After reading Brave New World, the chapters that stick out most in my mind are the final two, in which John Savage and Mustapha Mond have a philosophical argument.
Mond quotes the French philosopher Maine di Biran. The quote says that religion is in response to the threat of loss, old age, and death. I agree with this statement. Mond points out that in this World State society, there is no old age, loss or death. Therefore, there is no need for religion. John believes that if the people of the World State found religion, they would give up their pleasurable vices and become chaste and moral.
John claims that God is the reason for "everything noble and fine and heroic." I agreed with John's views until he expressed this viewpoint. I consider myself agnostic, yet I am definitely a moral person. In fact, I practice a lot of the values that Christianity preaches, I just don't use God to justify my beliefs. They're more personal.
Mond responds with his belief that, "Christianity without tears-that's what soma is." I think that this is one of the most important quotes of the novel. People in the society are obsessed with soma, to the point that many religious people today are obsessed with their religion. With the amount of radical religious people in the world (Radical Evangelicals in the South and Radical Muslims come to mind automatically), it made me wonder if soma is an acceptable replacement for organized religion. With the amount of damage that humans have inflicted on each other in the name of religion (9/11, the Crusades, to name a few), maybe the whole soma idea isn't a bad one after-all.
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