Speak out with an educated voice…

 

Brave New World Revisited

From the first edition book jacket of Brave New World Revisited

When the novel Brave New World first appeared in 1932, its shocking analysis of a scientific dictatorship seemed a projection into the remote future.

Today the science of thought control has raced far beyond the dreams of Hitler or Stalin. Methods for destroying individual freedom are being rapidly developed, and the pressures to adopt them are becoming increasingly powerful. Now in one of the most important, fascinating and frightening books of his career, Aldous Huxley scrutinizes these and other threats to humanity and demonstrates why we find it virtually impossible to resist them… unless…

The first threat is overpopulation. Penicillin, DDT and clean water--cheap commodities--supply effective death control. It is highly unlikely that practical birth-control measures will be adopted in time to avoid widespread misery and regimentation.

More sinister is the threat that comes from the power of propaganda through the use of radically new laboratory discoveries to control the mind. Many of these methods are being used today by the Communists. Some are now used experimentally in America. But all are within the reach of any group which is in a position to soften up and manipulate society without our knowing it.

Dictatorship by drugs is no longer a fantasy. The "soma" of Brave New World forecast the miltown of today, the possible Ipronaizid of tomorrow. These, with the other inexpensive tranquilizers or stimulants still to be developed, will make ideal weapons for the state-operated "psychopharmacopeia." Other weapons for the dictator are subliminal projection, hynopaedia (a method of "teaching" a person while he sleeps), and all the chillingly successful arts of brainwashing. with a combination of these forces at its command, the state would have little difficulty blotting out even the memory of liberty in most of its subjects. It would have far less difficulty than Hitler in brutalizing them and arousing the pleasurable emotions of hatred and enmity. Red China has already shown the way.

Brave New World Revisited is not fiction. It is a shocking, yet calm, estimate of what has been done, what is being done and what may very soon be done to turn men into compliant robots. The enemies of freedom are subtle, often unobserved, and far more numerous than we suppose. Mr. Huxley revels them with the lucidity and the scientific insight for which he is famous. With overpowering impact, the book is a challenge to the complacency and a plea that mankind should educate itself in freedom before it is too late. top

Classroom Introduction

In the twenty-six years between his original utopian novel and Huxley's "second" thoughts (some formulated after only 16 years), we see rather common problems that appear in all ages but many that seriously bedevil us now. The concerns that Huxley voiced in Revisited are clearly present in our day and there may be considerable proof that we have neglected to heed his warning and are in more severe trouble than in 1958. What Aldous Huxley seemed to fear most, as human beings began to become more technologically adept, was our tendency to generate more and more ways to fill our lives with passive pleasures and to plan excellence from effortless activity. TV has become the most passive of pleasure and the most noticeable purveyor of the "easy life."

Regular beer drinking bouts (daily?--check the commercials) are not only passively unthinking as is most of television, but they hinder positive human activity to the point of eliminating thinking. Do beer companies actually believe their warnings are realistic, responsible encouragements? Although TV can be social and educational and the local night spot can begin as social, both refuse humans the chance at the highest behavior: thinking and benefiting society.

Having no responsibility is a characteristic of children. Maturity comes with shouldering responsibility; rights and privileges then follow as reward and pleasure for that undertaking. Consider the bridge crew of the Enterprise on Star Trek. They have all the power and rights and pleasures anyone might want. But they also have the responsibility to act immediately on situations--even at the cost of their lives--which they willingly offer, because they are responsible.

Brave New World Revisited is really a long essay broken into thirteen parts which are easily recognized as chapters and the foreword. Huxley has united the units into roughly three complaints and one section for solution.

The forward is self-explanatory. Huxley offers is purpose for Revisited and his concern for the free world. Some of this material you may recall from the forward to Brave New World.

The first three chapters deal with the problems that bothered Malthus: food and birth control. To these Huxley adds problems arising from medical science which has prolonged life by medical advances well past the accepted long life of one hundred years ago. The old live longer and the young do not die as readily. How equipped are we to care for the added burdens caused by the increase in aged population? Not only is food an issue, but the quality of life, education, living conditions, and aspirations of citizens are of concern to those who rule the burgeoning population.

Most of Huxley's book deals with mind control in one way or another. He offers two chapters about propaganda and follows those with a chapter on Madison Avenue and its wiles.

In a country as affluent as ours, there are more than enough people about trying to separate our money from us by creating an artificial need for goods that may in fact be harmful for us. The term propaganda has a foreign flavor indicating half-truths and absolute lies from governments are are our enemies. Few think that propaganda occurs in our country. Propaganda is precisely what the power structure wants people to believe. It is the method governments use to sell themselves and it may be more devious than anything that can come from ad executives.

The next set of chapters deals with more mind control. Brainwashing leads into chemical dependence, subliminal teaching, and a concept of sleep learning. These methods of citizen control are probably the most devious because they are not immediately recognized. Those who are not educated enough to be aware of what can happen may never realize that they have been taken over.

Awareness and responsibility are Huxley's solutions to the above problems. Democracy and the freedom that goes with it cannot be achieved unless a country's citizens are educated. The need for knowledge and its use is even more required because of the increased fronts and the complexity of challenge to our individual lives. Our founding fathers knew how well-educated citizens must be, and the threats to democracy then were relatively harmless.

Responsibility demands that each of use shoulder the burden of being educated and watching for what happens. But education must extend to all areas from which the attacks on freedom and democracy come. Science, psychology, politics, government, and technology are the areas we must be familiar with lest some slick snake oil salesman sell us a useless tonic. This responsibility is particularly difficult for the young who seem to believe that they have all the answers and that adults have no concept of life as the teens will eventually live it. Dissipation, disinterest, and selfishness must be rooted from the present and future citizens, lest we, in the manner of the Dodo birds, perish because we have forgotten what should be done and what we should avoid. top