Mind Control Through Pharmacology
How addiction to social media is destroying our lives
Huxley’s hypothesis mirrors the insidious implementation of providing dopamine surges through electronic devices. This is comparable to a pharmacological method with a purpose to distract and control how people interact. We have been thrust into a virtual world, that mimics reality in such a way that we spend our days engrossed by technology without recognizing certain trends and events that are at play that are not in this United States’ best interest.
Furthermore, the news media self-selects the information they broadcast: creating news that are “stories,” instead of upholding the integrity of objective information. Simultaneously, social control reduces our freedoms by employing propaganda, spying and data mining our every move. This narrows our frame of reference, instituting new social norms where people are being silenced by what is called “groupthink,” a concept of which people cling to limited ideas, and are silenced if they question what it is, they hear.
The Illusion
We are caught in an illusion of togetherness when we converse online. Days pass quickly as the all-mighty computer consumes are actions. It feels like we are not alone. Our conversations feel like true substitutes for real relationships. However, one thing is amiss: physicality. Humans are social creatures. Like all mammals, we need to be with one another to thrive. The isolation of the computer seduces the mind by fueling our time with compulsiveness and boredom while our liberties are being taken away.
How many times a day to we check our phones? Waiting, hoping for something to increase endorphins. However, the computer never really satisfies. It gives the gift of insatiability where there is never enough and the user is always wanting more. And in that period of wanting…life passes by.
Humans are a Species of Mammals not Robots
Most mammals run in packs to assure safety and the ability to procreate the next generations. Togetherness is the reason for living: without it, the mammal would surely die. Human beings are not the elite. They are mammals, too. Mammals that have forgotten their basic needs to function and thrive.
Every living organism on this earth’s ultimate objective is trying to remain alive. That is how the world exists. Humans surpassed this mode and what was left became ingenuity, creativity, and insanity. The basis for neurosis dwells in the separation in which we connect to our online relationships, in our comments as well as passing around propaganda as the truth. It is the possibility that we are destroying are species because we stepped out of the line of what was natural: staying with the pack, caring for one another, and fighting for the existence of the whole rather than the individual.
Barbaric Words
As the years pass in the is the digital age, people’s hearts become crueler behind the computer. Unnecessary words are exchanged to sustain the level of dopamine that the computer offers. It is dangerous to depend on an external object to feed your soul. The danger lies in not pondering what is within without comparing oneself to what they view on social media.
Creating social media was supposed to be a good idea. But it is has taken over the daily lives of humans, ensnaring us through poignant chemicals that keep us distracted while we stop questioning the real world. We are left in an imaginary maze of toxic overload, reduced freedom, spread by each other, alone.
The Pharmacological Method
The pharmacological method Huxley foresaw in our lives is the drug of social media and high-intensity screens and graphics which serve to stimulate our brains to produce surges of dopamine that far exceeds the normal stimulation that would occur in the course of our daily, mundane lives.
Therefore, the brain’s reward circuits have been hijacked. If left unchecked we could as a society find ourselves bound to our devices in a dependent way. Thus, allowing us to be easily led off the cliff as though we were lemmings.