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To: Proud Deplorable who wrote (48368)	8/30/2007 3:11:36 AM
From: E. Charters	Respond to of 78421

I guess I should tell you what no one here wanted to. Sit down. Get a coffee and a cigarette, and remember what your parole officer told you about denial. It just won't work anymore. You have to face the truth. They have taken over. Everybody knows it. There is no point in ranting, raving or even crying about it. They have landed. They run things. We just take orders and let them make all the decisions. We are not strong enough, or smart enough, to fight them. They have taken away our free will by, it is thought, things in the food, that leave us with just enough self-determination to continue on. Zombies with no goal except survival. "Day by day", they call it. "Live for today. Exist in the moment. There is no reality beyond these four walls." You know the slogans. "What can we do about the future, we won't be there.." etc.. "what the hell do we care about 1000 years from now". It is a global abdication of responsibility. And retreating from from carbon based society is just a de-industrialization ploy to deconstruct our technology. The only questions are "how long have they been here?" "When did this all start?" Can we date the event(s) of the great decline? When did the idiots take over? Maybe they didn't just take control, maybe the people in control became idiots. Is anyone immune? Are there those who have been vaccinated? Will anyone listen? Have they ever? I think it was predicted who would be immune and who would go 'outside' (jesus, bin laden in the desert etc ... ) and come back to innoculate the world against its continued decline. Soma also shows physiological tolerance. Linda, the Savage's mother, takes too much: up to twenty grammes a day. Taken in excess, soma acts as a respiratory depressant. Linda eventually dies of an overdose. This again suggests that Huxley models soma more on opiates than the sort of clinically valuable mood-brightener which subverts the hedonic treadmill of negative feedback mechanisms in the CNS. The parallel to be drawn with opiates is admittedly far from exact. Unlike soma, good old-fashioned heroin is bad news for your sex life. But like soma, it won't sharpen your wits. Even today, the idea that chemically-driven happiness must dull and pacify is demonstrably false. Mood-boosting psychostimulants are likely to heighten awareness. They increase self-assertiveness. On some indices, and in low doses, stimulants can improve intellectual performance. Combat-troops on both sides in World War Two, for instance, were regularly given amphetamines. This didn't make them nicer or gentler or dumber. Dopaminergic power-drugs tend to increase willpower, wakefulness and action. "Serenics", by contrast, have been researched by the military and the pharmaceutical industry. They may indeed exert a quiescent effect - ideally on the enemy. But variants could also be used on, or by, one's own troops to induce fearlessness. A second and less warlike corrective to the dumb-and-docile stereotype is provided by so-called manic-depressives. One reason that many victims of bipolar disorder, notably those who experience the euphoric sub-type of (hypo-)mania, skip out on their lithium is that when "euthymic" they can still partially recall just how wonderfully intense and euphoric life can be in its manic phase. Life on lithium is flatter. For it's the havoc wrought on the lives of others which makes the uncontrolled exuberance of frank euphoric mania so disastrous. Depressed or nominally euthymic people are easier for the authorities to control than exuberant life-lovers. Thus one of the tasks facing a mature fusion of biological psychiatry and psychogenetic medicine will be to deliver enriched well-being and lucid intelligence to anyone who wants it without running the risk of triggering ungovernable mania. MDMA(Ecstasy) briefly offers a glimpse of what full-blooded mental health might be like. Like soma, it induces both happiness and serenity. Unlike soma, it is neurotoxic. But used sparingly, it can also be profound, empathetic and soulfully intense. The Savage has read nothing but The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. He quotes them extensively and, for the most part, aptly, though his allusion to "Brave New World" [Miranda's words in The Tempest] takes on a darker and bitterly ironic resonance as the novel unfolds. John the Savage is intensely moral. He is also somewhat naïve. In defiance of BNW's social norms, he falls romantically in love with Lenina, but spurns her premature sexual advances. After his mother Linda's death, the Savage becomes ever more disillusioned with utopian society. Its technological wonders and soulless consumerism are no substitute for individual freedom, human dignity and personal integrity. He debates passionately and eruditely with World Controller Mustapha Mond on the competing merits of primitivism versus the World State. After his spontaneous bid to stir revolt among the lower castes has failed, the Savage retreats to an old abandoned lighthouse, whips himself in remorse for his sins, and gloomily cultivates his garden. But he is hounded by reporters and hordes of intrusive brave new worlders. Guilt-ridden, the Savage finally hangs himself after - we are given to infer - he has taken the soma he so despises and succumbed to an orgiastic debauch.