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The scariest prisons are the ones people refuse to leave because they love them. That was Aldous Huxley’s warning in Brave New World, and this lecture from Academy of Ideas tests it against the present day. It shows how behavioral psychology, hypnotic screens, pleasure drugs, and genetic engineering are making people love their own servitude. Where Orwell warned of force, Huxley warned of comfort — a cage so pleasant no one thinks to resist. His closing words remain: even if the forces menacing freedom win, it is still our duty to resist them.
Full Video Transcript
In his 1958 book, Brave New World Revisited, Aldous Huxley wrote the following,
If the first half of the 20th century was the era of the technical engineers, the second half may well be the era of the social engineers.
And the 21st century, I suppose, will be the era of world controllers, the scientific caste system, and Brave New World.
Thirty years prior to penning these words, Huxley wrote his classic work of fiction, Brave New World.
Set in the distant future, this book depicts a scientifically managed dystopian society.
In Brave New World, the ruling authorities attain mass compliance not through force,
but by supplying the masses with endless streams of distracting entertainment,
and manipulating them with drugs and other technological methods.
Huxley wrote Brave New World as a warning.
Advances in science and technology, he believed, were paving the way for the type of society
depicted in this book, and he cautioned that if a brave new world type of order solidifies,
it could be the final or ultimate revolution. The people will have their liberties taken from them,
but they will enjoy their servitude and so never question it, let alone rebel.
In a 1962 interview at Berkeley University, Huxley explained,
It seems to me that the nature of the ultimate revolution with which we are now faced is
precisely this, that we are in the process of developing a whole series of techniques
which will enable the controlling oligarchy, who have always existed and will always exist,
to get people to love their servitude.
According to Huxley, this brave new world totalitarianism was most likely to solidify
in the 21st century, and so in this video we are going to examine whether Huxley’s
predictions are coming true.
Do we live in a brave new world?
In Brave New World Revisited, Huxley wrote the following.
In 1931, when Brave New World was being written,
I was convinced that there was still plenty of time.
The completely organized society, the scientific caste system,
the abolition of free will by methodical conditioning,
the servitude made acceptable by regular doses of chemically induced happiness.
These were coming, all right, but not in my time,
not even in the time of my grandchildren.
27 years later, I feel a good deal less optimistic than I did when I was writing Brave New World.
The prophecies made in 1931 are coming true much sooner than I thought they would.
The nightmare of total organization has emerged from the safe, remote future,
and is now awaiting us, just around the next corner.
In Brave New World, advances in psychology made it possible for the ruling authorities
to use mind control to condition citizens from an early age to think and behave in ways that were
submissive and conformist. Nearly 100 years after Huxley wrote his dystopian novel, has this type of
conditioning left the realm of fiction and entered reality? Today, the art of mind control is in the
process of becoming a science, Huxley wrote in 1958. The practitioners of this science know what
they are doing and why. They are guided in their work by theories and hypotheses solidly established
on a massive foundation of experimental evidence. While the idea of mind control may sound like
science fiction, in the mid to late 20th century, many prominent philosophers, psychologists,
and scientists joined Huxley in sounding the alarm bell that research into the fundamentals
of this phenomenon were well underway. In 1953, the distinguished British philosopher
Bertrand Russell explained. It is to be expected that advances in physiology and psychology will
give governments much more control over individual mentality than they now have even in totalitarian
countries. The renowned 20th century American clinical psychologist Carl Rogers warned that
the rapid development of the behavioral sciences, which is a cluster of scientific disciplines,
including psychology psychiatry sociology social psychology anthropology and biology economic and
political science mathematics and statistics was in the process of becoming what he called an
if then science by this he meant that scientists and social engineers were discovering that if
carefully constructed conditions are implemented in a society then there is a high probability that
the majority of citizens will respond to these conditions in predictable and hence controllable
ways or as he wrote in 1954 i believe that too few people are aware of the extent the breadth
and the depth of the advances which have been made in recent decades in the behavioral sciences
the increasing power for control which it gives will be held by someone or some group
such an individual or group will surely choose the purposes or goals to be achieved
and most of us will then be increasingly controlled by means so subtle we will not even
be aware of them as controls it appears that some form of completely controlled society is coming
in a report released in 2021 scientists on a subcommittee of the scientific advisory group
for emergencies in the uk admitted to using totalitarian mind control tactics to obtain
mass compliance one scientist went as far as to state that he was stunned by the weaponization
of behavioral psychology over the last five years while another admitted you could call psychology
mind control that’s what we do clearly we try and go about it in a positive way but it has been used
nefariously in the past psychology has been used for wicked ends along with conditioning the
thoughts and behaviors of the citizens in brave new world the latest in technology is used by
the ruling authorities to provide the population with non-stop distractions of the most fascinating
nature the purpose of this readily available entertainment was twofold firstly to ensure
that the citizens did not pay attention to political and social realities and secondly
to promote docility and stupidity and thus create a population that cared little for freedom
Is something similar happening today? Whether intentionally imposed on society or not,
one thing is certain. Technology in the endless supply of stimulating yet morally degrading
entertainment that flows from it is creating a passive, ignorant, and spiritually crippled
population uninterested in resisting the implementation of its political chains,
just as Huxley warned. As the art and science of manipulation come to be better understood,
the dictators of the future will doubtless learn to combine techniques of propaganda
with the non-stop distractions which, in the West, are now threatening to drown in a sea of
irrelevance, the rational information essential to the maintenance of individual liberty. But it is
not just an endless supply of distractions which make possible a brave new world. Huxley also
predicted that in the future certain forms of technology would be used to increase the
suggestibility and obedience of a population, so that everyone can be depended upon to behave
almost as predictably as machines. In Brave New World, the technology used for this purpose was
called hypnopadia, or sleep teaching, which Huxley called the greatest moralizing and socializing
force of all time. Every night, while asleep, citizens were exposed to propaganda and repeated
suggestions from the state. Huxley based his idea of sleep teaching on the science of hypnosis.
