state’s beliefs; demonising anything or anyone that goes against them. Truffaut exposes autocracies as using censorship to have complete control over people.
Censorship doesn’t just burn books, but the pillars of democracy.
Brave New World explores the mass production of genetically modified humans, as their emotions and individuality are extracted in a world stratified into castes.
‘Stability [in the World State] is practically assured’ (Brave New World, Page 55), as people artificially source happiness from a drug called soma, described as having ‘all the advantages of Christianity and alcohol but none of their defects’ (Brave New World, Page 55).
Bradbury’s plot revolves around John the Savage, who enters the World State after living most of his life on a technologically primitive Savage Reservation. While John is initially excited to enter the ‘brave new world’ (Brave New World, Page 152); he is quickly disgusted by society’s ironically barbaric values and ideals encapsulating a lack of freedom and identity. After engaging in promiscuous activity like others in the World State, the novel ends as John kills himself out of self loathing.
In Brave New World, human conditioning is the largest form of censorship. Democracy is destroyed as society is intrumentalised by an autocracy with complete power and control over individual autonomy.
‘One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them.’ (Brave New World, Page 261)
In Huxley’s dystopia, no one can be their own person.
Society is instrumentalised by the state, and democracy is killed.
Both Huxley and Truffaut’s dystopias explore an autocratic lust for utopianism, as governments oxymoronically censor individuality to create utopia.
In Fahrenheit 451, books are banned because they ‘make people unhappy’ (Fahrenheit 451, 0:11:42). The government sets the agenda as to what happiness is; killing autonomous thinking to disenfranchise human emotion. When there is no emotion, there is no unhappiness, but at the cost of an independent society.
After Montag reads an excerpt from David Copperfield to his wife and her friends — Doris, his wife’s friend, starts crying as she ‘can’t bear to know those feelings, [and had] forgotten all about those things’ (Fahrenheit 451, 1:09:27).
The human condition to feel emotion has been desensitised in Truffaut's dystopia.
Without this, people are ‘not living, [they’re] just killing time’ — (Fahrenheit 451, 1:07:00)
In Fahrenheit 451, emotion is relentlessly censored in pursuit of utopia, destroying the individuality of readers to create a society of ‘zombies’ (Fahrenheit 451, 1:06:56) unable to think for themselves.
Truffaut’s world isn’t a utopia; it’s an autocracy that disenfranchises emotion and identity. By censoring books, the government kills the human condition and purpose to feel, to learn, to love, to dream and to think.
Happiness means nothing when there is no purpose in life.
Similarly, Brave New World explores an oxymoronic utopia guaranteeing happiness, while censorship instrumentalises society to become pawns of the state.
Genetically ‘improved’ (Brave New World, Page 17) people live happy and healthy lives in a society that provides for their constant well being. ‘Stability [in the World State] is practically assured’ (Brave New World, Page 55), as people artificially source happiness from a drug called soma. In a world stratified into castes, there are intelligent Alphas and Betas, and less intelligent Gammas, Deltas and Epsilons, but all of them are happy with what they are and how they live.
Huxley’s world resembles a utopia, but it isn’t one.
Brave New World explores a disgusting dystopia that gives society illusory happiness through disenfranchising autonomy and banning emotion.
The curse of unquestioned stability is an element that suppresses freedom. In Huxley’s dystopia, no one can be their own person, as they are eugenically conditioned to be emotionless, and things that evoke emotion such as art, music, poetry, and religion are banned.
The World State kills the value of life, as people are conditioned from a young age to take dying as a matter of natural course ‘like any other physiological process’ (Brave New World, Page 179).
Happiness has no value in this ‘brave new world’ (Brave New World, Page 152), as life is but an expendable pawn to the government: an autonomy killing machine of consumerism.
Huxley and Truffaut’s worlds similarly paint an autocratic lust for utopianism, as both governments oxymoronically kill individuality through censoring books and emotion.
The texts warn us that when autocracies artificially regulate happiness through censorship, the pillars of individuality and free-thought will bleed with disenfranchisement.
