The beauty of religion. Finally! (Brave New World-17)

"'We are not our own any more than what we possess is our own. We did not make ourselves, we cannot be supreme over ourselves. We are not our own masters. We are God's property. Is it not our happiness thus to view the matter? Is it any happiness or any comfort, to consider that we are our own? It may be thouught so by the young and prosperous. These may think it a great thing to have everything, as they suppose, their own way--to depend on no one--to have to think of nothing out of sight, to be without the irksomeness of continual acknowledgment, continual prayer, continual reference of what they do to the will of another. But as time goes on, they, as all men, will find that independence was not made for man--that it is an unnatural state--will do for a while, but will not carry us on safely to the end...'" (Brave New World, page 232)


This chapter surprised me. I never thought that actual religion would come into the novel. However, it is interesting to see how the Controller is aware of religion but refuses to implement it into society. Mustapha Mond tells John that if the people in the New World were to have religion, happiness would be not be reachable. The New World society is built upon stability. The society is built upon gratification of one self. However, the possibility of God and an actual purpose in life is a foreign concept. If religion were to be apart of the New World, the people would no longer feel in control of their own lives. Thus, the stability on which the society is built is lost. If people were to feel loss and to feel actual pain and suffering, a need for something greater (God) would be necessary. However, since no one (except John) feels this, religion is an inconceivable idea. 


The society as a whole now makes sense to me. Everything goes back to how the people are conditioned at the very beginning of their existence. Because they are created and trained in an non-human way, they don't  act like humans created by God who have the free will. Instead, they act like how they are programmed to act. They aren't given the gift to be an individual and therefore they cannot think about God's will for our lives.