Brave New World, unfortunately, has
been an accurate prediction of the modern world's obsession with "mass" (mass
production, mass media, big cars and houses) and the desire for pleasure (orgy-porgy,
soma, and sports).
Whereas John is the tortured artistic
and Christian hero of the satire (the one who dies for the materialistic sins of
others), the Controller and his subjects are, like most Americans, obsessed with
pleasure: quick-and-easy meals, sex without consequence, pornography, sugary snacks, our
jobs, clothes, social class privileges, and instant gratification when it comes to,
well, just about everything. "Must have coffee!"
In his
essay "Amusing Ourselves to Death," Neil Postman
writes:
Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture,
preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal
bumblepuppy...He believed that it is far more likely that the Western democracies will
dance and dream themselves into oblivion than march in to it, single file and
manacled.
And Richard H.
Beckham argues, in "World as Social Irritant: Ban it or Buy
It?":
Lest
the pleasure of frequent and promiscuous sexual activity not be sufficient to distract
the population and dissuade them from rebellion, Huxley foresees a culture in which
widespread and addictive use of drugs offers a second means of assuring a frictionless
society. “A Soma in time saves nine,”—a hypnopaedic slogan drilled into the heads of
Brave New Worldians from nursery days on—conveys the message that individuals are to
protect themselves from normal pain by frequent doses of this widely available and
socially acceptable narcotic.
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