Soma
For those who have read Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, you are likely familiar with Soma. A drug that releases the user into a blissful, catatonic state. Life is difficult, take a Soma. Need a break, go on a Soma vacation. It is the solution for any hardship, whether physical or mental.
In the world of the novel, there is no hardship, no stress, everything is orderly, everyone is free to live out their pleasure filled lives. A pleasure fueled by the blissful emptiness of Soma, oblivious to whatever reality resides beyond their walls.
Soma is more than just a drug, it’s a mindset. It’s a numbing of the self to the world around us. Soma is the rejection of care, of compassion, it is a system shut down in order to protect us from hardship.
Sounds appealing, doesn’t it?
Without Soma, how numb can we make ourselves? How blind to the world? How deaf to the cries of our neighbors? How quickly, how tightly can we close our eyes?
It’s tempting to shut ourselves off, disconnect ourselves from the world. In a society that prioritizes “self-care”, it is just too difficult to let ourselves care. Isn’t it better to simply care about our own circles, our families? Batten down the hatches, and protect what is yours. After all, if it doesn’t affect you, why should you care?
I’ll admit, it’s a question I struggle with myself: if caring causes me suffering, why should I care? Wouldn’t it be better to disconnect? Practice serenity, worry only about what I have power over?
But there is so much going on and every time I look up something worse is happening and I’ve been grinding my teeth and my shoulders are straining from constantly being tense and I have not stopped being angry for weeks and I am exhausted and overwhelmed at the pace of everything and I’m frustrated at the people around me who don’t seem to understand what is going on or who feign ignorance, or joyfully cheer on what’s happening as if they live in a parallel world where up is down and fascism is freedom and how in the world can people be so fucking blind and what does it even mean when there’s no objective truth anymore, does anything even have any meaning or is all of this just absolutely pointless and if it’s pointless then what the hell am I even doing anymore —
God, what I wouldn’t give for a Soma holiday. The idea of being able to shut off my brain, pause time, sounds like a sublime slice of heaven to me.
In reality, what responsibility do I have to the world?
None, right?
I mean, if we are all just random bipedal organisms thrust onto a spinning ball of rock floating miraculously through an unfathomably infinite space, what, in the grand scheme of things, am I?
I am nothing.
So, why bother?
It is easy to intellectualize nihilism. It’s easy to take an easy way out: life is hard and nothing I can do will make any real impact, so therefore it’s best to do nothing.
Objectively, this is a sound argument, and following it would sure as hell save me a good deal of grief.
As always, the answer lies in history.
History is full of those who rejected the objective ambivalence of the universe, who looked at the odds stacked against them and declared, “I need to at least try.”
The odds are stacked against me, but I need to at least try.
So, I’m going to try, but how then do I manage my sanity?
Here’s the part that’s going to sound extremely cheesy:
My girls:
In many ways my family is both my refuge from the world and my motivation to persist despite it.
They are their own kind of Soma that, instead of numbing me, innoculates me, prepares me for the toxicity that exists outside my door.
It’s possible that without them I perhaps would fall to nihilism and the seeking of a more artificial Soma. But as it is, when I wonder, “Why fight? Why bother?” It’ll always be their faces that will both spur me to action, and guide me home.
So, with the odds stacked against me, I need to at least try.
