Freedom and individualism are
willingly exchanged for sensory pleasure and endless consumption.
Chapter 1. Over-population
- the completely organized
society
- the abolition of free will
- the scientific caste system
- the servitude made acceptable
by regular doses of chemically induced happiness
- the orthodoxies drummed in by
nightly courses of sleep-teaching
- the nightmare of too much
order
- prophecies made in 1931
- George Orwell’s 1984 was a
magnified projection into the future of a present that contained Stalinism and
an immediate past that had witnessed the flowering of Nazism.
- animal behaviour – control
through the punishment of undesirable behavior is less effective, in the long
run, than control through the reinforcement of desirable behavior by rewards
- 1984 – punishment and fear of
punishment
- Brave New World – mild
punishment, systematic reinforcement of desirable behavior, many kinds of
non-violent manipulation, genetic standardization
- representatives of commercial
and political organizations who have developed a number of new techniques for
manipulating, in the interest of some minority, the thoughts and feelings of
the masses
- human numbers are now
increasing more rapidly than at any time in the history of the species
- in the Brave New World, the
problem of human numbers in their relation to natural resources had been
solved.
- The problem of rapidly
increasing numbers in relation with natural resources is the central problem of
the mankind.
- the Age of Over-population
- there is a close correlation
between too many people, too rapidly multiplying, and the formulation of
authoritarian philosophies, the rise of totalitarian systems of government
Chapter 2. Quantity, Quality,
Morality
- in Brave New World eugenics
and dysgenics were practiced systematically
“In the bad old days children
with considerable, or even with slight, hereditary defect rarely survived.
Today, thanks to sanitation, modern pharmacology and the social conscience,
most of the children born with hereditary defects reach maturity and multiply
their kind. Under the conditions now prevailing, every advance in the survival
rate of individuals cursed by some genetic insufficiency. In spite of new
wonder drugs and better treatment (indeed, in a certain sense, precisely
because of these things), the physical health of the general population will
show no improvement, and may even deteriorate.” (Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
Revisited)
We know that the pursuit of good
ends does not justify the employment of bad means. But what about those
situations, now of such frequent occurrence, in which good means have end
results which turn out to be bad?
Chapter 3. Over-Organization
- must of humanity facing the
choice between anarchy and totalitarian control
- allied with immensely powerful
forces generated by the very advances in technology of which we are most proud
- democracy can hardly be
expected to flourish in societies where political and economic power is being
progressively concentrated and centralized
“We see that modern technology
has led to the concentration of economic and political power, and to the
development of a society controlled (ruthlessly in the totalitarian states,
politely and inconspicuously in the democracies) by Big Business and Big
Government.”
It is in the social sphere, in
the realm of politics and economics, that the Will to Order becomes really
dangerous. Here the theoretical reduction of unmanageable multiplicity to
comprehensible unity becomes the practical reduction of human diversity to
subhuman uniformity.
Too much organization transforms
men and women into automata, suffocates the creative spiritu and abolishes the
very possibility of freedom.
Biologically speaking, man is a
moderately gregarious, not a completely social animal – a creature more like a
wolf, let us say, or an elephant, than like a bee or an ant. In their original
form human societies bore no resemblance to the hive or the ant heap; they were
merely packs. Civilization is, among other things, the process by which
primitive packs are transformed into an analogue, crude and mechanical, of the
social insects’ organic communities.
Brave New World presents a
fanciful and somewhat ribald picture of a society, in which the attempt to
re-create human beings in the likeness of termites has been pushed almost to
the limits of the possible.
To give organizations precedence
over persons is to subordinate ends to means.
In the more efficient
dictatorships of tomorrow there will probably be much less violence than under
Hitler and Stalin. The future dictator’s subjects will be painlessly regimented
by a corps of highly trained social engineers.
To the question quis custodiet
custodes? – Who will mont guard over our guardians, who will engineer the
engineers? – the answer is a bland denial that they need any supervision.
Higher education is not
necessarily a guarantee of higher virtue, or higher political wisdom.
Chapter 4. Propaganda in a
Democratic Society
No people in a precarious economic
condition has a fair chance of being able to govern itself democratically.
There are two kinds of
propaganda – rational propaganda in favor of action that is consonant with the
enlightened self-interest of those who make it and those to whom it is addressed,
and non-rational propaganda that is not consonant with anybody’s enlightened
self-interest, but is dictated by, and appeals to, passion.
Mass communication, in a word,
is neither good nor bad, it is simply a force and, like any other force, it can
be used either well or ill. Used in one way, the press, the radio and the
cinema are indispensable to the survival of democracy. Used in another way,
they are among the most powerful weapons in the dictator’s armory.
- man’s almost infinite appetite
for distractions
But even in Rome there was
nothing like the non-stop distraction now provided by newspapers and magazines,
by radio, television and the cinema.
Chapter 5. Propaganda Under a
Dictatorship
Hitler’s dictatorship was the
first in the present period of modern technical development, a dictatorship
which made complete use of all technical means like the radio and the
loud-speaker.
Hitlerism – ecclestiasticism
without christianity, the discipline of a monastic rule, not for God’s sake or
in order to achieve personal salvation, but for the sake of the State and for
the greater glory and power of the demagogue turned Leader.
