Wait, so I have noble origins. In Brave New World, Aldous Huxley describes a society where individuals are completely cut off from their origins. Well, what I’m offering you is, on the contrary, to reconnect with your origins. That is why this episode is sponsored by MyHeritage. MyHeritage is a site that allows you to build your family tree over several centuries with almost no effort. So, I entered my name , date, and place of birth. I did the same for my parents and my grandparents . And from that little bit of information, MyHeritage tracked my ancestors back to the 17th century. Just look at that, not bad at all. On my mother's side, the name is Lacoste, and I just found a 17 th-century ancestor named de la Coste. Wait, so I have noble origins. Well, I dug deeper, looked through birth and death records, and what I found wasn't castles or knights, but a small village in the Creuse region called Lafa. And all my ancestors on my mother's side came from there. For three centuries, no one ever left that village. That’s what I find really fun, the investigative side and that desire to know where we come from. So, how does it work? MyHeritage cross-references your information with over 39 billion historical records, birth, marriage, and census records, as well as family trees created by other users. Perhaps a distant cousin you don't know has already found information on an ancestor you share. The site detects these matches and offers to automatically fill in your tree. So, if you also want to trace the thread of your family history, MyHeritage is offering you a 14-day free trial. You can find the link in the description. And with that, on to your episode. Hello everyone. In contemporary literature, there are two dystopian novels that stand out: George Orwell's 1984 and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. We’ve already talked about 1984. I made an episode a few years ago about Newspeak in 1984. So today, to complete the diptych, we’re going to talk about Brave New World. Brave New World is a novel that was published in 1932, so it’s been nearly a century. And contrary to what many people might think, 1984 and Brave New World are very different books. You could even go so far as to say that these books are opposites. Still, they do share two common points. First, as I said, they are both speculative novels, meaning books where the author imagines what the future will be or could be. And that nuance is important. It was R. Bradbury who said that speculative novels are not meant to predict the future so much as to prevent it—to predict it as a warning. And the second common point, which is why they are usually associated, is that both novels describe a totalitarian society. Except that the totalitarian society imagined by Orwell has very little to do with the one imagined by Huxley. That is how the two novels stand in opposition. The totalitarian society imagined by Orwell is a totalitarian society in the classic sense, as we imagine it in the collective consciousness. A society of widespread surveillance, a society of control, censorship, and repression. Let's not forget that 1984 was written in 1948, and at that time, the prevailing totalitarianism was Soviet, Stalinism with its gulags, trials, and Pravda. So, it's a repressive totalitarianism, whereas in Brave New World, we are dealing not with a repressive but a permissive totalitarianism. In Brave New World, what reigns isn't surveillance or repression; it's pleasure, it's happiness, and even to an extent, freedom, notably sexual freedom. In short, if we had to summarize, in Brave New World, everything is for the best. So, if everything is for the best, where is the problem? Isn't that what we expect from an ideal society—that everything goes well and people are happy? In other words, isn't there a contradiction in calling a society totalitarian where people are free and happy? I used a rather strange expression earlier. I spoke of permissive totalitarianism. Upon hearing that, some of you must have thought, "That doesn't mean anything, permissive totalitarianism is a contradiction. Either it's totalitarian , in which case it can't be permissive, or it's permissive, in which case it isn't totalitarian." Well, exactly, that is the whole problem. That is the entire philosophical problem. What is totalitarianism? What are the defining criteria of totalitarianism? And to what extent can a totalitarian society take the form of a free and permissive society? That is the question, and it is this question that will interest us today. So, before starting, I should specify that in this episode, we will rely not on one, but on two books: Brave New World, and a second book, an essay that Aldous Huxley published 26 years later, in 1958, entitledBrave New World Revisited, in which Huxley revisits his novel to show how what he described in his book was a harbinger of what was to come. So, for those who haven't read it, what isBrave New Worldabout? Well, it's about a global society, what Huxley calls the World State, at a date we don't know. We only know that it takes place in the future, as the technological means described far exceed those of the era in which the novel was written. The only date given to us is the year 632 After Ford. Ford in reference to Henry Ford, the inventor of the assembly line. Because inBrave New World, Ford is considered a prophet, the prophet of industrial modernity, the prophet of productivity, of profitability, the prophet of rationality. And you will see that this is important for what follows. And the point