...Soma in Brave New World The drug soma in Brave New World is a symbol of the use of instant gratification to control the World State's society. "Euphoric, narcotic, pleasantly hallucinant" is how Mustapha Mond describes soma. It's possibly the best tool the government has for controlling its population. It sedates, calms, and mainly distracts the citizen from the horrific state of enslavement that they live in. There's always soma to calm your anger, to reconcile you with one another, or to make you patient and forgiving. Everyone is trapped by happiness, which is a tough entrapment to break away from. Through the government's use of soma to control the population, Linda's excessive abuse of the drug, and John's attempt at stopping the drug, Huxley attempts to reveal how we allow the individual within us to be overcome by anything that will guarantee us pleasant feelings. Therefore, we sense a superficial happiness. The novel also compares religion with soma. It argues that Christianity functions the same way as soma, allowing the citizens to be controlled. Mustapha claims that soma is "Christianity without the tears." It offers its followers comfort, but at the expense of individuality. Soma clouds reality, replacing it with happy hallucinations. Soma is what the society uses to keep themselves balanced. Religion functions similarly because people use it as a source to give their life meaning. They refer to it to maintain order and function through life's obstacles. It acts...
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...-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Eat Your Heart Out | Paper Magazine Does a Super (Duper) Market Culture, Food By JANE HERMANJuly 13, 2012, 1:30 pm 2 Comments Paper Magazine's Super (Duper) Market Atisha Paulson Brucie Atisha Paulson Scribe Winery Atisha Paulson 123Loading “I’m crying. And dying,” Paper magazine’s Kim Hastreiter says halfway through the tour of her Super (Duper) Market, which will be open Friday through the weekend in Manhattan’s meatpacking district. She is completely elated and, more important, satiated, by what’s in store: “The best ice cream (Humphry Slocombe), the best cornbread (Red Rooster), the best olive oil (Sciabica’s),” she says. Here, at what is a smorgasbord of carefully procured and exquisitely packaged food stuff, all the stars of Hastreiter’s bicoastal culinary-craft world collide. The vendors hail mostly from Brooklyn (Empire Mayonnaise, Morris Kitchen, Mile End) and California’s Bay Area (Boulettes Larder, Modern Appealing Clothing, Tartine Bakery and Cafe). “I’m kind of a maven, and these are really my favorite things,” says Hastreiter pointing to the Tang Brothers noodle stand. “Those are, like, the best noodles.” Walk through the mart and you might sample homemade mozzarella on honey-drizzled toast from the Cobble Hill restaurant Brucie, buy a Sol LeWitt star bowl (Hastreiter’s pick) at...
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...The dictatorship consists of leaders called “World Controllers” who are in charge of making sure every individual is happy and that the society is stable. Everyone in the society worships and references to an individual who started the birthplace of their civilization, who is named Ford. “You all remember, I suppose, that beautiful and inspired saying of Our Ford’s: ‘History is bunk, History is bunk.’” (Huxley 34). This quote explains that the history before the time of the man Ford, is to be thrown out and forgotten. “His fordship Mustapha Mond” (Huxley 34). Both of these quotes indirectly reference the worshipment of Ford in the story, who is viewed as a god. The character of Ford in the book, is most likely inspired by Henry Ford of our society during the early 20th century. Huxley probably wanted to reference him, during his time, because Henry Ford was seen by many people as an industrious idol and he was praised for his invention of the model T, as stated by M.H.N. Schermer, a psychologist from the University of Rotterdam, in his article “Brave New World Versus...
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...Aldous Huxley purposed soma to be the object that eliminates suffering and, consequently, the characters think they are happy due to soma and conditioning. In the consumer utopia of Brave New World, citizens are conditioned to be happy, but do not experience true happiness because they are not willing defy the utopia, are not suffering, and are not liberated from soma. Defying the utopia is not in the best interest of the citizen considering genetically breeding requires little to replace them, but they are conditioned to believe they are in the best situation. “One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them” (Huxley 234). In chapter two, the Director used a mild-electric shock to condition the children to not like books. If the children would have not been shocked, they would...
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...test tubes until fertilized and divided into five castes—Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, and Epsilon. This quote symbolizes that the narrator takes on a satiric tone, as he gives the description of the lower three castes after the Director explains the advantages of the Bokanovsky Process. I feel...
