Additional comments on Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
From the statements attributed to Huxley in the introduction to this edition of Brave New World, it seems clear that Huxley’s fear at the time was of the people living in a world that is unplanned, living more naturally and thinking for themselves.
Another example is his last novel, Island (1962), which the introduction describes as a story about stabilizing “population growth” and replacing the family with “mutual adoption clubs”.
I think that readers of Plato’s Republic and Brave New World will be able to recognize similar themes. The elite or “ruling oligarchy”–a term that Huxley uses in his letter to Orwell–seems to be motivated to pursue this “utopia” from an obsessive desire for control.
It appears that the elite’s motivation for biological control over most human beings, as H. G. Wells discussed in “The Open Conspiracy”, is so far removed from the way of thinking of the majority, that this strangeness is part of the reason why we ignore clear statements in the elite’s own books about depopulation and eugenics.
In my view, the elite agenda is the real reason for decades of constant propaganda about population and resources–to the detriment of our rights to control our own property. Also it is part of the reason for the promotion of culturally destructive ideas that have been unleashed to tear down morality, family and hence our capacity to reproduce and raise children.
In addition to Huxley’s letter to Orwell–in which he mentions sadism, the Marquis de Sade and the ultimate revolution–an assault on the human individual–in order to modify body, mind and soul–as he also does in the Foreword, readers may be interested in listening to a presentation at Berkeley by Huxley in the 1960s, and to his 1958 interview with Mike Wallace.
In Huxley’s later statements, including his 1946 Foreword to Brave New World, we can’t deny that he is warning about an oligarchy that threatens to destroy freedom and individuality. However, we shouldn’t be so quick to assume his motives for those warnings.
Because of cultural propaganda, it’s possible that many people automatically associate the interest of Huxley and others in psychedelic drugs with a benign desire for freedom and self-empowerment. A drug might have some benefits if used in the right way, but can a drug make us free? It’s clear that this idea contradicts the point of drug use in his novel. The use of drugs described in Brave New World is a totalitarian method of disempowerment, of making human beings love and adapt to their condition of servitude. And Huxley repeats this theme in his lectures and interviews as if he is merely warning about it.
In my view, Huxley’s warnings were coming from someone who was involved in a promotional campaign for a large-scale social engineering project. As part of that campaign, he sells the idea of its inevitability. Hollywood has promoted the same type of future in many science fiction movies. Examples include: THX 1138, Logan’s Run, Soylent Green, Equilibrium, and Elysium. Researcher Alan Watt (cuttingthroughthematrix.com) has called this “predictive programming”.
As we’ll see, Brave New World appears to have already begun, but is it really inevitable? Is it really inescapable?
We need to be aware of what has happened to us, but we also need to be aware of our own power to resist. If we can escape from artificial mental constructs of “authority”, stop accepting propaganda as legitimate knowledge, and start thinking for ourselves, we will get closer to our natural way of thinking, and become more like our real selves and more empowered.
We have the power to resist through economic means (through boycott), and possibly also through the legal system. We have the power to refuse to cooperate, and the power to communicate the truth to others.
Brave New World appears to be like a blueprint or a model for a perfect controlled and planned society. The whole point of writing about this agenda is to help make people aware of what has been happening and to make them aware of their vulnerability to techniques such as propaganda, drugs and entertainment, so that as many people as possible can snap out of their delusions and empower themselves to stop going along.
The analysis I’ve done of Brave New World is an effort to break down various techniques that have already emerged in our world, methods that are already working away on us.
These techniques are addictive. It is hard for us to say no to the television, to the movies, to the pop culture. It is hard for us to disagree with changes that even our parents had partially accepted before we were born. It’s hard to question authority figures, media, the education system, and the government.
Also, it’s hard to pull us out of the factional traps of picking a camp and taking one side or another with an issue instead of making up our own minds. We believe the sexual revolution was based on truth. We believe the myth of “progress”, which just means that we are trained to accept the inevitability and goodness of elite’s agenda. It’s part of their marketing campaign. The elite created the big Foundations to promote their agenda.
Many of us refuse to be suspicious about what we are eating, about the medical system, about prescription drugs, about the monetary system, about governments, and corporations.
We are more and more part of a hive mind.
We need to resist the forces that try–with some success, but not complete success–to push us away from small business, from family farms, from independence, and from thinking for ourselves.
If we could only just turn away for a minute and think! Start digging up the facts and evidence about drugs, vaccines, fluoride, GMO food, etc. Start asking questions and look up the answers. Are they tested for safety? What are the official side effects? Are the makers protected from lawsuits and subsidized by government?
What if we just pulled back, stopped being afraid, stopped buying these dubious substances, and stopped accepting mindless “change”? What if we stopped obeying all the made up laws, and stopped doing everything we’re told? What if we started asking questions about product ingredients? What if we started threatening lawsuits and launching boycotts?
My point is: if enough people did that, would the whole system of lies and scams just collapse in a heap? I think so.
The “net” has been pulled slowly over us and around us, but its strength depends on our consent and compliance.
IF you–and then a few more, and a few more–turn off the TV (for example) and you refuse to expose your children to the lies, and start learning about reality, then there is hope.
The hope lies in us tapping in to our survival instincts and asking questions. What makes us weak? What makes us strong? We can figure it out. Let’s be suspicious AND learn all we can. Let’s get rid of the addictive and toxic influences that dominate our lives, those things that prevent us from taking the time we need for thinking and learning.