Introduction
Materialism strips away self-agency. The will of the strong can divorce themselves from comfortability, and therefore consumerism. Having a given sense of liberty and choice but ensconced by feathers of pleasure, comfort, and endless joy mitigates the totality of the human condition passed from Adam. The world’s vices contain us moderns, and distract us from achieving Jungian apotheosis, true individuation. Of course, some escape this materialistic fantasy, but the slothic vices are often too difficult to expunge from our daily lives. Surely the American Dream was a phantasm of modernised slavery.
Discussion
Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and Huxley’s Brave New World paint a contrast between overt control and covert control. Which of these two dystopias would be more difficult to challenge? Which world grasps your soul and faculties of will more than the other? Nineteen Eighty-Four’s government is overt in its control; totalitarianism in this society propagates lies, and monopolises control over overt instincts: fear, seeking, play, and lust. Conversely, Brave New World has a society that amplifies the Pankseppian instinct of play and lust – further desensitising the human spirit and lulling them into submission (unknowingly of course!) Brave New World is a clean playground that makes it a difficult place to critique. It is prosperous, organised, and the needs of the masses are fulfilled, although superficially. Nineteen Eighty-Four however is an obvious and hate-filled dystopia that includes the perpetual boot of might, yet Brave New World is obfuscated enough to be a utopia. Nineteen Eighty-Four somewhat permits a hero’s journey to occur, but Brave New World emasculates and taints this journey. To break free from the Brave New World would optically shatter your persona and image. You would absolutely be seen as unstable, or schizophrenic, or even labelled as a “conspiracy theorist.” But the truth is that Brave New World’s society is the ultimate primordial chrysalis of comfort. To escape that overly pleasurable womb of comfort would entail a metamorphosis so significant that individuation would be made possible.
Discussion: Eden
The Garden of Eden is the ultimate utopia. It is a naïve womb where ignorance propagates, and knowledge of one-self is sheltered by those in charge. Like light that escapes a black hole, knowledge is pulled away from Eden. But I say to you, there is a snake in every perceived utopia. There is always a temptation to break away from perfection so that you can individuate into someone that is truly you – away from culture. This perennial and guiding myth is symbolic of the human condition – Adam’s fate. Perhaps the Adam instinct is stronger than Pankseppian…it is pressured to come out eventually under a seemingly perfected environment.
Conclusion
Excessive comfort from culture is synonymous with the idea of perverting the Pankseppian instincts. Excessive comfort is a covert catalyst which aims to weaken one’s free will more so than an overt, dogmatic society. When true free will is hindered biopsychologically, so too is individuation halted indefinitely. And because of this, somewhere down the line of a society that behaves like Brave New World will succumb to a place that is devoid of novelty. And this absence of novelty will only evolve the society into a world of sameness.