A Nation On Soma Wakes Up

One catastrophe at a time.

For the last few nights, I’ve been watching A Brave New World. I see a fictional culture popping pills whenever they have a feeling that is unapproved. If they feel sad, they have a pill. If they feel angry, they pop a pill. Everyone has a pill dispenser that clicks when a pill is dispensed. Feelings are hot potatoes. Pills make them go away. They call those pills, Soma.

The nation I live in now kind of looked like that, before the pandemic. Sometimes, when the news is on TV, I’d see the ads for drugs. The drugs had…