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...What happens during this form of teaching is a recording will be played over and over again while the individual is sleeping, by the time the person wakes up the tape has been fully memorized without knowing that anything happened. This form of technology allows a person to be conditioned without knowing it, “Everybody's happy nowadays” (Huxley, 40 ) “A gramme is always better than a damn” (Huxley, 54 ) “Every one works for everyone else” (Huxley, 91 ). In fact these are just a few of many examples of the kind of hypnopaedic word phrases that are drilled into children's heads while they lay asleep hearing nothing. These quotes go hand in hand with the way the World State is ran and it’s basic principles, whether it’s putting the community first or simply taking soma if you’re not happy and want to forget about it. Technology is said to be used to condition the children in this sense but realistically all it’s doing is brainwashing them and feeding them information that can only benefit the society. Physiological technology is used when looking at sleep teaching but the result of it triggers a different field of technological...
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...dystopian society is because it embraces an exploitative caste system. In the new world, it has an extremely severe class system, which people are divided into five different castes: Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, and Epsilon. All of them are responsible to a different part of jobs in the state, like brain workers, labors, creators, and leaders. The Alpha embryos will become the leaders and thinkers, but the Epsilon embryos just can be labors. The author says, “We also predestine and condition. We decant our babies as socialized human beings, as Alphas or Epsilons, as future sewage workers or future. He was going to say ‘future World controllers,’ but correcting himself, said ‘future Directors of Hatcheries,’ instead ” (Huxley, 11). In this quote, the author shows that people have been chosen their classes...
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...In Brave New World, Aldous Huxley provides us with a strange yet appealing futuristic world. Huxley throughout the book argues the points that author George Orwell makes in his book “1984”. Neil Postman made six assertions that varied when comparing them to today’s contemporary society. Some of these assertions are either highly valuable or fail to meet the standards of today’s advanced society. In one of Postman’s quotes, he states that “As he (Huxley) saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.” Postman describes the lost of thinking for ourselves and how society has lost all ability to use imagination. What we seem to imagine is all given to us through social media and television. Everything around us is intensified, to create a series of propaganda and influences. Both Orwell and Huxley believed that our thoughts and imaginations are a complication of our own...
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...And there’s always soma to calm your anger, to reconcile you to your enemies, to make you patient and longsuffering. In the past you could only accomplish these things by making a great effort and after years of hard moral training. Now, you swallow tow or three half-gramme tablets, and thee you are. Anybody can be virtuous now. You can carry at least half your morality about in a bottle. Christianity without tears-that’s what soma is. (Huxley 237-238) This tablet is controlling their population; it sedates, calms and distracts people of the true horror that has them enslaved. All things considered, soma is a sedative that permits its clients to be controlled. Brave New World appears to contend that Christianity burdens similarly. It controls through easement. It offers solace, yet to the detriment of uniqueness. This book has many themes but this quote demonstrates how science affects people and the choices that authority make. "They'll grow up with what the psychologists used to call an 'instinctive' hatred of books and flowers. Reflexes unalterably conditioned. They'll be safe from books and botany...
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...to maintain its stability, the State in Brave New World ensures that all its citizens get exactly what they want all the time. In other words, the State is designed to make people happy. According to Tom Stewart, this universal "happiness" is achieved in three ways: “The first is, state uses biological science and psychological conditioning to make sure that each citizen is not only suited to its job but actually prefers that role to anything else. Secondly, through the promotion of promiscuous sex as virtuous and the elimination of families or any long-term relationship of any sort, the government ensures that no one will ever face emotional or sexual desire. Lastly, whatever sadness slips through the cracks can be brushed away by using soma, a drug with no side-effects that gives the user a pleasant high and makes all worries dissolve away. All this keeps everyone in the state from rebellion,” (Tom Stewart, 7-9). The state wants to keep everyone against rebellion, but by doing the things above they also take away their individuality. According to Bill Smith, “Their jobs are assigned for them without any say from the person they are assigning the job to,” (Bill Smith, 4). I think this is extremely unfair because not only the State is deciding your whole life for you but they are also telling you how to feel about life. They are taking away your free will. By having the state decide everything for you makes you feel small and unimportant, like a little child. In this “New...
