Aldous Huxley's most terrifyingly accurate prediction about our society (from 1948)

Brotherman
reply to post by doesntmakesense

 

Give cattle enough to roam and the illusion of freedom is prevalent where as tight confinement offers no illusion and the cattle become quickly frightened and uneasy as to whats happening.

Orwell may have may have used more force to color his picture but he did place it within the larger context of an overall mind screw.

Whatever the well constructed illusion, however wide the margins be sure that no power ever gives up the billy club. Its always there at the hip, hanging on the belt in its neat little holder and when they determine the case demands it, it will also serve as an object lesion.

Anyone else remember how Obama announced earlier this year about how they were spending money to map the human brain? To figure out how it processes information.

Yeah, I'm sure they have the best of intentions with that one.

America will be unrecognizable in another 5-10 years.

I see Orwell and Huxley both coming true right before my eyes. I don't think they really prefer one or the other, but both. Keep the jackboots on the face and also make people to where they just don't care what those in authority do.

Sounded like he was a bit "Yeah it was a good book... but my vision of doom was better" hahaha

It is very true though, there are two ways that our freedoms will be taken from us, by force (thus enter a 1984 style reality) or willingly put into practice (would result in more of a Brave New World type of world).

It looks like we are heading into a totalitarian form of Government, one that congress and parliament will politely applaud.

NihilistSanta
You have to go through 1984 to get to the Brave New World. The 1984 phase is the stamping out of individuality and consolidating power. Once the resistance is crushed then they unfold the high tech new society. Radically different from anything we have ever seen. Growing humans for specific task and more.

I couldn't agree more. Each writer understood a component and method of instituting societal control and BNW was the logical next step. No Soma, just beer, sports and tv (or T&A w/ a heavy dose of envy). Take any of those 3 things away there would be a revolution by morning.
The trend towards specialization is nearing a peak beyond which only machines will be able to manage the tasks done by humans. What happens when people become irrelevant is the thing I worry about most.

Huxley was on the money IMO.

Island is one of my favorite books (it's the utopian contrary to the dystopia of Brave New World). Somewhere around the internet there is a Orwell and Huxley comparison and contrast (in graphic form) of both of their concepts of where the world was heading. Orwell was more of a police state (rule by fear and oppression) kinda world and Huxley thought there would be no need for that because of all our "stuff" placating us into eternity (I think of people complaining on the internet like it does something).

Maybe a little of both? As "both" "and" not "either" "or" is usually a hard concept for us to grasp lol.

NihilistSanta
You have to go through 1984 to get to the Brave New World. The 1984 phase is the stamping out of individuality and consolidating power. Once the resistance is crushed then they unfold the high tech new society. Radically different from anything we have ever seen. Growing humans for specific task and more.

Yup! That's the way I'm seeing this too. 1984 is the next step after the nuclear/bio/chemical catastrophe. A chance for the TPTB to consolidate. Brave New World occurs a few hundred years later around the 26th century, giving TPTB plenty of refinement time to establish a true New World Order. So what happens inbetween to get from a violently oppressive surveillance state to a sterilized social
scientific drug dependent state?

Maybe a little movie called "THX1138" could fill some of those gaps...

Ok... George Lucas isn't in the same league but this movie fits right in there and forms a nice dystopian trilogy. Perfect for a Saturday night in.

BTW for the ones that don't like to read (I know there won't be many here that fall into that category)
1984 (BBC 1956) and 1984 (1984) are free to watch on YT, the 1956 version is particularly good. There's also the BBC commissioned 80s version of Brave New World free to watch, also highly recommended above the 1998 version. I haven't found THX on there but I'm sure the more resourceful of you will find it somewhere about the web

THX trailer

www.youtube.com...

reply to post by Asktheanimals


Right now, we're more of a Brave New World. TPTB are working on putting the machinery in place for 1984, but they are using the mechanisms of Brave New World in the meantime to keep people fat and placated and complacent. They are also using them to keep the permanent relatively useless underclass just pacified enough to be eating and more or less pacified. Right now, those people serve a useful purpose - they provide an excuse to rob the productive classes of wealth and drag us down and keep us working too hard to notice, for the most part, what TPTB are doing right under our noses.

