“A Dictatorship without Tears”
Aldous Huxley’s prescient 1961 speech
In 1961, President Eisenhower gave his famous “Military-Industrial Complex” Farewell Address in which he warned about “the potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power.” During this same year and in the following year, Aldous Huxley gave a talks at different institutions in California, including the UC Medical Center of San Francisco and the University of California, Berkeley, in which proposed that in the future, tyrants would no longer use terror and concentration camps, but far more refined methods of inducing the servitude of the citizenry.
Aldous Huxley delivering”Man and Civilization: Control of the Mind,” held January 28-30, 1961 at the UC Medical Center of San Francisco
Tapping into the understandable desire for comfort, security, and pleasure, the new dictators will obtain the consent of the governed by inducing them to ENJOY their servitude. At his talk at UC Berkeley in 1962, he explicitly contrasted his vision with that of Orwell’s in the book 1984.
And here I would like briefly to compare the parable of Brave New World with another parable which was put forth more recently in George Orwell’s book, Nineteen Eighty- Four. Orwell wrote his book between, I think between 45 and 48 at the time when the Stalinist terror regime was still in Full swing and just after the collapse of the Hitlerian terror regime. And his book which I admire greatly, it’s a book of very great talent and extraordinary ingenuity, shows, so to say, a projection into the future of the immediate past, of what for him was the immediate past, and the immediate present, it was a projection into the future of a society where control was exercised wholly by terrorism and violent attacks upon the mind-body of individuals.
Whereas my own book which was written in 1932 when there was only a mild dictatorship in the form of Mussolini in existence, was not overshadowed by the idea of terrorism, and I was therefore free in a way in which Orwell was not free, to think about these other methods of control, these non-violent methods and my, I’m inclined to think that the scientific dictatorships of the future, and I think there are going to be scientific dictatorships in many parts of the world, will be probably a good deal nearer to the brave new world pattern than to the 1984 pattern, they will a good deal nearer not because of any humanitarian qualms of the scientific dictators but simply because the BNW pattern is probably a good deal more efficient than the other.
That if you can get people to consent to the state of affairs in which they’re living. The state of servitude the state of being, having their differences ironed out, and being made amenable to mass production methods on the social level, if you can do this, then you have, you are likely, to have a much more stable and lasting society. Much more easily controllable society than you would if you were relying wholly on clubs and firing squads and concentration camps.
Another talk that Huxley apparently gave around the same time (I’m struggling to find a copy of the complete transcript) is quoted more often, especially the following passage. Most online references state that the quotation is from a speech he gave to the “Tavistock Group, California Medical School, 1961,” though I am unable to verify this. At any rate, what he apparently stated in this speech strikes me as remarkably prescient:
There will be, in the next generation or so, a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing dictatorship without tears, so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them, but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda or brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods. And this seems to be the final revolution.
These reflections immediately resonated with me, because in recent years I’ve often thought that the power of our overlords derives as much from our own stupefaction and distraction as it does from their potency.
Every passing day brings fresh revelations of the preposterously fraudulent character of the COVID-19 Pandemic and the official response to it. The reality of it isn’t even being concealed—it just isn’t being reported in the legacy media, and a large swath of the population is too stupefied and distracted to see what is right in front of them.
From the article:
…….”people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them, but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda or brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods.”…….
In the Brave New World the pharmaceutical vehicle to enjoyable slavery was going to be Soma, a drug developed to sedate the masses & keep their minds fried or at least distracted from what was actually happening.
……”Soma seems to be something of a wonder drug with no unpleasant side effects or hangover. However, it is somewhat addictive. Soma is typically provided in half-gram tablets that people can take to give themselves a sense of calm and happiness. In larger doses, soma can have a pleasant hallucinatory effect that is sometimes referred to as a soma ”holiday.” This is a way for individuals to drop out of society for a few hours and simply dream, forgetting all of their worries. The doses mentioned in the book explain the effects of soma as follows: ”half a gramme for a half-holiday, a gramme for a weekend, two grammes for a trip to the gorgeous East, three for a dark eternity on the moon.””…….
https://study.com/learn/lesson/what-is-soma-in-brave-new-world.html
It would seem that the WEF in general & Ardern in particular have decided that allowing the populace to self medicate ourselves into poverty & servitude is too merciful. Instead we must be rendered dead or at least incapable of resistance via Pfizer’s depopulator. As the emphasis is on pain & punishment rather than pleasure I suspect Vatican involvement.
Huxley was a hopeless optimist & Pollyanna.
SOMA proponents = cannabis activists. People drugged out on SOMA are easily tricked.
nasska. Enthusiastic supporter and
poster boy for pot smoking drop-kicks.
Huxley came from the famous English Elitist huckster family of story tellers, and manipulators. His grandfather wrote the Dinosaur myth story, and worked hard to popularise the Darwinistic evolutionary death grip on popular imagination. An early family of propogandists, like the Freud/Bernays/Netflix family line. Not good.
I’ve read both “1984” & Brave New World along with various dissertations on their themes. If Huxley’s novel hadn’t proved prophetic it would have been regarded as science fiction & cast into the $2 bin. In the same vein as the Book of Revelation or the prophesies of Nostradamus it attracts increasing interest as its predictions turn into fact.
Comparing cannabis with Soma is not really valid if the intention is to denigrate the author. Huxley’s drug experience was to the best of my knowledge confined to mescaline which is an hallucinogen. Cannabis of the era was a very weak & mild drug only banned by the 1925 Geneva Convention on Traffic in Opium and Other Drugs. This was in order to give the FBI a club with which to bash the bohemians who were thought to inspire communism.
Nasska, so right.
it is a way of opening ones thinking, to what we did not consider as possible, as clues to this dropped around us in the past 3-4 years.
…. If Huxley’s novel hadn’t proved prophetic it would have been regarded as science fiction & cast into the $2 bin. ….
I felt the same way years ago, and the book had no appeal to me.
A bit tedious, & is a book that one can not skip to the end..
However since the start of Covid, and damm it, to make sense of it, one can not skip through it.
Since I have read it, I now look for more of Aldous Huxley’s quotes, and seriously consider his other writings.
It is a part of being more aware of things, to know ourselves, to where the limits of community & why it seeks compliance; a part of Sun Tzu thoughts, to better able to challenge others,
We should be careful about how the English Elite broadcast their prophecies, especially when they are backed by Tavistock, forerunners of the WEF. Orwell was on state spook payroll too. They are no doubt talented communicators and somewhat prophetic, but I get the feeling Huxley was shepherding as much as warning. Its like, don’t touch the red button, and the first thing you want to do is touch the red button. Our family were crushed by booze and drugs, and I get a red flashing & klaxon go off when anyone proposes SOMA is self medication, good somehow, just lets you get through your day. I really like all Orwell, loved Road to Wigan Pier, Huxley, not so much, but still good.