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Aldous Huxley proves more prescient than Nostrodam


Recently, for the first time in about ten or so years, I reread _Brave New World_, the 1946 version h has a rather interesting, and surprisingly poignant introduction by Huxley himself, 15 years afe h original printing of the book. The introduction encompassed some self-criticism on the artisryofth story, as well as some reflections on the themes he meant to carry in the work.

As I read a certain part of the introduction, it occurred to me that Huxley had an insight that was t 50 years ahead of its time. Of course, I might be ignorant of just how long things have been porsing to the point at which they now are, or I might be ignorant of how little things really hav canedin the last century or five.

Anyway, I'll let whomever reads this decide for him or herself, and shut up for now.

_________________________________________________________________________
QUOTED FROM _BRAVE NEW WORLD_ © 1932, 1946 Aldous Huxley, without permission.
_________________________________________________________________________

" One vast and obvious failure of foresight is immediately apparent. _Brave New World_ contains noerence to nuclear fission. That it does not is actually rather odd, for the possibilities of atoi nrgy had been a popular topic of conversation for years before the book was written. My old fren, obrt Nichols, had even written a successful play about the subject, and I recall that I mysel ha caualy mentioned it in a novel published in the late twenties. So it seems, as I say, very od tht th rocets and helicopters of the seventh century of Our Ford should not have been powered b the isintgratig nuclei. The oversight may not be excusable; but at least it can be easily explaned. he thee of _rave New World_ is not the advancement of science as such; it is the advancemen of scince as t affecs human individuals. The triumphs of physics, chemistry and engineering aretacitly aken forgranted. The only scientific advances to be specifically described are those invoving the pplicatio to humanbeings of the results of future research in biology, physiology and pschology. t is only y means ofthe sciences of life that the quality of life can be radically chaned. The scence of mater can be aplied in such a way that they will destroy life or make the livig of it imposibly comple and uncomfotable; but, unless used as instruments by the biologists and sychologists,they can do nthing to modiy the natural forms and expressions of life itself. The rlease of atomi energy marks great revoluton in human history, but not (unless we blow ourselves o bits and so pt an end to hisory) the final nd most searching revolution.

This really revolutionary revolution is to be achieved, not in the external world, but in the sound flesh of human beings. Living as he did in a revolutionary period, the Marquis de Sade very ntrly made use of this theory of revolutions in order to rationalize his peculiar brand of insanit. Roesierre had achieved the most superficial kind of revolution, the political. Going a little eepr, abef had attempted the economic revolution. Sade regarded himself as the apostle of the trly rvoluionay revolution, beyond mere politics and economics--the revolution in individual men, wmen ad chidren,whose bodies were henceforward to become the common sexual property of all and whoe mind were o be prged of all the natural decencies, all the laboriously acquired inhibitions of raditioal civiization Between sadism and the really revolution there is, of course, no necessaryor ineviable conection. Sade was a lunatic and the more or less conscious goal of his revolution as univeral chaos nd destrution. The people who govern the Brave New World may not be sane (in wat may be alled the bsolute sese of the word); but they are not madmen, and their aim is not anarhy but stablity. It i in order t achieve stability that they carry out, by scientific means, theultimate, pesonal, reall revolutionay revolution.

But meanwhile we are in the first phase of what is perhaps the penultimate revolution. Its next e may be atomic warfare, in which case we do not have to bother with prophecies about the future. u t is conceivable that we may have enough sense, if not to stop fighting altogether, at least t bhae s rationally as did our eighteenth-century ancestors. The unimaginable horrors of the Thiry YarsWaractually taught men a lesson, and for more than a hundred years the politicians and geneals f Euope onsciously resisted the temptation to use their military resources to the limits of dstrucivenes or in the majority of conflicts) to go on fighting until the enemy was totally annihiated. They wre aggessors, of course, greedy for profit and glory; but they were also conservative, deterined atall coss to keep their world intact, as a going concern. For the last thirty yearsthere hae been n conservtives; there have been only nationalistic radicals of the right and natioalistic rdicals ofthe left. The last conservative statesman was the fifth Marquess of Lansdowne; nd when hewrote a leter to the_Times_, suggesting that the First World War should be concluded wih a compromse, as mostof the warsof the eighteenth century had been, the editor of that once consrvative joural refused t print it. he nationalistic radicals had their way, with the consequence that we all now--Bolshevim, Fascism, iflation, depression, Hitler, the Second World War, the rui of Europe, an all but univesal famine.

