In Aldous Huxley’s 1932 classic novel, Brave New World, the government keeps citizens in line with soma, a drug described as having “all of the benefits of Christianity and alcohol without their defects.” The “original” soma, of course, was a legendary Vedic drink said to convey immortality.
Personally, I wonder if the current candidate for “soma” might not be the IPhone/Android/whatever handheld electronic communications/entertainment device. Everywhere I look, people are buried in those devices. They walk totally absorbed in such devices through city streets and college campuses, cross streets and often get hit, ignore crossing gates and get killed by trains… or they text while driving or doing something else.
In nearby St. George, earlier this year, a fifty-year-old woman was speeding and texting. She hit another car, throwing it onto the sidewalk where it killed a man and so severely injured his wife that she had fractured bones all over her body, had to have her skull rebuilt, and suffered 15,000 stitches. The texting driver has been charged with vehicular homicide and assault and faces up to 15 years in prison.
Every single day in the United States, there’s another spate of accidents and fatalities or injuries resulting from texting or from using some handheld electronic device, despite the proliferation of laws against use while driving. Yet, for all the publicity, for all the laws, the possible legal consequences or even death from usage in the wrong places, the near-total absorption in such devices by tens of millions of Americans continues. Why? It’s not as though people don’t know the dangers.
Could it be addiction?
Just look at people. If they’re not on the device, they’re always checking it, and when they get a signal that “something” is arriving on their device, their faces light up in anticipation. It’s the sort of look that people in love once displayed upon seeing their significant other, and I’m not sure that even happens any more. More and more often, since Cedar City is a university town, we see couples together in public places. More than a decade ago, they use to talk to each other. Now they’re silent, sitting together, yet totally alone, each on his or her electronic device, seemingly oblivious to their partner.
And, as for those messages… well… lately some parents of young people who’ve died in accidents while texting have published those texts… and they’re all absolutely trivial. There’s nothing earth-shattering, or even interesting. Yet there’s obviously something more addictive about being electronically connected than being personally connected. Otherwise all those couples would be talking to each other rather than texting someone else. And, frighteningly, in some cases they’re actually texting each other. This gets you closer?
From what I’ve seen, the electronic communications craze isolates people. The other day, my wife and I wanted to invite an acquaintance and his wife to a party. We see them on and off, but when we tried to call them, we discovered both their landlines had been disconnected. He didn’t answer his office line or the message left on it. Nor did he even open the email offering the invitation. We still haven’t been able to reach them. And frankly, I don’t think I should have to drive over to their house some three miles away and knock on their door to invite them. Besides, they’re likely so engrossed in their electronic diversions that they might not even answer the door.
This is far from unusual. Several of our grown offspring have disconnected their landlines. But the problem with all this is simple – no one can reach you who doesn’t already know your number…or your Facebook name or account [and, dinosaur that I am, I refuse to do social media]. If you’re so into your handheld device that you don’t look at anyone around you and aren’t accessible to anyone who already doesn’t know you… how can your circle of true friends and acquaintances do anything but shrink. Given social media, the only online “friends” you’re likely to get are people who think exactly as you do. And all that means is that social polarization and individual isolation are increasing with the growth and addiction to electronic soma.
Orwell’s soma made the routine of his Brave New World bearable, and apparently the handheld device of choice is doing something similar for people today, but unlike the Vedic soma, reputed to convey immortality, the most likely outcomes of excessive electronic soma are social polarization, growing physical isolation and an early death because sooner or later the outside world will crash into you, or you into it, in some form or another.