of choosing the name Ford is that it's a name whose sound is close to Lord. Lord, which in English means seigneur. Lord in the sense of God. So inBrave New World, people don't say " for the love of God," they say "for the love of Ford." Moreover, it's not just a joke, it's not just a play on words, it's also because inBrave New World, there is no god, there is no religion. Because religion is for savages, for peoples who have not yet accessed civilization. Civilization being defined by reason, by material progress , by technology. God is for those who have not yet taken their destiny into their own hands and who, because they believe in God, accept things that a civilized people cannot accept. Suffering, disorder, instability, irrationality. God is a consolation. However, for there to be a need for consolation, there must be a misfortune to console, a suffering, a fear, a lack . Brave New World is a society where unhappiness has been neutralized. So, how was unhappiness neutralized in this brave new world? It was neutralized by two means. Chemistry and psychology. First, through chemistry, with soma. Soma. A relaxing and euphoric drug that everyone consumes after work, at parties, before sex, which has the effect of making us forget everything wrong. The advantage of soma is that it has no side effects—in other words, a harmless drug, which is not too bad. In fact, there is a line in the book describing the effects of soma. It is, I quote, all the advantages of Christianity and alcohol with none of their defects. It’s beautifully put. So, with soma, all problems evaporate. We no longer ask ourselves questions. We no longer ask questions, for example , about justice or injustice, equality or inequality, good or evil. In other words, soma is a social sedative. It is the molecule of social slumber. It puts any desire for dissent to sleep. It puts any political demand to sleep. Soma is what makes revolution impossible because we don't want to revolt when everything is going well. Because we don't want to revolt when we are happy. With soma, individuals are, I quote, happy and wise. Happy, therefore wise. Wise in the sense of obedient, in the sense of docile, because happiness makes you soft, pleasure makes you soft. Relaxing, loosening up, it serves a function. Have you ever wondered why the consumption of certain psychotropics is tolerated? Alcohol is sold freely, even though we know it is one of the most violent and harmful drugs. Cigarettes, responsible for thousands of deaths each year. Cannabis, illegal by law but tolerated in practice, because drugs are social stabilizers. They keep us in a state of lethargy, of anesthesia. There is a whole imaginary surrounding drugs that leads people to believe there is a revolutionary dimension to their consumption. It is the opposite. Drugs are an instrument of subjugation. We know that in France, for example, drugs were introduced into prisons in the 80s. We let them in, to be precise, because it allowed the inmates to be managed. In the same way that drugs were allowed to spread in African-American ghettos, particularly crack. Crack, an extremely destructive drug, because a population on crack is a population that will never revolt. Well, it's cynical. Some will call it conspiratorial, if you like. Above all, it's reality. The reality of power and the mechanisms of political manipulation. So, back to soma, the chemical sum of power in Brave New World. Recreation serving submission, pleasure serving order. So that's the first tool through which unhappiness is neutralized in Brave New World. A chemical tool, therefore: soma. But there is a second tool, a much deeper, more decisive, and also much more insidious tool. Psychological conditioning, what is called in the novel hypnopaedia. Hypnopaedia. Hypno means sleep. Paedia means education. So , how does hypnopaedia work? Well, from the day they are born until adulthood, individuals are subjected to looping messages while they sleep. Messages whose function is to instill in them, to make them literally incorporate the morality and ideology of the World State. An example of a hypnopaedic message: happiness is stability. Another example: everyone belongs to everyone else. Or even: a gram is better than a damn. Implied meaning: if something is wrong, take soma, you'll feel better. In other words, hypnopaedia broadcasts social maxims into people's minds, aimed at carving into their unconscious what they must believe, what they must love or desire, or what they must turn away from. For instance, at one point in the novel, the director of the conditioning center explains that for a time, they programmed certain categories of individuals to love flowers and nature. Why? Because they wanted to encourage them to take public transport to the countryside, because public transport pays off; it brings money into the coffers. But then they realized that once they arrived in the countryside, those individuals weren't consuming anything, because there is nothing to consume in nature. As the director says , love of nature provides no work for any factory. So they had to reprogram those individuals, reprogram them to hate nature and to love something else instead, something profitable. So the principle of hypnopaedia is to enter the subconscious of individuals to model their desires, their beliefs, and their thoughts. According to the idea that, I quote, the mind is equal to the sum of the suggested things. Suggested by whom? Suggested by power. Suggested by those pulling the strings of suggestion. So psychological