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Alone with the Controller, the Savage says they've paid a high price for happiness—art and science. He asks if there's anything else. The Controller says there's religion, of course. He crosses the room and withdraws some books from his safe. He reads, "You can only be independent of God while you've got youth and prosperity; independence won't take you safely to the end." And, "The religious sentiment will compensate us for all our losses." Now there's always youth and prosperity; there are no losses. Instead of God, they have soma. He tells John to call it the fault of civilization; God isn't compatible with machinery, medicine and universal happiness. You have to choose. They debate over whether a belief in God is intrinsic, John thinking of the sky and moon and mesa back at the Reservation, and the Controller saying that a belief in God is conditioned. All the same, says the Controller, it's natural to believe in God when you're alone and thinking of dying, but no one is ever alone anymore, and dying isn't frightening. John protests that God is the reason for everything noble and heroic, but the Controller says civilization has no need for nobility or heroism. Conditions have got to be thoroughly unstable before any opportunity for heroism arises. In a properly organized society, there are no divided allegiances, no temptations to be resisted, no objects of love to be fought for or defended. And what you have to do is on the whole so pleasant that you don't mind doing it. If you do, by some misfortune, there's soma to give you a holiday from the facts. Anybody can be virtuous now. John still can't fathom it. He says that what they need is something with tears for a change. There's something to be said for living dangerously, and the Controller agrees there is. That's why they have compulsory Violent Passion Surrogate treatments once a month—they flood the system with adrenaline to reproduce the complete physiological effects of fear and rage. All the tonic effects of murdering Desdemona without the inconveniences. John says he likes the inconveniences. He doesn't want comfort. He wants God, poetry, real danger, freedom, goodness and sin. The Controller points out that he's claiming the right to be unhappy. John agrees. He claims the right to be unhappy, and all the rights the Controller suggests—to age, have diseases, have too little to eat, and to generally be tortured by pain of every kind. Mustapha Mond shrugs and says he's welcome to them. While John thinks human beings have an instinctive need to believe in a divine being, the Controller says God is only a counterpoint to misery. Without misery, people have no need for religion, which is simply another social and moral structure imposed by conditioning. This question is never resolved—again, it's left up to the reader to decide the answer. But John remains resolute about his own beliefs. In claiming his right to misery and happiness, he claims the right to his humanity.
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