Jesus Loves Me (or maybe I just think that)

Huxley basically hit the nail on the head when it comes to what happens to religion in an age of technology. Religion gets morphed into something entirely different than when it started and people don't really care about it in the same way people cared about it before technology. Unfortunately we don't get to see the thoughts of any religious practitioner besides Bernard, so I'm going to go ahead and just assume that many of them are like him, maybe not in the sense that they don't believe that Ford is coming back, but in the sense that they only go to those meetings because it is what they need to do to be accepted. That's basically what religion is now, some of us go because we believe, others go simply because its how they were raised, which is pretty Huxleyian to me.

This only furthers my agreement with Postman. Huxley's future is the one we should fear, not Orwell's. I mean seriously this discussion of whether or not we are stupider than we used to be or not makes no sense to me. Clearly we are. We are essentially half an inch away from a Huxleyian future and we don't seem to care. Now I'm sure many of you are going to be angry with me and disagree and that's OK with me. I don't quite know how or when we changed into such a Huxleyian society but we surely did. Our society is now based almost entirely on distracting people from the sad state of their lives while hopefully getting them to use consumption as a remedy for any emotion other than happiness. Maybe we don't use soma as much as they do, but surely we use drugs more than they do, and for similar reasons.
This is how we work.

SOCIETY: I'm sorry you lost your job, here take an antidepressant.
MASSES: (swallow pill) awesome I no longer care about anything.
SOCIETY: and we don't have to see you cry.

SOCIETY: You're child appears to have trouble learning, here take this....
MASSES: (swallow pill) my child doesn't have trouble focusing anymore
SOCIETY: and he doesn't interrupt people who can learn nor does he learn anything. He'll make a perfect Epsilon

How it used to, and probably still should, work.

SOCIETY: I'm sorry you lost your job.
MASSES: (continues crying)
SOCIETY: Alright enough get over it.

SOCIETY: Your kid is stupid.
MASSES: (beats child; either it works or the child is actually stupid)
SOCIETY: Good job.

but no, our society hasn't gotten stupid or soft or weak, we merely need drugs for everything and can't accept responsibility for anything.