conditioning is a method that allows one to take control of individuals, to take control of their behavior, their minds, and therefore their bodies, since the body obeys the mind. And at the same time, it is a method that makes submission unconscious. Unconscious, therefore consented to. Because how can you resist what you are not conscious of? Conditioning is the supreme stage of domination because it is domination that does not appear as domination. It is domination that leaves no trace as domination. It is domination without the form of domination. If from the time you were a child, you were conditioned to believe that freedom is dangerous, to believe you are in the place you deserve, to believe you must obey authorities, well , there will be no need to force you to obey. You will obey naturally. Spontaneously. Spontaneously means by oneself, therefore without coercion. And that is where Brave New World effectively appears as a society of freedom. Because once individuals are conditioned, you can leave them free. Freedom is not a threat when individuals are conditioned to obey. Freedom is not a threat when one has the desires of one's conditioning. Resorting to force, to threats, to intimidation, only makes sense and is only relevant if the one you seek to submit is not already inclined to submit. It only makes sense and is only relevant if there is resistance. But if there is acceptance, if there is consent, adherence to what you want them to do, they will do what you want without you even having to ask. That is what conditioning is. Conditioning is the phrase spoken by Mustapha Mond, one of the 10 world controllers, someone who knows how it works. I quote, "They can't help but behave as they ought to. " Translation: "They do of their own accord what we want them to do." There is no need to coerce them, no need to influence them, not even a need to ask them. They do it because they desire it , because they have been conditioned to desire it. You know, there is a saying, "If you don't do what you love, then love what you do." Amusing. It's like the Stoics telling us that if reality does not satisfy us, we shouldn't seek to change reality, but to change our perspective on reality. Yes, that's exactly it. That is exactly what justifies submission to the established order. To love what you are forced to do in order to accept what you are forced to do. Mustapha Mond says it. Explicitly. The secret of happiness is to love what you are forced to do. A few years ago, I made an episode about Edward Bernays. Edward Bernays was a propaganda theorist who developed techniques for manipulating public opinion that allowed him to convert entire segments of the population to certain consumer products. He converted women to smoking by organizing fake protests. Women who smoked while holding signs that read "torches of freedom." He converted American families to eggs and bacon for breakfast by publishing fake medical articles touting the benefits of a hearty breakfast because he was paid by lobbyists to influence consumption habits. And it worked. Women started buying cigarettes, thus fattening the tobacco industry in the name of emancipation. Families started buying bacon, thus fattening the food industry in the name of health. It worked because people weren't coerced, they were conditioned. And that is where the fundamental difference appears between 1984 and Brave New World, between repressive totalitarianism and permissive totalitarianism. Repressive totalitarianism functions through constraint and physical coercion. It is the juvenile version of totalitarianism . The visible totalitarianism. Permissive totalitarianism, however, functions through freedom and desire. It is the mature version of totalitarianism. Invisible totalitarianism, the totalitarianism compatible with democracy, because there is nothing to fear from a self-governing people as long as that people desires what they have been taught to desire. Listen closely to what I am about to say. There are two ways to make a people happy. To give them what they desire or to make them desire what they are given. You now understand why the word totalitarianism applies perfectly to the society of Brave New World. Because the happiness of Brave New World is a fake happiness, because the freedom of Brave New World is an illusory freedom. What freedom is there in having the right to do what you have been programmed to want to do? What happiness is there in having the desires of your conditioning? The conditioning of desire is the assurance that desire will never exceed the possibilities of satisfying that desire . And that is why Brave New World is a totalitarian state. Because there is totalitarianism the moment there is control over all sectors of human existence and activity. In Brave New World, everything, absolutely everything is under control. An invisible control, all the more effective for being invisible. Invisible, therefore unassailable; invisible, therefore undetectable. Because the control does not happen downstream, that is to say on bodies, like in repressive totalitarianisms. It happens upstream. In the souls; repressive totalitarianism functions through coercion. Permissive totalitarianism functions through manipulation. The body and the mind. The accomplished totalitarianism is one that controls the minds of its subjects and therefore no longer fears losing control. Since it can leave individuals perfectly free. The accomplished totalitarianism is one that no longer fears losing because it has no more adversaries. Let's continue. In Brave