I don't think Huxley's Brave New World has aged too well. Many of its central concepts such as 'soma', 'hatchery and conditioning centers', and the caste system - alphas to epsilons - don't have readily transposable equivalents in our modern day society. Granted, many of the technologies in 1984 don't either, but its central concepts resound to our times.
You could argue that constant access to entertainment is the "soma" of modern society.
If you ever feel anxious, unhappy or nervous just reach into your pocket and distract yourself with social media, a TV show, a game, or a podcast.
The fact that we can, at all times, be indefinitely distracted and stimulated means we never have to fully feel sad, lonely, or bored if we don't want to. How many people go home from work to binge watch a show until they fall asleep?
It's been a while since I've read the book but I remember soma being used as a way to regulate unwanted emotions. It seems like there's some parallels there, but obviously it's not a perfect analogy.
Arguably, soma = the entertainment industry (what distracts you from real concerns)
Arguably, 'hatchery and conditioning centers', represent mass production. Of people in the book, but we've certainly got an economy based on producing more houses, cars, appliances, digital gadgets, so more people can consume more, very much in line with BNW.
Arguably we have a stronger caste system than in generations, measured by inequality and immobility. Alphas = capital owners, Betas = service providers to capital owners, Deltas, Gammas, Epslions = labor here and in other countries.
I think today's growing inequality together with distraction through social networks and "fake" news translates pretty well to Brave New World. Add to that improvements in gene manipulation over the next decades and it's easy to see how the world may split up into castes that have genetic ability based on wealth.
I was just going to say that "Newspeak" in 1984 basically seems like exactly what is going on with "fake news."
On the surface, it just seems absurd and fascinating in a certain way that we can have video footage of the president saying one then and then he can just claim it's "fake news" and a sizable chunk of the populous seems to be cool with it.
Or the stock market keeps going up steadily over the last 10 years and one half thinks it was a complete disaster until 2017 and then glorious and the other half thinks everything went to hell in 2017. Same for the development of employment rate and other indicators.
> Many of its central concepts such as 'soma', 'hatchery and conditioning centers', and the caste system - alphas to epsilons - don't have readily transposable equivalents in our modern day society
I always wonder why these two books are framed as mutually exclusive (and F451 for that matter.)
They all reduce to tuning out discomfort, either through pleasure or storytelling. They paint pictures of different forms of self censorship.
You are either using pills, entertainment, religion, lies, propaganda, or marketing to achieve a nirvana of cognitive dissonance and safety.
They are not a zero sum game, they compliment each other nicely.
Another book that doesn't get mentioned enough in this category is Ira Levin's (Rosemary's Baby, The Stepford Wives, The Boys from Brazil) This Perfect Day. It's a global AI super computer house sorting hat, like Captain Marvel or I Robot, mixed with Gattaca.
Soma has a clear equivalent in the form of television and social media. These are things that suck up people's attention and provide short term ego/happiness boosts so that people don't spend a lot of time really thinking about the system that they're in.
Regardless, I don't think any of these things are the "central concepts" of BNW. BNW is about how a society can oppress and degrade people in a subtle and sustainable manner, without being totalitarian, without hatred or fear or the will to dominate, with people by and large believing that they are contented and fulfilled. All this simply by the inevitable progression and continuation of certain principles, e.g. that it's good to maximise how happy people say they are, or that conflict should be avoided at any cost. This all has disturbingly close parallels with modern Western society.
I live in the U.S. where many people can't turn off their devices because they're addicted to them. And because they don't really have off switches.
This is one of the things that Orwell did not anticipate: there's no need to threaten people with prison. People will voluntarily set up the spying infrastructure in their homees if they perceive that it's cool or that it makes life a little more convenient for them. They'll even pay for it!
Again, choosing not to switch off a device because you're "addicted" is not the same as "can't turn off".
And every device has an off switch. At the very worst, you either unplug it or don't charge it or throw the damn thing out.
Where you're absolutely right is the voluntary aspect of modern surveillance. If we had a BB style telescreen, it would annoy people to the point of revolt, but package it with "content" and everyone is cool with it.
Always on devices like Alexa (and its clones) are becoming more and more common. Even my parents in their 80s (hardly tech early adopters) have one. If there's a problem with the prediction of 1984, it's the assumption that the threat is government. But William Gibson and other cyberpunk authors got that corporations are the real source of power.
Well, we are totally addicted to antidepressants and all sorts of other mood altering drugs we wouldn't need otherwise. Every time I see how many people are taking meth for 'ADHD' I think of Soma.
And it would be very easy to make the argument that America has a 'caste system'. Zuck, Bezos, Gates all went to schools almost none of us could even consider affording to attend.
Not meth or anti-depressants, but even alcohol and weed to excess.
And yeah, more than anything I think we have a caste system. Social mobility is decreasing, and we certainly don't interact with people of far-away economic classes unless it is required (usually). I don't think the poor like being poor the same way the Epsilons were pleased not to be burdened with responsibility.
Ritalin is methylphenidate, not methamphetamine (which is what is usually called "meth"). And it's an SNDRI, while by "antidepressant" most people mean SSRI (or older types like MAO inhibitors and tricyclic). Though SNDRI are also used as antidepressants, I haven't really heard about Ritalin being classified/used as such. Do you have a source for that?
I'm not trying to make an argument here, just pointing out some factual errors in case you wonder why you're being downvoted.
Yes, that's technically true, but it's besides the point: Ritalin is close enough to Soma for the predictive nature of the story to make sense.
A very significant chunk of the population are taking drugs, legally or not legally, that materially affect our state of mind. This is a dystopian feature of 'A Brave New World'.