In today’s social environment, identity censorship for illusive happiness is the most significant shadow on our democracy and intellectual freedom.
Whether it be the banning and disenfranchisement of independent journalism, the centuries of ethnic cleansing against minorities, or social media companies censoring our freedom to speech,
individuality is censored in our world, to make people ‘happy’.
While the autocratic censorship painted by the two films hyperbolise the consequences of censorship for utopia, they send a strong message — envisaging the future of what is to come if governments continue to disenfranchise identity.
In North Korea, the sole source of information is the state owned Korean Central News Agency; comforting society with deceptive rhetoric portraying the excellence of the state. Analogous to Huxley and Truffaut’s dystopias, the North Korean government paints an illusion of happiness through their media monopoly, yet they oppress and disenfranchise the freedom of their citizens; as people who speak out against the state are executed. Brave New World and Fahrenheit 451 (1966) illustrate societies that have been conditioned to accept the way things are, as emotions and individuality get caught in the cancer of censorship. Similarly, propaganda is constantly forced down the throats of North Korean citizens; suffocating and choking their individuality.
Their opinions are censored before they are born.
In China, one million Muslims are held in concentration camps; forced to renounce and critisise their religion as they are tortured and killed for being indocile. And yet, an ocean of blatant anti-Muslim propaganda drowns the broader population, incarcerating their rights to information.
Censorship is perpetuated as the cancer of propaganda sculpts societal thinking; disenfranchising Islam.
‘Members of the public who have been chosen for reeducation have been infected by an ideological illness. They have been infected with religious extremism and violent terrorist ideology, and therefore they must seek treatment from a hospital as an inpatient.’
- Chinese Communist Party
Analogous to Huxley and Truffaut's dystopias, the Chinese Communist Party have forcibly bent society into puppets for the state, as they lull people to believe that ethnic cleansing is a precursor for freedom and happiness.
In reality, it’s genocide.
In Western ‘democracies’, plutocratic social media companies censor free speech; violently conditioning human thought and emotion. Maintaining the illusion of a free society; the strings of democracy are controlled by censorship on social media.
The function of these corporations is to be profitable.
They don’t care about your opinions.
They don’t care about your freedom.
They just want you to be happy.
If debatable opinions are banned; if there isn’t any news beyond what they want you to think — then people are hegemonically predisposed to happiness.
Social media companies sculpt a utopia paralleling Brave New World and Fahrenheit 451 (1966), as they contaminate our world with a cacophony of censorship, spreading illusive happiness that burns the pillars of democracy.
We are living through a genocide against thought.
We live in a dystopia that consistently disenfranchises our freedom, replacing it with an illusory sense of happiness as governments and corporations lust for utopianism, power, and control.
Think about it.
Autocratic governments burning democracy, media monopolies thwarting opinions, ethnic cleansing rampant against minorities, social media corporations extinguishing expression; our freedom and thoughts are drowned as we glorify censorship for making us happy!
Censorship is a cancer that should never coexist with humanity.
Literature, knowledge, and controversial political opinions should never be censored, as you disenfranchise society’s principled right to freedom and democracy; allowing autocrats to kill emotion and thought in pursuit of ‘utopia’.
People don’t advocate for controversial ideologies because they’re technically legal in a niche subsection of the law — they do it because they believe in radical principles and want to outcast themselves from the ‘mainstream’ consensus; such that even if our world bans controversial ideas, they would still exist.
Importantly, censoring controversial opinions for happiness burns democracy and freedom; feeding power to governments and corporations who are then entitled to decide what makes us ‘happy’.
‘Controversial’ will then be defined by autocracy; distorting humanity.
Fahrenheit 451 (1966) directed by François Truffaut, and Brave New World written by Aldous Huxley explore how governments condition and censor society to conform to expectations; burning the bastions of democracy to create deceptive utopias.
Today, censorship for ‘happiness’ sees our world transform into those dystopias, disenfranchising our freedom and emotions.