Then, when the system all collapses for whatever reason, 1984 is ready to take over because it's been put in place while the rest of us were basking in Brave New World. At that point, a lot of the people who were not productive before and some of us who were productive are relegated to the category of useless eaters assuming we survive the transition, but even then, our deaths serve a useful purpose as an object lesson in the futility of resistance.

reply to post by doesntmakesense


I used to admire Aldous Huxley but that admiration became a bit tarnished not that long ago. We have this tendency to hold up his "Brave New World" as a social critique to inordinate amounts of control but his personal opinions really can make one question just what his beliefs actually were such as the following quote.

"About 99.5% of the entire population of the planet are as stupid and philistine ('tho in different ways) as the great masses of the English. The important thing, it seems to me, is not to attack the 99.5%...but to try to see that the 0.5% survives, keeps its quality up to the highest possible level, and, if possible, dominates the rest. The imbecility of the 99.5% is appalling--but after all, what else can you expect?" Aldous Huxley

From The Meaning of Race: Race, History and Culture in Western Society

Both he and his brother, Julian, had definite links to eugenic themes. His brother, Julian, was an outright eugenicist and both made comments in varying degrees that definitely held a disdain for humanity.

"The lowest strata are reproducing too fast. Therefore… they must not have too easy access to relief or hospital treatment lest the removal of the last check on natural selection should make it too easy for children to be produced or to survive; long unemployment should be a ground for sterilisation." Julian Huxley

Source

Aldous, however much of an elitist as he tended to be, seemed to prefer a more temperate approach and held the view that the masses shouldn't be abused. Aldous, on his own, seemed to have a love/hate relationship in regards to the masses and sometimes I think that that mixture is what allowed his words to be used to validate some things that we would consider to be largely unethical by today's standards. I've seen for myself scholarly papers written using quotes from both Huxleys suggesting the benefits of utilizing post hypnotic suggestion and '___' on children. It is kind of funny (and disturbing) that Huxley's cautionary tale may have actually been a blueprint for a non-terrorism way of assuring order. Cruel really if you believe that he was against it.

Here's a couple videos with actual interview/lecture with Huxley where you can really see just how conflicted he was at times on those Brave New World subjects.

Evening,

There are only three words for a situation like this..."Know your Enemy."

Aldous Huxley Control Humans:



-Peace on Earth...for as long as it can last-

reply to post by Eryiedes


That must be from the Q&A portion of the Berkley lecture that I posted above yours. However, I want to smack the bell ringer in the last portion. That was annoying. I think Huxley, despite his pleas towards a general betterment of society and treatment of the masses, still had some rather amoral strains within him and, ultimately, was a man conflicted by prejudice and disdain.

I also find it really interesting that he was given so much access, by his own admittance, to observing so many psychological experiments including the usage of implants in the brain. One can consider that the researchers may have decided he would be interested because of "Brave New World" but, if it is a critique on such a world, then one would figure he would be appalled by the realizations occurring in that research.

reply to post by WhiteAlice


Thank you for pointing out the needless repetition on my part.
All very fine points you make but it wasn't just Aldous at work here. Julian and Thomas were no better.
Nor was close friend Bertrand Russell and even Charles Darwin who is guilty by association (at the very least) when he married into that bloodline, if memory serves. Hard to believe they actually used Phrenology in their eugenics research.

-Peace-

alldaylong
reply to post by doesntmakesense

 

Those two English writers were way ahead of their time.
It makes you wonder if they were in fact Time Travelers

They saw all the propaganda that was going around in the 1930's, and how government departments were run.

1984 has the idea that information becomes so commonplace that it becomes worthless, and that historical records can be edited, modified and deleted like wikipedia pages.

Brave New World has the idea that information is a valuable commodity and given out on a need-to-know basis. The executives (alphas) were on the top floor, the senior managers (betas) on the floors below them, then the clerks, and then the mail rooms close to the ground floor. Since elevators were still manually operated, they needed someone to operate them (gammas). We seem to moving that we with all the immigration.

alldaylong
reply to post by doesntmakesense

 

Those two English writers were way ahead of their time.
It makes you wonder if they were in fact Time Travelers

They saw all the propaganda that was going around in the 1930's, and how government departments were run.