New World, society is divided into castes, into social castes. The Alphas, the Betas, the Gammas, the Deltas, and the Epsilons. I said social castes, but in reality, these castes are not only social; they are also biological, physical, and intellectual. The Alphas are at once the highest in the social hierarchy, but they are also the tallest, the most handsome. White, blue-eyed, and the most intelligent. At the other end of the spectrum, we have the Epsilons. The Epsilons are the workers, the executors, the laborers. They are small, dark, swarthy, with a low IQ. So, you might tell me, "OK, so in fact there is state racism."" Individuals are ranked in the social hierarchy based on biological criteria. " No, it's the opposite. It is not because they are small and swarthy that they are placed at the bottom of the social hierarchy. It is because we need people at the bottom of the social hierarchy that we manufacture individuals who are small and swarthy. I mean that we manufacture them. We manufacture them. They are cloned. Cloned in a laboratory. Everyone is manufactured in a laboratory, but there are those manufactured with high aptitudes, high faculties. There are those who are manufactured with only manual faculties as their sole ability. Those intended to be at the top of the social hierarchy are manufactured tall, blond, and intellectually superior. Those intended to be at the bottom of the social hierarchy are manufactured small, dark, and intellectually limited by means of a very simple process. The Bokanovsky process: simply adding alcohol to the test tubes. The Brave New World society is a eugenic society. What does eugenic mean? "Eu" means good . "Genos" means birth. Eugenics is, therefore, literally good birth. Good in the sense of controlled. Controlled in a laboratory. Good in the sense of planned, efficient, and profitable. The principle of production applied to biology. The phrasing isn't mine; it's from the Director of the Hatchery and Conditioning Centre. You now understand why Henry Ford is the prophet of this society. Because he is the prophet of rationalization. Rationalization in the dual sense of the term: founded on reason, science, and technology, but also rationalization in the sense of efficiency and optimization. And if you wonder, doesn't it pose a small moral problem to do this, to create superior Alphas and inferior Epsilons? The answer is no. Because it would be a moral problem if the Epsilons were aware of the issue—that is, if they suffered from their condition, if they felt diminished, humiliated, or inferior. Yet, that is not the case. Since they have been conditioned by hypnopaedia to love their condition, to love the place assigned to them, and it works. The Epsilons are happy: happy to sweep, happy to clean, happy to serve. Their servility is an integral part of their psychogenetic identity. So, no moral problem. There would be a moral problem if the Epsilons suffered from their condition. That is not the case. They do not suffer. Everything is fine for them. They live in the brave new world. Since the end of the 20th century, sociology has known about a phenomenon called social reproduction. Social reproduction is the idea that social positions are transmitted from generation to generation, not through biological heredity, but through social heredity. It was Pierre Bourdieu who highlighted this sociological law. I actually made an episode on the subject for those interested. But, assuming that a law of social reproduction exists, assuming there is a kind of social fatality perpetuating itself generation after generation, well, politically and democratically speaking , it's complicated because it contradicts one of the fundamental values of the French Republic. In any case, one of its stated values: namely, equality. How can we reconcile the fact that individuals are born equal with the observation that there are structural and innate social inequalities? It doesn't work. And that is why the Republic gave birth to a concept necessary for maintaining the illusion of equality, namely meritocracy. More precisely, the meritocratic ideology. The meritocratic ideology is the idea that our social position depends on our efforts, depends on our work, and therefore on our merit, which is obviously false. Apart from a few notable exceptions, we have the position of our social origin. Meritocracy is based on hope. The hope of being able to rise in the social hierarchy. Yet, hope is an idea, it is a belief. Beliefs are necessary for the maintenance of social order. They are part of the mechanism. So the meritocratic ideology is the ideology of belief in the possibility of social advancement and, by extension, belief in social justice since it depends on our efforts. If it depends on our efforts, it depends on our will, it depends on us. So it is fair. In Brave New World, there is no such hypocrisy, there is no such ideological facade intended to make us believe that our social situation depends on us. There is conditioning, there is programming, there is the chemical and psychic internalization of the just and legitimate nature of our position. I am in my place. That is what the Epsilons tell themselves. And if I am in my place, I have no reason to complain about my place. Once again, one cannot complain about what one does not lack. One can only complain from the moment there is awareness that something else is possible. Because hope is the fruit of the awareness of the existence of the possible. But if this possibility does not exist, if this possibility is not