That's also what I thought - Wasn't Soma more of a way to make people question less and just remain in a blissed out but maybe sort of out of it state at all times ? Seems very different than amphetamines

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phantasmish 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The link (including the transcript of Huxley’s lecture) doesn’t seem to be about Soma, unless I’m missing something. Huxley produced a lot of work outside of Brave New World, lots of it concerned with drugs and altered states of consciousness (so much so that personally I don’t think I’ve done enough drugs to understand his perspective, as I find him distinctly, and almost uniquely among such high-profile authors that I’ve tried, unreadable)

	▲	angadh 6 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		You are vey correct—the talk and link have nothing to do with Soma. I can only presume, based on timing of the talk being 1960, that his thoughts here link to mescaline and the practical utopia he talks of in Island, whose inhabitants make use of a local psychedelic. So whatever he must have said here had more to do with his later perspectives than his feelings around the island.
	▲	Melatonic 6 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		Guess more of us should have read the link more carefully..... oops !
	▲	greekrich92 4 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Fair enough, but I have read Island, The Doors of Perception, and BNW, and none of those books described using uppers or anything about efficiency. Island was psychedelics (fantastic book in my opinion).

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mattgreenrocks 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

So kind of like our social media feeds then?

	▲	phs318u 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I would've said like marijuana.