Scientists have long known that when an individual is placed under hypnosis,
alpha waves are activated in the brain, just as they are when in a light sleep. In both cases,
suggestibility is dramatically heightened. As Huxley explained,
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 cortex to the midbrain,
the brainstem, and the autonomic nervous system. If these suggestions are well conceived and
frequently repeated, new patterns of feeling can be installed and old ones modified. Post-hypnotic
commands can be given, slogans, formulas, and trigger words deeply ingrained in the memory.
While not subjects of sleep teaching, many people in the modern world watch television
on a near daily basis for hours on end. Scientists have known for decades that television watching
activates alpha waves in the brain, thus placing the individual in a hypnotic-like trance,
primed for suggestions and ready to be programmed. The neurosurgeon Adam Lipson explains,
There have been EEG studies that demonstrate that television watching converts the brain from beta
wave activity to alpha waves, which are associated with a daydreaming state and a reduced use
of critical thinking skills, when, in a television-induced hypnotic state, clichés and slogans from
the mainstream media, moral values and ideological principles from shows and movies, and suggestions
from commercials, politicians, celebrities, and state-sponsored propaganda bypass the
critical faculties and seep into the foundations of the mind.
Over time, the typical television watcher is transformed into an opinionated robot.
His or her evaluations of the world are mindless regurgitations of whatever has been absorbed
from the TV.
Nearly 70 years ago, the medical doctor Joost Meerloo warned of the hypnotizing dangers
of television.
Dangers which now apply to computers, smartphones, and any other technology which turns the human
being into a mesmerized spectator of a screen no longer does man think in personal values
following his own conscience and ethical evaluations he thinks more and more in the
values brought to him by mass media television keeps him in continual awe and passive fixation
consciously he may protest against these anonymous voices but nevertheless their suggestions ooze
into his system. In Brave New World, suggestibility was heightened not just through the use of
technology, but also with a super-drug called Soma. The systematic drugging of individuals
for the benefit of the state was a main plank in the policy of the world controllers. Soma
had no physiological drawbacks. When taken in small doses, it stimulated a sense of bliss,
and in larger doses, it generated pleasant hallucinations and a refreshing sleep.
It provided what Huxley called a holiday from reality, and, most importantly, it made the
citizens highly submissive. As well as tranquilizing, hallucinating, and stimulating,
the Soma of my fable had the power of heightening suggestibility, and so could be used to reinforce
the effects of governmental propaganda. Today, not one Soma-like superdrug, but a whole concoction
of drugs including but not limited to alcohol, marijuana, psychotropics, opioids, and sleeping
pills are readily used as a means of escaping reality.
The widespread use of drugs in our day has socio-political ramifications.
For a drugged-up society, just like a dumbed-down society, is more easily conditioned into servitude.
The chemical dependent is not a politically vigilant person who is ready to defend liberty,
and as Meerloo wrote,
Any man who escapes from reality through the use of alcohol and drugs is no longer a free
agent.
He is no longer able to exert any voluntary control over his mind and his actions.
Alcoholism and drug addiction prepare the pattern of mental submission so beloved by
the totalitarian brainwasher.
Drugs can be used to make man a submissive and conforming being.
The society of Brave New World was also organized into a scientific caste system.
Prenatal genetic engineering produced children destined to belong to one of five castes.
The highest caste, Alpha, was made up of citizens genetically engineered to be intelligent,
strong, and beautiful.
The lowest caste, the Epsilons, were short, ugly, stupid, and treated as slaves.
Each of the castes was forbidden to intermingle.
Is a scientific caste system possible today?
While the widespread use of prenatal genetic engineering may not be on the near horizon,
post-natal genetic engineering and the technological augmentation of the brain and body is in its
initial stages.
We are at the beginning of a fateful era in which man may merge with machine, and the
result could be the formation of a two-tiered scientific caste system.
There will be a caste of human beings who welcome the merger with technology in the
expectation of transcending biological limitations.
And there will be an all-too-human caste composed of people who resist the merger with technology.
What restrictions will be placed on those in this latter caste?
What surveillance and control will be possible on those who accept technological augmentations?
What will be the carrots on a stick to entice people to transition into a transhumanist
era?
Time will tell.
The world of tomorrow will witness a tremendous battle between technology and psychology.
It will be a fight of technology versus nature, of systematic conditioning versus creative
spontaneity.
If Huxley’s predictions are coming true, what can be done about it?
Perhaps nothing needs to be done.
Perhaps the brave new world totalitarianism which Huxley warned of is not feasible in
the long term, not as stable as he thought.
Perhaps this form of social order is destined to crumble under its own oppressive weight.
But perhaps Huxley was right.
With enough advances in science and technology, a brave new world order can be achieved.
And once fully instituted, this will be the final revolution.
Human beings will be born and bred in conditions of technocratic servitude that they will not
challenge or resist, because it will be a servitude that most of them love and offend.
If this should turn out to be the case, Huxley’s final words from Brave New World Revisited
will prove prescient. Perhaps the forces that now menace freedom are too strong to be resisted
for very long. It is still our duty to do whatever we can to resist them.
Source: Academy of Ideas