1984 has the idea that information becomes so commonplace that it becomes worthless, and that historical records can be edited, modified and deleted like wikipedia pages.

Brave New World has the idea that information is a valuable commodity and given out on a need-to-know basis. The executives (alphas) were on the top floor, the senior managers (betas) on the floors below them, then the clerks, and then the mail rooms close to the ground floor. Since elevators were still manually operated, they needed someone to operate them (gammas). We seem to moving that we with all the immigration.

reply to post by Eryiedes


No, yours is good, too, because it's part of the Q&A that isn't included in the link that I posted. I'd love to hear the full version of the Q&A as it would be infinitely less scripted than the original lecture. I did mention Julian Huxley including his infamous sterilization quote. Don't know that much about Thomas but definitely have looked into Bertrand Russell. Toss in a few more blokes such as Edward Alsworth Ross and Louis Terman and I would say that it pretty much sums up the Anglo-American Noble Order of Intellectual Douchebags (ANOID for short) with Sir Francis Galton as their patron deity.

Though I do admire the fact that Huxley expressed dismay over the effects of marketing on children and the indoctrination into brand loyalty at an early age. At least he had more morals than say Edward Bernays or BF Skinner.

Know thy enemy indeed.

reply to post by doesntmakesense


Conside a flock of sheep in a paddock. If they could talk they would likely to swear they are free.

They would claim they can eat when they want, they can sleep when they want, they would claim they can travel anywhere in that paddock they want and so thefore they are free, but the farmer knows different doesn't he?

How does one who thinks our lives are more like Brave New World reconcile the decades of communist scares with the Cold War, duck and cover nuclear war preparation in schools, and the ongoing, perhaps infinitely long War on Terror?

We live in a world far more like Orwell's 1984 than anything resembling Brave New World.

WhiteAlice
reply to post by Eryiedes

 

Though I do admire the fact that Huxley expressed dismay over the effects of marketing on children and the indoctrination into brand loyalty at an early age. At least he had more morals than say Edward Bernays or BF Skinner.

Know thy enemy indeed.

Man, when someone figured out that humans had a propensity for irrational brand loyalty, a need even, the jig was up.

reply to post by Frith


I'd say that there are definite Orwellian elements and it's not totally a Brave New World. If we look at the propaganda in regards to the Iraq War, there's definitely an Orwellian tinge to it from the newspeak (anybody want a side of "freedom fries"?) doublespeak against any questioners of the validity of the war ie.Don't like the war? Well you're not supporting our troops! Or the classic:


Talk about obfuscation and well, doublespeak.

And of course, there was the threat itself that turned out to not exist--those gosh darn disappearing WMDs. Straight up Oceania.

I think, however, that in reality we have a little bit of both. It's Orwell time when what is desired is war and Brave New World when we're not. After all, how many times have you seen a delta or epsilon argue on behalf of an alpha in the present day?

reply to post by Logarock


Yep. I still occasionally slip into Slinky, Chia Pet (Ch-ch-ch-chia!), or Oscar Meyer singsong to this day.

Frith
How does one who thinks our lives are more like Brave New World reconcile the decades of communist scares with the Cold War, duck and cover nuclear war preparation in schools, and the ongoing, perhaps infinitely long War on Terror?

We live in a world far more like Orwell's 1984 than anything resembling Brave New World.

edit on 3-1-2014 by Frith because: (no reason given)

Because we're still more or less living like the sheep in learned's paddock. They use the "scares" to justify putting their power structures in place. They never scare us enough to truly panic us or cause a stampede, but when the collapse comes, they will have all the mechanisms in place to clamp down on us brutally, and the rosy veneer of peace and plenty will come off.

reply to post by AthlonSavage

The felt need for increased efficiency is something which permeates now all aspects of social, economic and political paradigm we live in.

Increased economic return is not the same as increased efficiency even if at time they can go hand in hand...