Soma brave new world consequences9/19/2023 Pharmaceuticals, while hardly a new industry then, still had much to master in terms of sedatives, opiates, barbiturates, and amphetamines. Microdosing and Tech’s Troubling Utopian Vision of ItselfĪt the time of Brave New World’s publication, soma was intriguing, a parallel of other casual substance use and abuse. The peaceful, rigidly ordered, and emotionally stunted civilization Huxley envisioned would be impossible without it. The point of soma within Brave New World is an end to anxiety over pain, over social interactions either romantically or in the workplace, over the fear of death, or indeed over complex and troubling thought of any kind, under the exhortation “a gram is better than a damn.” One character, important in the hierarchy of the fictional world, refers to it as having “All the advantages of Christianity and alcohol, and none of their defects.” Characters confronted with morally or intellectually challenging scenarios immediately resort to varying amounts of the drug, either resuming their work or taking a “soma holiday”. It’s tempting to spend a fair bit of time on Huxley’s the philosopher’s choice of terminology. What concerns me as psychedelics move forward is Brave New World’s preferred method of social control, a drug of unspecified chemical composition referred to as soma. If nothing else, it’s sexier.Īll of this is fascinating, but only a background. The novel is frequently compared to George Orwell’s 1984, and in fact, the two authors corresponded over their competing and complementary visions of what they saw as society’s inevitable slide toward totalitarian control. His dystopian vision of a Fordist world-state, the end of history, monogamy, family, and religion, and humans being decanted rather than born to be socially conditioned from infancy has endured in popular culture. While we’ve mainly focused on the seminal experience with mescaline that led him to write The Doors of Perception, Huxley is most famous for his novel Brave New World. Potential is not a one-way street to benefit. While I share a sense of optimism and curiosity into what these substances can do for us, I also have no small amount of reservation about what they can do to us. Psychedelics are being touted for their potential, whether medical, therapeutic, or spiritual. Through all of it has come the chance to interview entrepreneurs and doctors, and to absorb a range of perspectives on substances I’d admittedly pigeonholed prior to taking this job.Īt the risk of forming another such bird-shaped aperture, I’d like to share a growing anxiety of mine, one that may be obvious from the subtitle of this piece. There’s been a lot of reading from old favourite authors of mine like Aldous Huxley, and quite a few modern psychedelic insights from the always-charming and informative Michael Pollan. Since then, I’ve learned a great deal of history, ancient and modern. My first contribution after starting that education was to realize the level of ignorance I was functioning at, and to help craft a statement promising to respect both the substances and cultures I’d end up researching. Some Dystopian Thoughts from Aldous Huxley on Psychedelic and Microdosing Cultures Moving to the MainstreamĪs the Editor of Truffle Report, I’ve spent the past six months learning about psychedelics and, by extension, microdosing.
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