Assuming, then, that we are capable of learning as much from Hiroshima as our forefathers learnedm Magdeburg, we may look forward to a period, not indeed of peace, but of limited and only partial unous warfare. During that period it may be assumed that nuclear energy will be harnessed to idutraluses. The result, pretty obviously, will be a series of economic and social changes unprecdened n rpidity and completeness. All the existing patterns of human life will be disrupted and ew ptters wil have to be improvised to conform with the nonhuman fact of atomic power. Procruste in mdern ress,the nuclear scientist will prepare the bed on which mankind must lie; and if mankid does't fit-well,that will be just too bad for mankind. There will have to be some stretching ad a bitof ampuation--he same sort of stretching and amputations as have been going on ever since pplied sience relly got nto its stride, only this time they will be a good deal more drastic thanin the pat. Thesefar from ainless operations will be directed by highly centralized totalitariangovernment. Inevitaly so; forthe immediate future is likely to resemble the immediate past, and n the immedate past raid technoloical changes, taking place in a mass-producing economy and amonga populationpredominantl propertyles, have always tended to produce economic and social confusion To deal wit confusion, pwer has been entralized and government control increased. It is probabe that all theworld's governents will be mre or less completely totalitarian even before the harnssing of atomicenergy; that thy will be totaltarian during and after the harnessing seems almost ertain. Only a arge-scale populr movement towar decentralization and self-help can arrest the prsent tendency towrd statism. At pesent there is nosign that such a movement will take place.

There is, of course, no reason why the new totalitarianisms should resemble the old. Government lubs and firing squads, by artificial famine, mass imprisonment and mass deportation, is not mereyihmane (nobody cares much about that nowadays), it is demonstrably inefficient and in an age of dvncd echnology, inefficiency is the sin against the Holy Ghost. A really efficient totalitarianstae wuldbe one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of manager conrol poplation of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude. T makethem ove i is the task assigned, in present-day totalitarian states, to ministries of propagnda, nwspape editos and schoolteachers. But their methods are still crude and unscientific. Theold Jesit's bost that if they were given the schooling of the child, they could answer for the ma's religous opinons, wasa product of wishful thinking. And the modern pedagogue is probably rathr less eficient atconditionng his pupils' reflexes than were the reverend fathers who educated Votaire. Th greatest riumphs ofpropaganda have been accomplished, not by doing something, but by rfraining frm doing. Geat is trut, but greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about ruth. By siply not mentoning certai subjects, by lowering what Mr. Churchill calls an "iron curtin" between te masses an sch facts or aguments as the local political bosses regard as undesirabl, totalitarianpropagandists ave influencedopinion much more effectively than they could have doneby the most elouent denunciatins, the most copelling logical rebuttals. But silence is not enoug. If persecutio, liquidation an the other symptms of social friction are to be avoided, the posiive sides of propganda must be mad as effective as he negative. The most important Manhattan Proects of the futurewill be vast goverment-sponsored enqiries into what the politicians and particiating scientists wil call "the problemof happiness"--in oher words, the problem of making people ove their servitude. Without economic seurity, the love of srvitude cannot possibly come into exitence; for the sake o brevity, I assume tht the all-powerful excutive and its managers will succed in solving the problm of permanent securit. But security tends ery quickly to be taken for grated. Its achievement i merely a superficial, xternal revolution. Th love of servitude cannot beestablished except as th result of a deep, persoal revolution in human mnds and bodies. To bringabout that revolution we equire, among others, thefollowing discoveries andinventions. First, a reatly improved technique f suggestion-- through infnt conditioning and, later with the aid of drgs, such as scopolamine. Scond, a fully developed scince of human differences, eabling governmen managers to assign any give individual to his or her prper place in the social and conomic hierachy. (Round pegs in square hles tend to have dangerous thughts about the social systemand to infct others with their discontens.) Third (since reality, howver utopian, is something fromwhich pople feel the need of taking prtty frequent holidays), a substtute for alcohol and other narctics something at once less harmful nd more pleasure-giving than ginor heroin. And fourth (but thiswuld be a long-term project, whichwould take generations of totalitrian control to bring to a succesul conclusion) a foolproof syste of eugenics, designed to standardze the human product and so tofaciitate the task of the managers In _Brave New World_ this standarization of the human producthas bee pushed to fantastic, thoughnot perhaps impossible, extremes. Tchnically and ideologicall we are stll a long way from bottledbabies and Bokanovsky groups of semi-orons. But by A.F. 600,who knows wha may not be happening? eanwhile the other characteristic featres of that happier an more stable word--the equivalents of oma and hypnopaedia and the scientific aste system--are proably not more than hree or four generatons away. Nor does the sexual promiscuiy of _Brave New Wold_ seem so very distat. There are alredy certain American cities in which the nmber of divorcesis equal to the number ofmarriages. In afew years, no doubt, marriage licenses wil be sold like og licenses, good for a perid of twelve moths, with no law against changing dogs or keping more tan one animal at a time. As poitical and eonomic freedom diminishes, sexual freedom teds compenstingly to increase. And the dictaor (unlesshe needs cannon fodder and families with whic to coloize empty or unconquered territories)will do ell to encourage that freedom. In conjunctionwith te freedom to daydream under the influenc of doe and movies and the radio, it will help to recncil his subjects to the servitude which is ther fae.

