The Death of Character

By Feodor D. Rogachev

Yesterday we discussed the idea of duty bound ethics or the idea of Aristotle’s form of “deontology,” which focuses on the thought that people have different functions in society and in order to be true to one's character they must do their “duty”/what they were meant to do. And with the idea of this virtue if one were to say follow their duty, according to Aristotle this would result in happiness following because as long as one has managed their work and wasn’t actively seeking happiness, supposedly happiness should follow. I have a feeling in Huxley’s Brave New World, the idea of duty ethics is taken to a whole new level because in Aristotle’s description of character he mentioned that one’s personality is visible when they break this character of doing active duty and break their so to say “consistent pattern”. However in the society that is set in A Brave New World, everyone is created from test tubes with designated predetermined roles for society that they are physically and mentally trained to endure and excel at.

So, would it be possible to say that all characters that are made in that society fated? If they are created with only one specific purpose and past that there isn’t that much contribution to society, there isn’t much to say “personality.” There can be no individuality when each character must exclusively focus on one specific job/function, mandated to be their whole purpose in society. While the idea of “happiness following” is already over satisfied in this society due to the creation of stoma. Because people are able to have happiness available to them constantly and not only that but society encourages it over any other feeling, thus further locking in the idea of characters in this society being fated to follow their duty, while continuously having their personality suppressed with the false focus of obtaining happiness through the use of stoma rather than certain life choices and getting satisfaction from one's “duty”.

In other words what I am trying to say is, with stoma flooding through society people no longer have much of a need to do things “inconsistently with their daily pattern” because they go to work (which is one of the things they know best because that is what they are created for) and they have constant happiness available which takes away any incentive for characters to try and step out of their normal bounds because the comfort of the familiar and the known is much calmer/stable to them. And when a character does step out of their norm and are overwhelmed with emotions for example they always have stoma available to bring them back to their “familiar” happy/braindead selves.