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...This special drug is considered the ‘perfect drug’ and is a euphoric, narcotic, and a hallucinogen (Huxley 53). Also, one hypnopediac saying that made citizens like the drug more is, “And do remember, a gramme is better than a damn”(Huxley 55). This quote seems to suggest that every one in the new world is brought up to love the drug and use it as an escape for any situation. Soma essentially enslaves the population and ensures more control for the government; without the drug, hypnopedia would all but be useless since hypnopedia is what is tricking them into using it so often and soma is what is tricking them into being happy. This is just another example Aldous Huxley uses to show governments having too much control over the people can be a bigger issue than most would...
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...Plot: This book starts off in the Central London Hatching and Conditioning center, where the Director of the hatchery and his assistant, Henry Ford, are giving a tour of the facilities to a group of young boys. The Director explains to the students the process of Bokanovsky and Podsnap by which humans are grown inside bottles and then conditioned/brainwashed to believe the moral “truths” that the World state wants to implant in them. This conditioning, also known as hypnopaedia or sleep-teaching, instructs the citizens to believe in the value of society over the individual. Each person exists to serve the community. It’s their job to be consumers and workers, which in turn keeps the economy stable and strong. Buy lots of clothes. Use lots of transportation. For example they use electrical shocks o young children to make them afraid of books and flowers, this allows the government to install fear of knowledge and nature in the society. To assure the stability of the society, the bottles are divided into castes: the alphas, Betas, Gammas, Deltas and Epsilons. The alpha embryos are the highest cast for they are designed to become the leaders and thinkers of the world state, they are smart, tall, and muscular. Epsilons are the total opposite; they are short, dumb, and ugly. The government implies that the best way to keep non-Alphas stupid is to give them dangerous substances, such as alcohol and oxygen deprivation, while they’re still in the test tube. Epsilons are also grown in...
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...retreats. As he’s fleeing, the hordes of Delta workers are all lining up outside to receive their regular soma ration and with his mother’s passing still fresh in his memory, he lashes out at the employees, taking away their rations and disposing of them out the window. Meanwhile, Bernard had been looking to find John, with no success until he receives a call from the distributer, informing him of the Savage’s disturbance....
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...being from birth to death. There are many factors that cause aging, and many theories that use these factors to explain aging. Aging cannot be stopped; however, the debate stands on how life can be prolonged. This essay will discuss theories of aging, and ways that these theories give for life prolonging. Aubrey de Grey uses the analogy between a human being and a machine. He states that the same way machines deteriorate, the human body gets old. Similarly to machines in need repair, humans use different medications in order to cure their diseases and prolong their lives[1]. However there is still no unique definition on the cause of aging but there are many theories on what causes aging. In order to define aging, Grey quotes Edward Masoro’s : “deteriorative changes with time during postmaturational life that underlie an increasing vulnerability to challenges, thereby decreasing the ability of the organism to survive.”[2] Grey is a renowned scientist who graduated in Cambridge. Grey thinks that life can be prolonged to extremes. According to Grey there are seven components of aging. The Economist properly paraphrases him when saying “The seven sisters that Dr de Grey wishes to slaughter with SENS are cell loss, apoptosis-resistance (the tendency of cells to refuse to die when they are supposed to), gene mutations in the cell nucleus, gene mutations in the mitochondria (the cell's power-packs), the accumulation of junk inside cells, the accumulation of junk outside...
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...Beta because I picture Alpha being almost perfect. Perfect abilities, perfect features, the perfect capacity to do amazing on everything. I know that I make mistakes in my life and I know that sometimes I struggle and that I could do better on many assignments, but I accept my flaws and know that I need leeway to make mistakes and not be perfect. Beta is the perfect caste to me because it gives me that leeway that I need. I would be extremely happy with being a Beta for the rest of my life. But thats not to say that one caste is better than another. Every caste is a necessity for the World State. As a quote in the book reads, “Every one works for every one else. We can’t do without any one. Even Epsilons are useful. We couldn’t do without Epsilons. Every one works for every one else. We can’t do without any one.” This quote perfectly defines what I am trying to say. Every caste is needed and appreciated by others. Of course, no caste would want to be that lower or higher caste. People will be who they want to be but there needs to be variety of people and I am proud to say that I would fall into the caste of Beta. Beta holds my level of capacity and talents and I feel as if its the perfect decision knowing none of the other castes measure up to my abilities. Journal Entry #2 In the first three chapters of the book we learn a lot of about the values of the peoples lives, yet some stray from that way of thinking and...
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