even in the realm of the imaginable , the conceivable, hope has no reason to exist. And if hope has no reason to exist, there can be neither revolt, nor anger, nor demands. There can only be acceptance. So individuals are created in a laboratory and sexual reproduction no longer exists. And here I must tell you about a film, a film that some of you surely know. Demolition Man with Sylvester Stallone. For those who haven't seen it and are wondering what a Stallone film has to do with an episode on Brave New World, well, know that this film is openly inspired by Brave New World in both substance and form. In Demolition Man, the main female character played by Sandra Bullock is called Lenina Huxley. Like Aldous Huxley and Lenina because in Brave New World, the main female character is called Lenina Crowne. Moreover, it happens that in Brave New World, most of the characters borrow their names from great figures of socialism. The main character, Bernard Marx. We also have Poly Trotsky, Sarojini Engels, Herbert Bakunin, and finally Lenina Huxley. And like Lenina Huxley, Lenina in Demolition Man is an ambivalent character. She is a two-sided character, at once shocked and repulsed by the old world and at the same time fascinated. by the old world. The character of John Spartan, played by Stallone, inspires both repulsion and attraction in her. And so , when she eventually tells John Spartan she wants to make love to him, Spartan obviously doesn't expect " making love" to mean putting on a virtual reality headset and receiving neural stimuli. And when he throws his headset off and says to Lenina, "Is that what you call making love?" Implied, "Where's the sex in all of this?" Lenina is scandalized. "But that's disgusting," she replies, " Because sex doesn't exist anymore." Children are conceived in a laboratory in artificial wombs. In other words, viviparity has disappeared. Now, in Brave New World, there is still sexual activity. There is even an incentive for freedom and sexual consumption. We will come back to that. But there is no more sexual reproduction. There is even a taboo on sexual reproduction because sexual reproduction is for animals, it's for savages. Savages, meaning those who live on the margins of society in the reserves. Reserves that we visit like a zoo, but in Demolition Man, the savages don't live in reserves , they live in the sewers and they aren't called savages, they are called scraps. The word "savage" has something more telling, more significant than the word "scrap." Because semantically, " savage" is the antonym of "civilized." And that is exactly what we are dealing with in Brave New World. The triumph of civilization over savage life and the rejection from society of everything that is savage, that is to say, everything still connected to nature. Which brings me back to my main point: the taboo of viviparity. Because viviparity is animality; it is the mode of reproduction that brings us back to our animal nature. Imagine a being coming out of our body, a being coming out of another being. I don't know if you've ever witnessed a birth, but if not, do so. You will quickly understand what it means that the human being is an animal. Well, saying that, saying the human being is an animal in Brave New World, that is out of the question. It’s an insult. in Brave New World. If you want to insult someone, if you want to shame them and make everyone in the room uncomfortable, don't call them the child of a prostitute. Say they are their mother's child. Bring up their mother. bring up their parents, their biological parents. It is shameful to have biological parents because it is shameful to be the result of a physical mating. And that is where, in an extremely subtle way, Huxley sets up an entire philosophical reflection on the concept of humanity, on the essence of humanity. Because in Brave New World, what we call humanity is actually animalistic. Motherhood is animalistic. The family is animalistic. And everything that goes with it, including couples, including emotional attachment , including love. In Brave New World, being in love means risking being stigmatized. Being a couple means risking being mocked, criticized, and marginalized because it reflects an irrational attachment. Love is irrational. And not only is love irrational, it creates irrationality. Love is what creates jealousy. Love is what creates the desire for possession, rivalry, and therefore conflict, suffering, and disorder. In Brave New World, there is sexuality, but it is a mandated sexual promiscuity because feelings are neutralized. Because there is a dissociation of pleasure and feeling, of the body and the soul. Brave New World is the civilization of absolute materialism. Absolute materialism plus absolute rationalism. No room for anything beyond the body, no room for anything beyond matter. No room for what escapes reason. The couple escapes matter and escapes reason because love escapes matter and escapes reason. Therefore, love is forbidden. It’s clear, sharp, and precise. And it's all the more interesting because in our minds, the couple, the couple that leads to the family, to genealogy, to transmission, is the very essence of civilization. In Brave New World, it’s the opposite. In Brave New World, the couple carries within it the seed of irrationality. Therefore the seed of instability, the seed of chaos; order against chaos. And that is where we arrive at this great paradox: that it is in the name of civilization, in the name of humanity, that humanity de-humanizes itself. It de-humanizes itself