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Aldous Huxley Foresaw America’s Pill-Popping Addiction

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Re: Aldous Huxley Foresaw America’s Pill-Popping Addiction

#51

Post by narag »

drongoking wrote: post #9

I hate to be That Guy Who Argues With Everything, but I will. I'm a big fan of Huxley and Brave New World, but he wasn't particularly visionary with Soma. Drug use goes back as far as humankind does because people have been trying to cope with the stress of life since there have been people. If you're looking for a drug that helps with the anxieties of everyday life, alcohol would have my vote. It's been used for tho…

Also there's a very important difference: Soma is described as non-addictive, no hangover. It's a way to control society but keeping it productive at the same time. Any drug that causes "epidemics" that result in death or defeating from work would be useless. You can argue that it's enough that most people keep working though, even if a fraction gets trashed.

Edit: if anything, social media or other addictive distractions are more like soma.

Re: Aldous Huxley Foresaw America’s Pill-Popping Addiction

#52

Post by narag »

Thorentis wrote: post #43
rtpg wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry but this is not a narrative rooted in reality. People don’t not want kids. Lots of people want kids at the right time. Others want it but find they would be unable to provide for their children due to a generation and a half of wage stagnation, along with women not wanting to have to change their profession to “full time childcare”. Giving people access to childcare is documented to work. There isn’t some magic…

> People don’t not want kids. I'm not sure which Gen Z's you've spoken to recently, but the next generations certainly want kids much less than previous generations. And this trend will only continue. We have seen family sizes continually drop, until now the average is about 2. That will soon drop below 1 where most people do not have children. Give it 30-40 years max.

I'm confused. How is what you say opposed to "people don't want kids"?

Re: Aldous Huxley Foresaw America’s Pill-Popping Addiction

#53

Post by unixhero »

rtpg wrote: post #33
shams93 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is interesting is that the same family owned company that created oxycontin also created valium originally. Amazing to think of how much damage one family owned business has done (Purdue Pharma) to an entire nation.

As someone who has had to deal with restrictions on other drugs I need to function, I’m always a bit reticent to go full in on “this drug is evil” narratives. Is Oxycotin particularly addictive in itself in ways it could otherwise not be? Or is this about general painkiller addiction plus the pharmaceutical company taking advantage of this to push it out too much? In other words, is there a way to tackle this problem…

Who needs that stuff?

Re: Aldous Huxley Foresaw America’s Pill-Popping Addiction

#54

Post by madengr »

claudeganon wrote: post #24
nostrademons wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, Huxley was writing almost a century after the Opium Wars, which managed to reduce the greatest civilization on earth to a bunch of drug addicts within a few decades. Laudanum (10% tincture of opium) was extremely common within the late 19th and early 20th century Anglo-American world. The reason soma continues to resonate in literature is because it reflects fundamental truths of how the world works. Huxley did…

>the Opium Wars which managed to reduce the greatest civilization on earth to a bunch of drug addicts within a few decades. This too sounds familiar... https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-05-22/deadly-ch...

They’ll just switch to carfentanil if fentanyl is stopped. The spice must flow.

Re: Aldous Huxley Foresaw America’s Pill-Popping Addiction

#55

Post by maverick2007 »

The scariest thing in this article to me was buried at the end describing how many of these drugs can be found in the water supply (albeit in mostly trace amounts). Whether you want them or not, it seems like everyone is going to get these medications in trace amounts and who knows what they will do to our bodies over time.

Is there anything that I as an average person can do to remove as many of these chemicals as I can? A special filter?

Re: Aldous Huxley Foresaw America’s Pill-Popping Addiction

#56

Post by wincy »

maverick2007 wrote: post #55

The scariest thing in this article to me was buried at the end describing how many of these drugs can be found in the water supply (albeit in mostly trace amounts). Whether you want them or not, it seems like everyone is going to get these medications in trace amounts and who knows what they will do to our bodies over time. Is there anything that I as an average person can do to remove as many of these chemicals as I…

You could get spring water for really cheap. It’s something like $30 a month. No idea if it actually has less pharmaceuticals in it though.

Re: Aldous Huxley Foresaw America’s Pill-Popping Addiction

#57

Post by wil421 »

larnmar wrote: post #49
nostrademons wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. There's a certain irony how, a century and a half after Britain and the U.S. managed to reduce the greatest civilization on earth to a bunch of drug addicts and trigger a civil war and the fall of the empire, the rump state of that civilization is now reducing the new greatest civilization on earth to a bunch of drug addicts, triggering the fall of its empire and a potential civil war.

Are we overreacting a little? Drug addiction is a serious problem, as it has been for many decades, but it’s not on the verge of collapsing US society. The vast majority of people aren’t addicted to opiates and aren’t going to become addicted to opiates, and of those they are... well, most of them would otherwise be addicted to something else anyway.

Why is this comment getting downvoted?

Re: Aldous Huxley Foresaw America’s Pill-Popping Addiction

#59

Post by hnick »

narag wrote: post #52
Thorentis wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People don’t not want kids. I'm not sure which Gen Z's you've spoken to recently, but the next generations certainly want kids much less than previous generations. And this trend will only continue. We have seen family sizes continually drop, until now the average is about 2. That will soon drop below 1 where most people do not have children. Give it 30-40 years max.

I'm confused. How is what you say opposed to "people don't want kids"?

They were responding to "don't not want" (as in, do want), not "don't want".

Re: Aldous Huxley Foresaw America’s Pill-Popping Addiction

#60

Post by WiseWeasel »

MFLoon wrote: post #27
3fe9a03ccd14ca5 wrote: post #15

Huxley and Orwell saw two dystopian futures in different ways: one, totalitarian and ever watchful government. The other, a society robbed of cognitive and personal agency via societal pressure and medication. When I was young, I thought Orwell's future was the most dangerous an imminent. Then later Huxley, especially once things like "apps" were created. Now I see they both work together to erode liberty. Your cultu…

I'd agree with the spirit of your assertion that both the state, through surveillance and beauracratic control, and the market, through ever increasing share of our attention and hold over our appetites, are having harmful effects on many people. But it's interesting that you frame that harm as 'eroding liberty'. I've recently been reading a book called "Why Liberalism Failed" by Patrick Deneen, which also sees these…

I’d think a Roman or Latin-descendant-language-speaking person would have coined the term, since it's based on the word liber, Latin for “free”. I would also think the ancient Greek word [1] would have been more commonly used in context of freedom from slavery than from any self-imposed restraint (or lack thereof).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleutheria

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