Matthew Pye - Plato Tackles Climate Change

Soma so good

Here is the big irony to bring this section about truth decay to a close.

In the first half of the 20th century, and in the aftermath of the World Wars, the US government was anxious to curb the evidently violent and irrational instincts of human beings and sought to bring about something placid and constructive. One World War was bad enough, but having to bludgeon our way through a Second World War really did pose some uncomfortable questions about human nature.

The US turned to the psychiatric insights of Freud’s nephew, Edward Bernays to help them understand the chaotic and destructive forces that must be at work under the surface of things. Apart from leading the push for the establishment of legal frameworks for peace through the United Nations, they also invested millions of dollars in mollifying our primal instincts through the soft comforts of consumerism.

However, here is the irony. That pacification of our human impulses had the double effect of dulling both our critical thinking skills and our civic skills. So now, as we face a new existential threat, we somehow can’t really see it. When we look at it, our minds are so doped up on ‘Soma’ (129) that we do not really react to it.

For the moment, far too many people see increased recycling and reduced plastics as somehow relevant to the sheer scale of the dangers we are in. The gigantic churning up of the earth for resource extraction continues to accelerate, as does the pace of the planet’s bio-diversity loss. The asymmetry between the science and our actions is so pronounced that clear-minded, mature and highly educated people have started to give up their jobs and glue themselves to trains and buildings.

How utterly bizarre that such an action is so rational.

(129) “Soma”, (Sanskrit, “सोम”) is an ancient ritual Vedic drink made from an uncertain plant base. What is certain is that this drink produced hallucinogenic thoughts. It is the pill that is popped by those in Huxley’s Brave New World for those moments when their thoughts and emotions need soothing.