Bottles and bubbles, soma and scrolling. Is Huxley’s warning to us in Brave New World just a warning anymore?  With wailing sirens in the background being tuned out, the seeds of “development” have creepingly been planting themselves right under our noses, bombarding us with the curse of endless information and a rose-tinted veil of passivity as an invisible villain pushes us to the brink of a dangerous culture of social conformity. Neil Postman’s view of our society as a sort of “parallel universe” reflection of Brave New World emulates a prediction of time travel: no matter how hard we try to convince ourselves that Huxley was a fool for feelies and soma rations, we all have cell phones and Snapchat.

The unavoidable “progress'' of society is as unmovable and certain as the forces of gravity and time. It cannot be halted or altered to one’s own will. It is inescapable, thickening around us with every step forward, with the owning of social media being directly correlated to our social status. As we trudge through the thickening quicksand of compliance, every painstaking step we accomplish to take is met with another cruel douse of sticky goop. In a haughty and brave attempt, I took one of these steps. I deleted Tik Tok last July. It was a personal decision and a good one at that. It was a decision made by the individual in her own interest. Very recently, however, a trickle of that sticky slime has been encroaching on the pristine confidence of being responsible and independent for my own decisions, when a friend expressed disapproval at this (not surprisingly, through text). Her response to my confession simply being “No,” with a sarcastic smile, the verdict was clear. Not having social media makes me an outcast. This makes me wonder: are our decisions now based upon whether we will get social approval or not? 

Many others face this dilemma every day, consciously or not, but unlike me, the chains of social acceptability bind you with a counterfeit smile, coercing you to stay on with another interesting video, and another, and another, until you forget that you ever wanted to get off of it. This is the danger of mass societal identity. When the gravity of progression pulls the mud into every crevice of society, it leaves the ones untouched as aliens. Huxley reflected this in a biological context, where human beings physically look the same, but the extent of the bonds of social conformity is very clear in the description of Bernard’s refusal to take soma. Social media is our soma. We swallow it mechanically, when we’re nervous, when we’re stressed, when we’re sad, when we’re happy. And why not? It takes us on a nice trip away from our reality, through hallucinations of colorful images and pleasant songs, and creates a collective mass identity due to the overwhelming chunk of the population that take these trips multiple times a day. So of course, if you do not, the conformed others question your societal status, and oust you, just like Bernard. 

But why, you may ask, is it so easy to shun someone on such a trivial basis? Why is it so easy to discredit an entire person based on one menial decision? The answer lies in a domino effect that has led to the reality of “cancel culture” that we experience now, in an eerily similar way to how it is carried out in Brave New World. When people come to rely on the pillows of technology, their own bodies become too weak to hold themselves up, which leads to a cycle that causes them to look to even more technology to solve their problems. Over time, peoples’ judgments have degenerated from a state influenced by their own synthesis (to whatever arguable extent their ideas are their own) to one influenced by a mass consciousness that is formed through the extensive communication and connection of people on social media, most notably, TikTok and Instagram. Much to my fear, and a little to my fascination, I noticed this process of complacency flowering and taking root in my own brain when I downloaded Instagram last October. Seeing and hearing about the same outfits, the same brands, the same poses, the same hairstyles, the same crystals, the same necklaces, the same faces, the same bodies, and the same songs muddled my diverse thinking into one brown, synchronous blob. Postman would agree that this is barely different from the culture of “communal mass identity” in Brave New World, where an individual is seen as a piece of a whole, almost like a distinct and fixed piece in a puzzle rather than a separate entity with complex traits by themselves. This trend of unilateral and shallow thinking is a manifestation of the broader trend of complacency that has been dampening the sparks of our complex thought and judgment. The attitude of “Why do I have to know where different countries are? I have Google!” is extremely threatening to the strength and fitness of our abstract thought, because if we always have a plush, reliable pillow to fall on, why would we ever make the conscious decision to sit up straight? It is this telltale human desire for pleasure and comfort that is leading us to our doom. 

We are constantly surrounded by the plush cushion of our phones, television, the news, movies, media, and advertising that we are pawns in a simulation. This reality aligns with Postman’s observation that our subjugation is imposed by a crushing abundance of information, rather than an Orwellian deprivation of it.  We live in a distorted bubble of comfort and false reality that reduces us to immobile technology-dependent blobs. Just when they ran out of things to exploit, our brains have been hacked and programmed with the hypnopaedia of constant advertising in a consumer-driven society. “Buy these new, trendy clothes!”, shouts Instagram when you are half-heartedly scrolling. “You need this mermaid-tail blanket that also turns into a hoodie!”, pushes Amazon in that annoying square when you are trying to do your homework. Buzz! “We think you’ll like these jeans!”, says Hollister unsolicitedly. Our brains have been made into a playground for companies to toy with and dance upon, embedding their gimmicks into our consciousness so that we see them as a “normal part of life.” The consequences? Useless buying, more money to companies, more advertising, more useless buying. “Save money, live better.” “Everyone’s happy nowadays.” “Open happiness.” “The more stitches, the less riches.” “Impossible is nothing.” Can you tell which of these are hypnopaedic phrases and which ones are company slogans? The eerie similarity between them is no coincidence. Our society is taking an alternate route to the same destination seen in Brave New World, and there is no denying it. 

However, some of us do attempt to deny this truth and argue, “But we are not soulless monsters! We can think for ourselves!” But can we really? When society as a whole takes a heartbeat to shun anyone that does not conform with the norm, is each person thinking for themselves? When someone decides that they will use Google to cheat on a test rather than learning the material, are they thinking for themselves? When you impulsively buy a Snuggie based on an exaggerated infomercial, are you thinking for yourself? The answer is no. Technology, distractions, and consumerism have been thinking for us, and have corrupted our minds so that they eventually will be laid obsolete, and we will be like Epsilon semi-morons mindlessly doing our tasks and ending the day on our soma ration. We feed and feed on the sweet end of the stick, grabbing for more and more and more, but eventually, we will reach the sour end. The desire for more “sweet” is what we call “progress”, but we lose our identity, consciousness, and judgment in the process.