because it breaks with what constitutes the essence of our condition. Feeling, emotion, sensitivity, connection. In the brave new world, there is no more connection. Children have no parents. The people have no origin. The nation has no history. In the brave new world, the teaching of history no longer exists. History has been abolished. A clean slate for history. A clean slate for Montaigne, Julius Caesar, or Napoleon. We don't care because these historical figures are only figures of passion. And passion is animality elevated to a value. Passion is unreason. The passion that drives rebellion. The passion that drives betrayal, to disorder. to misery , cutting the link with our past to cut the link with our animality. The motto of the world state is community, identity, stability. Stability, I think we have clearly understood stability as a condition of social order. Community, because in the brave new world, the individual does not exist, or rather, exists only as a member, as one speaks of limbs of a body, connected, united, devoid of a life of their own—and so what to say of identity? Well, it is ironic that this is the word chosen by Huxley, because the word identity can indeed be understood in two opposite senses. Identity as particularity, as singularity. The identity of a person is what makes them unique, that they are not like any other. But identity can also be understood in the sense of what is identical. In the brave new world. Everyone is identical. The " other" no longer exists. Difference no longer exists because man does not like difference. For difference is what escapes his control. I quote: "In the light of what we have recently learned about animal behavior in general and human behavior in particular, it has become obvious that control by repression of non-conforming attitudes is less effective in the long run than control by reinforcement of desirable attitudes through rewards, and that, on the whole, terror as a means of government is less effective than the non-violent manipulation of the environment, thoughts, and feelings of the individual." Punishment temporarily suppresses the offending behavior, but does not definitively eliminate the victim's tendency to indulge in it. Moreover, the psychophysical byproducts of repression can be just as troublesome as the attitude for which an individual was punished. Psychotherapy is largely devoted to the treatment of the debilitating or antisocial effects of past sanctions. The society described in 1984 is dominated almost exclusively by punishment and the fear of punishment. In the imaginary universe of my own fable, the latter is rare and generally not very rigorous. The almost perfect control exerted by the government is achieved through the systematic reinforcement of desirable attitudes. Numerous, nearly non-violent manipulations, both physical and psychological, along with genetic standardization. Test-tube gestation and central control of reproduction may not be impossible. But it is nonetheless evident that for a long time yet, we will remain a viviparous species reproducing by chance. Therefore, genetic standardization can be excluded from the practical realm. Societies will continue to be governed by postnatal control through repression as in the past, and increasingly by the highly effective methods of reward and scientific manipulation. In Brave New World Revisited, he tells us something very important, something we absolutely must remember. He tells us, "Nature creates according to the laws of plurality and irregularity.""Human beings create according to the laws of uniformity and regularity." He is right . What man creates is straight, it is square, it is similar. That is to say, the negation of the principles of natural creation. Nature does not create straight lines. It creates curves, asymmetries, imperfections. It is the human being who creates straight lines, who creates symmetries, who creates perfect things. Could it be that the human being has not seen? That creating according to the laws of perfection? Necessarily leads to destruction, that to build something viable, something harmonious that lasts , we need imperfection. And in this world of identity without identity, in this world of similarity without roughness, it is the savages who appear as the last representatives of humanity . Savages who still have feelings, emotions, desires; savages still sensitive who drink alcohol, have children, believe in God, and love art. John the Savage loves poetry, he loves literature, he quotes Shakespeare, and he claims the right to be unhappy. He claims the right to be unhappy in a world where unhappiness has been eradicated in the name of perfection. He claims the right to be unhappy because he is aware that the essence of humanity lies in imperfection, that it lies in lack, in dissatisfaction, in unhappiness. If man invented art, it is for the same reason he invented God: to console his unhappiness, to sublimate his unhappiness. From the point of view of the civilized, unhappiness is an evil. But from the savage's point of view, from the point of view of one who feels, who vibrates, who desires, happiness is flat. Happiness is boring. If art is the means to console us, if art is the means to transform the mud of our condition into gold, into beauty , the best of worlds that knows no unhappiness is a world without beauty. And a world without beauty is an inhuman world. Thank you. Thanks to Myer for sponsoring this episode. If you would like to take advantage of the 14-day free trial, the link is in the description.