Continued from Part 4
Series Contents

Continuing with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aldous_Huxley:

Huxley wrote an introduction to the posthumous publication of J. D. Unwin‘s 1940 book Hopousia or The Sexual and Economic Foundations of a New Society.

Referring to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._D._Unwin, Unwin’s opinions are interesting:

In Sex and Culture (1934), Unwin studied 80 primitive tribes and six known civilizations through 5,000 years of history. He claimed there was a positive correlation between the cultural achievement of a people and the sexual restraint they observe. Aldous Huxley described Sex and Culture as “a work of the highest importance” in his literature.

According to Unwin, after a nation becomes prosperous, it becomes increasingly liberal concerning sexual morality. It thus loses its cohesion, impetus, and purpose, which he claims is irrevocable.

A Wikipedia citation:

Unwin, Joseph Daniel (1934). Sex and Culture. London: Humphrey Milford: Oxford University Press. p. 412. “Any human society is free to choose either to display great energy or to enjoy sexual freedom; the evidence is that it cannot do both for more than one generation.”

The citation for the Aldous Huxley quote on Unwin:

Huxley, Aldous (1946). “Ethics”. Ends and Means. London: Chatto & Windus. pp. 311–2.

Right off the bat, I have questions about some of Unwin’s analysis, including the idea that greater prosperity somehow makes a society more sexually liberal. I think it’s more likely that prosperous societies–led by top down imperial elites–are subject to more systematic social engineering in order to hold down the prospects (family and economic production) for the mass of the public (as in Huxley’s Brave New World).

The Wikipedia article on Unwin points to links at which his books can be obtained, for example, https://archive.org/

Letter to Orwell:

On 21 October 1949 Huxley wrote to George Orwell, author of Nineteen Eighty-Four, congratulating him on “how fine and how profoundly important the book is”.

The complete text of this letter can be found here: https://web.archive.org/web/20200301141344/http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/03/1984-v-brave-new-world.html.

The most interesting part to me, besides the discussion of “narco-hypnosis,” is here:

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 quote his Foreword to the 1946 edition of Brave New World (Aldous Huxley, 1994, Flamingo, London) which uses a similar phrase to “ultimate revolution” in reference to his own novel specifically:

https://canadianliberty.com/vaccines-1-3-context-aldous-huxley-and-getting-under-the-skin/

“This really revolutionary revolution is to be achieved, not in the external world, but in the souls and flesh of human beings. . . . Sade regarded himself as the apostle of the truly revolutionary revolution, beyond mere politics and economics . . .

“. . . —the revolution of individual men, women and children, whose bodies were henceforward to become the common sexual property of all and whose minds were to be purged of all the natural decencies . . .

“. . . Sade was a lunatic . . . The people who govern the Brave New World may not be sane . . . ; but they are not mad men . . . It is in order to achieve stability that they carry out, by scientific means, the ultimate, personal, really revolutionary revolution.”

Notice the reference to “stability” as a justification for this revolution.

Also related to this topic, you can listen to Huxley’s presentation at Berkeley: https://canadianliberty.com/aldous-huxley-the-ultimate-revolution-speech-at-berkeley/.

In this speech, he says, “and I think there are going to be scientific dictatorships in many parts of the world.”

To be continued: Part 6