Brave New World plunges waist deep into metaphysics from its very outset, and wades only deeper as the novel progresses. Aldous Huxley clearly, albeit facetiously, advocates the central principle “Ignorance is bliss.” This may be true on a base level, but only regarding the superfluous and external problems that one need not concern oneself with; knowledge which cannot work to his favor, that which he cannot control. In this case, one is happier without the burden that comes with knowing. But there is much to be said of this noble burden, and it begs the question: Is ignorance really bliss? Temporary gratification perhaps, it is the easy path, but one cannot truly reach enlightenment through ignorance. You could be happy, but you can never be fulfilled. From this train of thought inevitably gushes the granddaddy of all deep philosophical questions: Why are we here? Which is more important, the pursuit of happiness, or the pursuit of truth? The reality is that the two seldom overlap. Perhaps Jack Nicholson was really addressing humanity when he told Lt. Kaffee “You can’t handle the truth.” Not if you want to be happy, anyway. Happy, though, is ambiguous: define happy. Sitting in a velvet theater with scent emitters and simulated intercourse may bring pleasure to the world’s Betas, but are they happy? I don’t think they really are, but then again they can’t know what happy is- they were never given the ultimate choice, their decision was determined prior to their synthetic conception. As such, I don’t know that the Brave New Worlders are truly human, either. Because they are reduced to cogs in the machine, they themselves are nothing more than automaton, serving the hive year in, year out- diminished to myrmicine. In this way, the human race has been altered to less than human, because they lack the thing that makes us different from the birds and the bees- the ability, and furthermore the desire, to search for the truth. A chimp does not seek actualization beneath the verdant canopy; he seeks food and female chimps. He looks for what makes him content, not what makes him chimp. Lenina does not know nor care what makes her tick any more than the monkey does. In philosophy there is a quote that forms the basis of all other assumptions: “Cogito ergo sum,” — Rene Descartes. If thought proves that you exist, doesn’t it stand to reason that pseudo-thought proves you only half exist? The inhabitants of Brave New World live from a pre-established mold, leaving no room for free thought, without which there can be no freewill. And without freewill, what are we but pawns on a cosmic chess board…