Philosophy
- Brave New World Or 1984 More Relevant Today?
Aldous Huxley's Brave New World is more relevant today than George Orwell's 1984. Although both of the two totalitarian societies are based on plausible premises, the Utopia depicted in Brave New World still has a chance of appearing today, while...
- Perfection Is A Point Of View
The Novels 1984, Brave New World, and The Republic of Plato all are considered masterpieces and/or classics in our world. These novels draw the reader in using a new and interesting plot which at the time of publishing made each novel revolutionary in...
- Where Plato And Two 21st Century Authors Differ
There are some startling similarities between The Republic of Plato, 1984, and Brave New World. At the most basic level all three are describing the perfect society in which the population is collectively working towards a common goal. Unlike Socrates,...
- Aldous Huxley Interview...march 20th, 1962
From the Berkeley Language Center audio/visual collection... "The Ultimate Revolution" March 20th, 1962 Listen Aldous Huxley's interview in "The Paris Review" ...
- 2+2=5
On this date sixty years ago Nineteen Eighty-Four was published. 1984 has passed and the world [or even the United States] has not become Oceania but then, this is 2009 and things have changed. "Looming Ahead, Orwell’s Big Brother" by Tony Long June...
Philosophy
Future on future...Huxley's letter to Orwell
Huxley wrote in October 1949...
Agreeing with all that the critics have written of it, I need not tell you, yet once more, how fine and how profoundly important the book is. May I speak instead of the thing with which the book deals - the ultimate revolution? The first hints of a philosophy of the ultimate revolution - the revolution which lies beyond politics and economics, and which aims at total subversion of the individual's psychology and physiology - are to be found in the Marquis de Sade, who regarded himself as the continuator, the consummator, of Robespierre and Babeuf. The philosophy of the ruling minority in Nineteen Eighty-Four is a sadism which has been carried to its logical conclusion by going beyond sex and denying it. Whether in actual fact the policy of the boot-on-the-face can go on indefinitely seems doubtful. My own belief is that the ruling oligarchy will find less arduous and wasteful ways of governing and of satisfying its lust for power, and these ways will resemble those which I described in Brave New World. I have had occasion recently to look into the history of animal magnetism and hypnotism, and have been greatly struck by the way in which, for a hundred and fifty years, the world has refused to take serious cognizance of the discoveries of Mesner, Braid, Esdaile, and the rest.
Partly because of the prevailing materialism and partly because of prevailing respectability, nineteenth-century philosophers and men of science were not willing to investigate the odder facts of psychology for practical men, such as politicians, soldiers and policemen, to apply in the field of government. Thanks to the voluntary ignorance of our fathers, the advent of the ultimate revolution was delayed for five or six generations. Another lucky accident was Freud's inability to hypnotize successfully and his consequent disparagement of hypnotism. This delayed the general application of hypnotism to psychiatry for at least forty years. But now psycho-analysis is being combined with hypnosis; and hypnosis has been made easy and indefinitely extensible through the use of barbiturates, which induce a hypnoid and suggestible state in even the most recalcitrant subjects.
Within the next generation I believe that the world's rulers will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging and kicking them into obedience. In other words, I feel that the nightmare of Nineteen Eighty-Four is destined to modulate into the nightmare of a world having more resemblance to that which I imagined in Brave New World. The change will be brought about as a result of a felt need for increased efficiency. Meanwhile, of course, there may be a large scale biological and atomic war - in which case we shall have nightmares of other and scarcely imaginable kinds.
Agreeing with all that the critics have written of it, I need not tell you, yet once more, how fine and how profoundly important the book is. May I speak instead of the thing with which the book deals - the ultimate revolution? The first hints of a philosophy of the ultimate revolution - the revolution which lies beyond politics and economics, and which aims at total subversion of the individual's psychology and physiology - are to be found in the Marquis de Sade, who regarded himself as the continuator, the consummator, of Robespierre and Babeuf. The philosophy of the ruling minority in Nineteen Eighty-Four is a sadism which has been carried to its logical conclusion by going beyond sex and denying it. Whether in actual fact the policy of the boot-on-the-face can go on indefinitely seems doubtful. My own belief is that the ruling oligarchy will find less arduous and wasteful ways of governing and of satisfying its lust for power, and these ways will resemble those which I described in Brave New World. I have had occasion recently to look into the history of animal magnetism and hypnotism, and have been greatly struck by the way in which, for a hundred and fifty years, the world has refused to take serious cognizance of the discoveries of Mesner, Braid, Esdaile, and the rest.
Partly because of the prevailing materialism and partly because of prevailing respectability, nineteenth-century philosophers and men of science were not willing to investigate the odder facts of psychology for practical men, such as politicians, soldiers and policemen, to apply in the field of government. Thanks to the voluntary ignorance of our fathers, the advent of the ultimate revolution was delayed for five or six generations. Another lucky accident was Freud's inability to hypnotize successfully and his consequent disparagement of hypnotism. This delayed the general application of hypnotism to psychiatry for at least forty years. But now psycho-analysis is being combined with hypnosis; and hypnosis has been made easy and indefinitely extensible through the use of barbiturates, which induce a hypnoid and suggestible state in even the most recalcitrant subjects.
Within the next generation I believe that the world's rulers will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging and kicking them into obedience. In other words, I feel that the nightmare of Nineteen Eighty-Four is destined to modulate into the nightmare of a world having more resemblance to that which I imagined in Brave New World. The change will be brought about as a result of a felt need for increased efficiency. Meanwhile, of course, there may be a large scale biological and atomic war - in which case we shall have nightmares of other and scarcely imaginable kinds.
- Brave New World Or 1984 More Relevant Today?
Aldous Huxley's Brave New World is more relevant today than George Orwell's 1984. Although both of the two totalitarian societies are based on plausible premises, the Utopia depicted in Brave New World still has a chance of appearing today, while...
- Perfection Is A Point Of View
The Novels 1984, Brave New World, and The Republic of Plato all are considered masterpieces and/or classics in our world. These novels draw the reader in using a new and interesting plot which at the time of publishing made each novel revolutionary in...
- Where Plato And Two 21st Century Authors Differ
There are some startling similarities between The Republic of Plato, 1984, and Brave New World. At the most basic level all three are describing the perfect society in which the population is collectively working towards a common goal. Unlike Socrates,...
- Aldous Huxley Interview...march 20th, 1962
From the Berkeley Language Center audio/visual collection... "The Ultimate Revolution" March 20th, 1962 Listen Aldous Huxley's interview in "The Paris Review" ...
- 2+2=5
On this date sixty years ago Nineteen Eighty-Four was published. 1984 has passed and the world [or even the United States] has not become Oceania but then, this is 2009 and things have changed. "Looming Ahead, Orwell’s Big Brother" by Tony Long June...