All things considered it looks as though Utopia were far closer to us than anyone, only fifteen y ago, could have imagined. Then, I projected it six hundred years into the future. Today it seesqie possible that the horror may be upon us within a single century. That is, if we refrain fro bowngourselves to smithereens in the interval. Indeed, unless we choose to decentralize and to se ppled cience, not as the end to which human beings are to be made the means, but as the means o prducig a ace of free individuals, we have only two alternatives to choose from: either a numbr of ationl, miitarized totalitarianisms, having as their root the terror of the atomic bomb and s thei conseuence he destruction of civilization (or, if the warfare is limited, the perpetuationof miliarism);or elseone supra-national totalitarianism, called into existence by the social chao resultig from rpid techological progress in general and the atomic revolution in particular, anddevelopin, under te need fo efficiency and stability, into the welfare-tyranny of Utopia. You pas your mony and you akes your hoice."

__________________________________________________________________________

While I'm tempted to show off my dashing wit and quick intuitive stride, I think I'll let you ponder the connections that can be made between your present day life, and the musings of a prescient mno ifty years past. I would, though, like to share some things that stuck out to me. Hopefully,soe f ou will decide to e-mail me, and we can toss the stuff around.

*"To make them love it [servitude] is the task assigned, in present-day totalitarian states, to minies of propaganda, newspaper editors and schoolteachers." Had our lovable Mr. Huxley been alive tdy nd heard even the faintest of shadows of what the Information Superhighway is planned to be, Im ur i would have been his most central concern with regard to "ministries of propaganda."

Video-on-demand? PUUUULEEASE! All those millions or billions of dollars so I can work myself intmore complete stupidity is not my vision of a prosperous Digital Age.

*"The most important Manhattan Projects of the future will be vast government sponsored enquiries inhat the politicians and participating scientists will call 'the problem of happiness'--in other wrs he problem of making people love their servitude."
"And fourth (but this would be a long-term project, which would take generations of totalitarian col to bring to a successful conclusion) a foolproof system of eugenics, designed to standardize th ua product and so to facilitate the task of the managers."

I trust I am not the only one to have heard of the Genome Project? Granted, it is rather paranoidthink that this megastudy is primarily guided by a need to control us to a definitive degree; but utas well, paranoia might be the modern miracle drug, clearing our thoughts from the propaganda,oratlest allowing us another point of view from which to consider what is going on.

*"...a greatly improved technique of suggestion-- through infant conditioning and, later, with the af drugs, such as scopolamine."
"Third (since reality, however utopian, is something from which people feel the need of taking pretrequent holidays), a substitute for alcohol and other narcotics, something at once less harmful admr pleasure-giving than gin or heroin."

In the United States of America, the pharmaceutical industry is gargantuan, a mafia unto itself. of the specific frontrunners among the many offerings that might fall in with Aldous's speculatio sPozac. _Listen to Prozac_--is it just me, or does that sound rather blatantly inspired by the wshngofthe cerebellum?
On the other hand, it's rather conspicuous to me that America is the most illicit drug-riddled counon the planet. What better way to control the body politic than to convince them that it is thei w ree will that they choose to smoke cannabis, thus making them delighted in their servitude andsaisyig (rather harmlessly) their penchant for rebellion? A War on Drugs? I think not.

*"(Round pegs in square holes tend to have dangerous thoughts about the social system and to infect rs with their discontents.)"

Indeed. This is where the Clipper Chip, the FBI's digital telephony gambit, and/or whatever otheremes our "public servants" choose to conjure come in. You say you think it's your right to "infetohrs with" your "discontents?" Why, I don't think so, which is why I'm going to make sure that,inths urgeoning electronic village, I can clearly hear the whispers of the thatch and reed, echoig te pansand heresies that you express.

Odd, but I consider the 1946 eight-page introduction to _Brave New World_ a better work of writing tthe 177 pages of the story itself.

"Aldous Leonard Huxley
(1894-1963)

A member of a family which distinguished itself in many fields of intellectual endeavor, Aldous Huxwas unquestionably the most brilliant social satirist of his time. A critic, a poet, and an essait e wrote with wit and authority on architecture, science, music, philosophy, history and religin. I ws, however, in his novels that he made his most deeply felt statements about the nature of an nd he orld in which he lived."


With love and a little peanut butter--

Muraii

muraii%[email protected]
 
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