Hitler’s first principle: the
masses are utterly contemptible. They are incapable of abstract thinking and
uninterested in any fact outside the circle of their immediate experience.
Groups are capable of being as
moral and intelligent as the individuals who form them; a crowd is chaotic, has
no purpose of its own and is capable of anything except intelligent action and
realistic thinking. Assembled in a crowd, people lose their powers of reasoning
and their capacity for moral choice.
herd-poison
Unlike the masses, intellectuals
have a taste for rationality and an interest in facts. They are the kind of
people who demand evidence and are shocked by logical inconsistencies and
fallacies.
Philosophy teaches us to feel
uncertain about the things that seem to us self-evident. Propaganda, on the
other hand, teaches us to accept as self-evident matters about which it would
be reasonable to suspend our judgment or to feel doubt.
Chapter 6. The Art of Selling
- consumerism requires the
services of expert salesman versed in all the arts of persuasion
People may start out with an
initial prejudice against tyrants; but when tyrants or would-be tyrants treat
them to adrenalin-releasing propaganda about the wickedness of their enemies,
they are ready to follow him with enthusiasm.
Effective rational propaganda
becomes possible only when there is a clear understanding, on the part of all
concerned, of the nature of symbols and of their relations to the things and
events symbolized. Irrational propaganda depends for its effectiveness on a
general failure to understand the nature of symbols.
On the levels of politics and
theology, beauty is perfectly compatible with nonsense and tyranny.
the principle of
disproportionately fascinating symbol
the Singing Commercial – Orpheus
has entered into an alliance with Pavlov – the power of sound with the
conditioned reflex
children are highly susceptible
to propaganda
Self-government is in inverse
ratio to numbers. The larger the constituency, the less the value of any
particular vote.
The political merchandisers
appeal only to the weaknesses of voters, never to their potential strength.
Chapter 7. Brainwashing
Ironically enough, the only
people who can hold up indefinitely under the stress of modern war are
psychotics. Individual insanity is immune to the consequences of collective
insanity.
every individual has its
breaking point
For the dictator
and his policemen, Pavlov's findings have important practical implications. If
the central nervous system of dogs can be broken down, so can the central
nervous system of political prisoners. It
is simply a
matter of applying the right amount of stress for the right length of time. At
the end of the treatment, the prisoner will be in a state of neurosis or
hysteria, and will be ready to confess whatever his captors want him to
confess.
fatigue increases
suggestibility
The effectiveness
of political and religious propaganda depends upon the methods employed, not
upon the doctrines taught. These doctrines may be true or false, wholesome or
pernicious—it makes little or no difference. If the indoctrination is given in
the right way at the proper stage of nervous exhaustion, it will work.
Brainwashing, as
it is now practiced, is a hybrid technique, depending for its effectiveness
partly on the systematic use of violence, partly on skilful psychological
manipulation.
Chapter 8. Chemical Persuasion
In the Vedic
hymns we are told that the drinkers of soma were blessed in many ways. Their
bodies were
strengthened,
their hearts were filled with courage, joy and enthusiasm, their minds were
enlightened and in an immediate experience of eternal life they received the
assurance of their immortality. But the sacred juice had its drawbacks. Soma
was a dangerous drug—so dangerous that even the great sky-god, Indra, was
sometimes made ill by drinking it. Ordinary mortals might even die of an
overdose. But the experience was so transcendently blissful and enlightening
that soma drinking was regarded as a high privilege. For this privilege no
price was too great.
The soma of Brave
New World: in small doses it brought a sense of bliss, in larger doses it
brought visions, if you took three tablets, you would sink in a few minutes
into refreshing sleep.
Soma was not a
private vice, it was a political institution, the very essence of Life, Liberty
and Pursuit of Happiness.
The daily soma
ration was an insurance against personal maladjustment, social unrest and the
spread of subversive ideas.
In Brave New
World, opium (soma) was the people’s religion.
Chapter 9.
Subconscious Persuasion
Pure science does
not remain pure indefinitely. Sooner or later it is apt to turn into applied
science and finally into technology. Theory modulates into industrial practice,
knowledge becomes power, formulas and laboratory experiments undergo a
metamorphosis, and emerge as the H-bomb.
The scientific
dictator of tomorrow will set up his whispering machines and subliminal
projectors in schools and hospitals (children and the sick are highly
suggestible), and in all public places where audiences can be given a
preliminary softening up by suggestibility-increasing oratory or rituals.
Above the
threshold of awareness, one of the most effective methods of non-rational
persuasion is what may be called persuasion-by-association. The propagandist
arbitrarily associates his chosen product, candidate or cause with some idea,
some image of a person or thing which most people, in a given culture,
unquestioningly regard as good.
Chapter 10.
Hypnopaedia
Intellectual
activity is incompatible with sleep. Hypnopaedia became successful only when it
was used for moral training—in other words, for the conditioning of
behavior through verbal suggestion at a time of lowered psychological
resistance.
