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A topic of Brave New World, that for me is a very strange thing, is religion. The use of particulat music, and strange instruments (synthetic trumpets, synthetizator), the unbroken repetition of verses, the recitation of prayers that invoke “Ford”, etc.,.. All these elements are the principal characteristics of the religion in this future world, a cult that is a mixture of cult, technology and science. But I think that this isn’t only utopia, fantasy, because Huxley, in 1932, prophesied a lot of social changes that now exist, and the religion described in the book, is very similar to some present New Age cults, and some modern religions. I think that Huxley succeeded perfectly in understanding that the modern culture and the modern society invaded by the progress, could change the traditional scheme of religion, values and virtues, and could transform them in a sort of fusion of technology and liturgy. We can note this topic in the second part of the fifth chapter of the book. I want to give the summary of this part of the book: after a game of Obstacle Golf, Henry and Lenina fly in a helicopter over a crematorium where phosphorous is collected from burning bodies for producing fertilizer. They drink some coffee with soma before heading off to the Westminster Abbey Cabaret. They take another soma dose before they return to Henry's apartment. Although the repeated doses of soma have made them almost completely oblivious to the world around them, Lenina remembers to use her contraceptives.
After Bernard went to the Solidarity Service at the Fordson Community Singery. In this sort of church, “Ford’s Church”, people sit twelve to a table, alternating men and women; while a rousing hymn plays, the participants pass a cup of strawberry ice cream soma and take a soma tablet with it. They work themselves into a frenzy of exultation and the ceremony ends in a sex orgy that leaves Bernard feeling more isolated than ever. And also they invoke “Ford” this modern “Jesus Christ”,
with a long litany repeated many times, in an obsessing way (really, they are under effect of soma, a depressing drugs): “Ford, we are twelve; oh, make us one,/Like drops within the Social River;/
Oh, make us now together run/As swiftly as thy shining Flivver.…/Come, Greater Being, Social Friend,/Annihilating Twelve-in-One!/We long to die, for when we end,/Our larger life has but begun.…/Feel how the Greater Being comes!/Rejoice and, in rejoicing, die!/Melt in the music of the drums!/For I am you and you are I.…/Orgy-porgy, Ford and fun,/Kiss the girls and make them One./Boys at one with girls at peace;/Orgy-porgy gives release”.
The Solidarity Service represent one of method useed by the World State for controlling the people. The use of soma and other drugs is a signal that represents the annihilating of human nature and humane sentiments and love. In this “mass” people do not prove true religious sentiment to their divinity, but prove the effects of drugs. So “Ford” is an artificial, an invented divinity that “some times they can see", with the use of soma, naturally! This is only utopia, of course! Twenty years ago, we could not think that in future such religions might exist! But now, I see a lot of religious sects, a lot of groups and communities that (for me) have some characteristics in common with the religion in B.N.W.. In particular, New Age groups and sects, the sect of Scientology, the Rhael’s sect (a new religion born in this period in USA), and a lot of other groups that I don’t know in details. When I read some documents from the Web about them, I note that the topics and the “dogmas” of these religions are a mystification of science, of technology and so is the fusion of science and religion. For example some groups have the cult of a divinity, and they can speak and listen to this divinity by means of some electric machines; some groups believe in the divinity of “computer”! also, there are some groups inside the New Age movement that use drugs (mariuana, hashish, cocaine, peyote, etc..) for celebrating their mass and their rites! A sect from North America believes in the cult of the fire, and in the celebrations that they do, people are grouped in circles and they pray and sing strange litanies with some oriental instruments. Many of these sects in our world are also illegal sects: Scientology in Italy has been involved in scandals and in economic cheat! So, these sects are also centres control of the society, and many of these groups are cheater!
Don’t you identify many aspects of these religions in BNW religion? Homogenization of people, amalgam of science and cult, all topics of these strange religions! I hope that in future these cults will not stifle the tradition and the sentiments of Cristianity, and I hope that in future the religion will not become an instrument of power.
Giuseppe Cacciotti
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