SGI's pursuit of "absolute happiness" similar to "Soma" from Huxley's book Brave New World.

According to SGI, chanting = absolute happiness. Now if you stop and think about it, the whole idea of pursuing "absolute" happiness would not be consistant with the Buddha's teachings. Teachings that call for remaining balanced, for observing the Middle Way, and for following the Middle of the Road path by avoiding going to extremes. The entire concept of absolute happiness is misleading and impossible - just as there is no 'absolute up' or 'absolute down', there is no absolute unhappiness or absolute happiness.

But there is an obsessive amount of the pursuit of the imaginary state of absolute happiness within the SGI. It's a fact - an induced trance state is precisely the state of mind one enters into when chanting. The trance state acts as a pacifist, is calming, and its a mental condition which is extremely susceptible to suggestion (suggestions from either self-made or external sources).

Obsessive chanting (remember chanting itself causes one to enter into an altered state), functions in many of the same ways as the fictitious pacifying drug "Soma", from the famous fictional work, Brave New World written by A. Huxley.

Here's part of a review of Huxley's book from Sparknotes that illustrates some obvious similarities:

The Incompatibility of Happiness and Truth

Brave New World is full of characters who do everything they can to avoid facing the truth about their own situations. The almost universal use of the drug Soma is probably the most pervasive example of such willful self-delusion. Soma clouds the realities of the present and replaces them with happy hallucinations, and is thus a tool for promoting social stability. source