Under proper
conditions, hypnopaedia actually works—works, it would seem, about as well as
hypnosis. Most of the things that can be done with and to a person in hypnotic
trance can be done with and to a person in light sleep. Verbal suggestions can
be passed through the somnolent cortex to the midbrain, the brain stem and the
autonomic nervous system. If these suggestions are well conceived and
frequently repeated, the bodily functions of the sleeper can be improved or
interfered with, new patterns of feeling can be installed and old ones
modified, posthypnotic commands can be given, slogans, formulas and trigger
words deeply ingrained in the memory. Children are better hypnopaedic subjects
than adults, and the would-be dictator will take full advantage of the fact.
Children of nursery-school and kindergarten age will be treated to hypnopaedic
suggestions during their afternoon nap.
The ideals of
democracy and freedom confront the brute fact of human suggestibility.
One-fifth of every electorate can be hypnotized almost in the twinkling of an
eye, one-seventh can be relieved of pain by injections of water, one-quarter
will respond promptly and enthusiastically to hypnopaedia. And to these all too
co-operative minorities must be added the slow-starting majorities, whose less
extreme suggestibility can be effectually exploited by anyone who knows his
business and is prepared to take the necessary time and trouble.
Chapter 11.
Education for Freedom
All the available
evidence points to the conclusion that in the life of individuals and societies
heredity is no less significant than culture. Every individual is biologically
unique and unlike all other individuals. Freedom is therefore a great good,
tolerance a great virtue and regimentation a great misfortune. For practical or
theoretical reasons, dictators, organization men and certain scientists are
anxious to reduce the maddening diversity of men's natures to some kind of
manageable uniformity.
[...]
"Science" (that wonderfully convenient personification of the
opinions, at a given date, of Professors X, Y and Z) [...]
The orgy of
spying, lynching and judicial murder, which these wrong views about magic made
logical and mandatory, was not matched until our own days, when the Communist
ethic, based upon erroneous views about economics, and the Nazi ethic, based
upon erroneous views about race, commanded and justified atrocities on an even
greater scale. Consequences hardly less undesirable are likely to follow the
general adoption of a Social Ethic, based upon the erroneous view that ours is
a fully social species, that
human infants are
born uniform and that individuals are the product of conditioning by and within
the collective environment. If these views were correct, if human beings were
in fact the members of a truly social species, and if their individual differences
were trifling and could be completely ironed out by
appropriate conditioning,
then, obviously, there would be no need for liberty and the State would be
justified in persecuting the heretics who demanded it. For the individual
termite, service to the termitary is perfect freedom.
In Brave New
World, desirable behavior was insured by a double process of genetic
manipulation and postnatal conditioning.
Suffice it to say
that all the intellectual materials for a sound education in the proper use of
language—
an education on
every level from the kindergarten to the postgraduate school—are now available.
Such an education in the art of distinguishing between the proper and the
improper use of symbols could be inaugurated immediately. Indeed it might have
been inaugurated at any time during the last thirty or forty years. And yet
children are nowhere taught, in any systematic way, to distinguish true from
false, or meaningful from meaningless, statements. Why is this so? Because
their elders, even in the democratic countries, do not want them to be given
this kind of education.
Chapter 12. What
can be done?
Freedom is
menaced, and education for freedom is urgently needed. But so are many other
things—for example, social organization for freedom, birth control for freedom,
legislation for freedom.
It is
perfectly possible for a man to be out of prison, and yet not free—to be under
no physical constraint and yet to be a psychological captive, compelled to
think, feel and act as the representatives of the national State, or of some
private interest within the nation, want him to think, feel and act. There
will
never be such a thing as a writ of habeas mentem; for no sheriff or
jailer can bring an illegally imprisoned mind into court, and no person whose
mind had been made captive by the methods outlined in earlier articles would be
in a position to complain of his captivity. The nature of psychological
compulsion is such that those who act under constraint remain under the
impression that they are acting on their own initiative. The victim of
mind-manipulation does not know that he is a victim. To him, the walls of his
prison are invisible, and he believes himself to be free. That he is not free
is apparent only to other people. His servitude is strictly objective.
preventive
legislation
“The
best of constitutions and preventive laws will be powerless against the
steadily increasing pressures of over-population and of the over-organization
imposed by growing numbers and advancing technology. The constitutions will not
be abrogated and the good laws will remain on the statute book; but these
liberal forms will merely serve to mask and adorn a profoundly illiberal
substance. Given unchecked over-population and over-organization, we may expect
to see in the democratic countries a reversal of the process which transformed
England into a democracy, while retaining all the outward forms of a monarchy.
Under the relentless thrust of accelerating over-population and increasing
over-organization, and by means of ever more effective methods of mind-manipulation,
the democracies will change their nature; the quaint old forms—elections,
parliaments, Supreme Courts and all the rest—will remain. The underlying
substance will be a new kind of non-violent totalitarianism. All the
traditional names, all the hallowed slogans will remain exactly what they were
in the good old days. Democracy and freedom will be the theme of every
broadcast and editorial—but democracy and freedom in a strictly Pickwickian
sense. Meanwhile the ruling oligarchy and its highly trained elite of soldiers,
policemen, thought-manufacturers and mind-manipulators will quietly run the
show as they see fit.”
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