With soma the citizens of the brave new world can compensate emotional stress. They get their soma-ration every day and swallow it although it shortens their lives. This fact especially appears in the case of the lower caste people. For many people in the brave new world taking soma is like a short holiday after work. Unlike alcohol or tranquillisers soma works positively on the human mind without having side effects or causing hangovers. It is a drug that causes a longer or shorter time of well-being, depending on the amount swallowed. In the brave new world soma is one of the most important scientific inventions. Another possibility is that the name refers to the plant “soma”, which the Hindus produce a drinkable, intoxicating drug from. The word “soma” could be derived from the Latin word somnium which means “the dream” or from somnus, “the sleep”. In the following text these different possibilities of entertainment are explained. Soma causes a feeling of content and helps to prevent negative emotions, the community sing substitutes religion, different sports are there for the sake of fitness and feelings of success, the feelies are a substitute for a variety of feelings and the desire for sex is satisfied by frequent sexual encounters. All these institutions and means have been developed for the society to satisfy basic, human needs. In Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, happiness is supposed to be achieved by increased leisure, such as the consumption of mass-products, by doing sports like electromagnetic “Obstacle Golf”, by frequent sexual encounters with changing partners, 'the feelies', and of course the utopian wonder-drug “soma”.

In 1933 he published the novel Brave New World in which he tries to prove this thesis. In his article he explains, “that increased leisure does not lead to increased culture ”(1). In August 1927 Aldous Huxley wrote an article entitled “Entertainment for the Masses”.

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