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First
of all, I like to underline that this subject has been choosed,
because I think that the drug is a big problem that involve the
entire humanity. I will try to give my opinion taking in
consideration also the Aldous Huxley’s book: Brave New World.
This writer borns in Surrey, England. He majored in literature at
Oxford College. His first experience was just after his
university: journalism. Huxley wrote four volumes of poems before
his first novel Chrome Yellow (1921). Huxley wrote 45 novels
including Brave New World that established his fame. Brave New
World is a science fiction book. We can say that the principal
motto of Aldous Huxley’s utopian World State is “Community,
Identity, Stability”. Everyone consumes daily grams of soma, to
fight depression. Soma is really the fundamental image of social
and behavior control. Some drugs dull, stupefy and sedate. Others
sharpen, animate and intesify. After take soma, one can apparently
drift pleasantly off to sleep. For example: Bernard Marx, for
instance, takes four tablets of soma to pass away a long plane
journey to the Reservation in New Mexico. When he arrive at the
Reservation, his friend Lenina, swallows half a gramme of soma
when she begins to tire of the Warden’s lecture. In BNW, people
resort to soma when they feel depressed, angry or have intrusive
negative thoughts. They take it because thier lives, like society
itself, are empty of spirituality or higher meaning. Soma keeps
the population comfortable with their lot. Soma also shows
physiological tolerance. Another example is Linda, the savage’s
mother, that takes too much: up twenty grammes a day. Taken in
excess, soma acts as a respiratory depressant. Linda eventually
dies of an overdose.
Some
assertions about soma in BNW:
“All
the advantages of Christianity and alcohol; none of their defects.”
“...there
is always soma, delicious soma, half a gramme for a half-holiday,
a gramme for a week-end, to grammes for a trip to the gorgeous
East, there for a dark eternity on the moon...”
“Benito
was notoriously good-natured. People said of him that he could
have got through life without ever touching soma. The malice and
bad tempers from which other people had to take holidays never
afflicted him. Reality for Benito was always sunny.”
“you
do look glum! What you need is a gramme of soma.”
“Soma
was served with the coffee. Lenina took two half-gramme tablets
and henry three.”
“the
warm, the richly coloured, the infinitely friendly world of
soma-holiday. How kind, how good-looking, how delightfully amusing
every one was!”
“By
this time the soma had begun to work. Eyes shone, cheeks were
flushed, the inner light of universal benevolence broke out on
every face in happy, friendly smiles. Even Bernard felt himself a
little melted.”
(from
Brave New World)
As
I mentioned above, my intention was to compare the Aldous
Huxley’s romance to our society, we know in fact that today the
drug is one of the must bigger problem in the world. Its
popularisation probably begging around ’60, through the music
and mass media. Maybe it was for this reason that the most users
in this word (drug’s word) are the young people. Drugs are
probably the fastest growing trade, except maybe the internet. It
is a billion-dollar industry. In most countries, there is
drug-related crime. People on drugs will steal, sell their bodies,
kill, do anything, to find money for their habit. Usually the
people started taking drugs, mainly cannabis. Although they
usually enjoyed the feeling it gave, they soon realised that the
drugs could not really satisfy them.
For
some countries, drugs it’s the principal economic income. Place
like Bolivia or Columbia live with the drugs industry giving food
to their people. It’s an easy and quick way to get money. At
moment, no-one has destroyed the drugs implantation and their
criminal organisation, due to the bigger profit present at every
institution level: politici, police officer and finally the single
distributors. To convince all this people to convert the drugs
organisation in one healty consumable product it’s an utopian.
Maybe the idea to sell the drugs in the supermarkets, at low
price, can reduce the interest of many criminal chaps, but it will
create for sure more new users. I am not ready to give any
suggestions on the related topics. I hope to be away from it for
all my life.
FRANCESCO
PAOLELLA |
