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Hallucinogenic Drugs, Virtual Sex, Alienated People. Brave New World is a futuristic novel traced by Aldous Huxley, considered one of the greatest prophetic writers of the 20th century. Aldous, who wrote about the effect of LSD and acids, brought from his experimental sessions ideas that were at the very least intriguing, so much so that some renowned scientists then chose him for research into the effect of hallucinogens on humans.
In Brave New World, Aldous describes a perfect society, possibly located in Europe, dominated by a single ruler, where the state distributed a drug called SOMA to the citizens. All had a very calm life, without stress, which helped discipline all inhabitants. In addition to this collective doping strategy, the state provided cinemas where the audience connected to the sensory terminals. It accompanied the films, directly knowing sensations, taste, and smell from the screen. The sex is divided into two parts, one for pleasure and another for prosecution. The latter depended on state authorization. The first was free since there was no sensual coition, i.e., no direct contact between people, which eliminated the carnal intercourse of relationships, connecting to individual terminals, conveying the sensations of sex through the mind and not of the sensual body.
Several children were born in a test tube, adapting them to future situations and raising those working in the basement from a fetus in a dark room. Others who would be soldiers were taught by electroshocks not to appreciate nature, flowers, and wild animals.
Beyond context, the fascination of this literature is that Aldous described all this writing around 1913, when the world was still preparing for the first great world war, trench warfare, without any technology. No one dared to think, much less talk about test-tube children, and sensory terminals were unimaginable; humanity had barely gotten used to the telephone. There was no television; cinema was recently released by the genius Chaplin, still in black and white and mute.
In the book, Aldous mentions a region that would protect from the state's power, where wholly savage people lived, preserving customs of food, sex, and freedom unrelated to the present stage. This charming place, described by Huxley in that fiction written in the moments of his hallucination, was Brazil, with its forests and people.
In Brave New World, Aldous describes a perfect society, possibly located in Europe, dominated by a single ruler, where the state distributed a drug called SOMA to the citizens. All had a very calm life, without stress, which helped discipline all inhabitants. In addition to this collective doping strategy, the state provided cinemas where the audience connected to the sensory terminals. It accompanied the films, directly knowing sensations, taste, and smell from the screen. The sex is divided into two parts, one for pleasure and another for prosecution. The latter depended on state authorization. The first was free since there was no sensual coition, i.e., no direct contact between people, which eliminated the carnal intercourse of relationships, connecting to individual terminals, conveying the sensations of sex through the mind and not of the sensual body.
Several children were born in a test tube, adapting them to future situations and raising those working in the basement from a fetus in a dark room. Others who would be soldiers were taught by electroshocks not to appreciate nature, flowers, and wild animals.
Beyond context, the fascination of this literature is that Aldous described all this writing around 1913, when the world was still preparing for the first great world war, trench warfare, without any technology. No one dared to think, much less talk about test-tube children, and sensory terminals were unimaginable; humanity had barely gotten used to the telephone. There was no television; cinema was recently released by the genius Chaplin, still in black and white and mute.
In the book, Aldous mentions a region that would protect from the state's power, where wholly savage people lived, preserving customs of food, sex, and freedom unrelated to the present stage. This charming place, described by Huxley in that fiction written in the moments of his hallucination, was Brazil, with its forests and people.