Alduos Huxley's New Relevance
A televised interview with the late Mike Wallace in 1958 is making the rounds. Huxley outlines how dictators will lead their subjects to accept and embrace their circumstances.
Most of you probably were required to read Aldous Huxley's dystopian "Brave New World" in college, perhaps high school. I recall it being paired (contrasted with) in college with B.F. Skinner’s “Beyond Freedom and Dignity.” Huxley was no fan of Skinner. Published in 1932 before the rise of Nazism. Also, before Stalinism inspired George Orwell’s “1984,” it remains a classic. It later inspired a television series. Here’s a very brief summary courtesy of britannica.com:
Brave New World is set in 2540 CE, which the novel identifies as the year AF 632. AF stands for “after Ford,” as Henry Ford’s assembly line is revered as god-like; this era began when Ford introduced his Model T. The novel examines a futuristic society, called the World State, that revolves around science and efficiency. In this society, emotions and individuality are conditioned out of children at a young age, and there are no lasting relationships because “every one belongs to every one else” (a common World State dictum).
I recently came across an interview with the late Mike Wallace of CBS/60 Minutes fame conducted with Huxley in 1958. Huxley had just published a series of essays about the "enemies of freedom," later republished in a book entitled, “Brave New World Revisited.”
"Most ignorance is vincible ignorance. We don't know because we don't want to know."
- Aldous Huxley
Wallace asks how these "enemies" will come to power. Huxley wasn't right about everything. He thought overpopulation was a problem then, a popularized notion. He feared that resources would be overwhelmed (Paul Ehrlich's discredited theory also) since the world’s population was then doubling faster than ever, with no vision about how technology and innovation would more than keep up (and it has). Further, as demographers tell us, as populations become wealthier, birth rates drop. And then there is China. Sadly, that notion has returned.
Huxley quotes Orwell's equally prescient "1984." I've queued up Wallace's question that leads to his fascinating answer - that future tyrants would not use force but “chemical” and other forms of persuasion to make people accept their situation. Cannabis legalization for recreational use, anyone? But plenty of other pharmacological devices are moving us in that direction.
“Education for freedom must begin by stating facts and enunciating values, and must go on to develop appropriate techniques for realizing the values and for combating those who, for whatever reason, choose to ignore the facts or deny the values.”— Aldous Huxley
The World Economic Forum - Davos - is meeting this week. Its leader, Bond villain Klaus Schwab, has famously envisioned a world where “you will own nothing, and you will be happy.”
I used to think Huxley was mainly wrong. Not anymore.
By the way, Brave New World is supposed to be fiction, not an instruction manual. In reality, it is a warning, more prescient than ever.
The interview starts at the 10-minute mark.