Aldous Huxley was a man of great insight. His studies
into human nature, society, and the threats of government control create a
foreboding vision of a possible future. Huxley’s novel Brave New World allows readers to be transported into the
unsettling future which he had hypothesized. With the publication of Brave New World Revisited, Huxley was
able to break down the society he had created, compare it with modern society,
and explain the rationality behind his fears, warnings, and predictions. To
absorb each and every page of Huxley’s writings as truth would warrant a very
disturbed reaction. However, there are reasonable objections which may be made
to Huxley’s postulations, primarily with reasons he himself espouses in Chapter
XI of Brave New World Revisited.
The eleventh chapter of Huxley’s non-fiction work deals
with “Education for Freedom”. Huxley believes, among other paths, that
avoidance to his dangerous future can be accomplished through education.
Recognition of declining social conditions, knowledge of rational and
irrational propaganda, and a guarded mind against government can help ensure
liberty. “If this kind of tyranny is to be avoided,” states Huxley, “we must
begin without delay to educate ourselves and our children for freedom and
self-government”. This is a statement which bears much truth in any
circumstance, as knowledge is key when facing an enemy.
Huxley sees education in several specific subjects as
key. He believes “an education first of all in facts and in values” is of the
utmost importance, as such would aid in combatting appeals to passion and lies
spread for a dictator’s gain. However, “an education in the proper uses of
language” is of equal importance, as it allows individuals to recognize meaning
and symbols, tools which can be skewed by dictators and propagandists to
further a cause. Yet Huxley raises attention to the threat of undistinguished
truth and falsity, and meaning and meaningless. Or rather, he raises attention
to the lack of attempts to dispose of this threat.
Through using the example of the Institute for Propaganda
Analysis (founded in 1937 and closed in 1941) Huxley makes a very poignant
point about society. The Institute sought to analyze non-rational propaganda,
yet was unfortunately juxtaposed with the Second World War As such, propaganda
fast became critical in Nazi Germany, but in the Allied home fronts as well.
Beyond the mental war effort, numerous groups, including military officers,
clergymen, and businesses found issues with the Institute as disrupting and
undermining their status quo. Society, even before the war, was centered, at
least partially, on “the acceptance, without too many embarrassing questions,
of the propaganda put forth by those in authority and the propaganda hallowed
by the local traditions.” Huxley thus determines that a “happy mean” must be
found for society to function while also enabling avoidance of
mind-manipulation.
The individual may draw many conclusions from Huxley’s
statements in this chapter. I found it helped to validate my own thoughts which
had sat ruminating within me throughout the readings of his works. The concept
of a societal mean seemed to always come nagging back to me. Sure, I could get
swept up in the Huxley’s terrible predictions. But I found that, for all his
predictions, society still sits relatively close to where it was in his time.
Dictators and totalitarian regimes may rise, but they can just as easily fall.
Advertisements may run constantly which employ non-rational propaganda, but the
general populace is knowledgeable enough to recognize them for what they are.
Science could be working day and night to establish a system for domination of
the individual, but the science I know is one with a general goal of well-being
and understanding, technology a neutral tool.
I suppose the main issue I have with many of Huxley’s
arguments is the lack of a human element, and an oversight of history’s
cyclical patterns. Now, I do not deem Huxley’s studies untruthful. His
population estimates were fairly exact, and his analysis of threats posed by
resources and society’s organization carry weight. But a totalitarian
dictatorship, a world power of vast control, seems to be as likely as a meteor
impact. Now, the latter is a not impossible event. Thus, I am recognizing the
potential rise of a dictatorship. However, conditions which would give rise to
such a power, and the circumstances necessary to carry the power in existence,
can be frail when including the human element.
“Every individual is biologically unique and unlike all
other individuals.” Huxley makes this statement towards the beginning of the
chapter. In the section, he is discussing how unfortunate and disappointing are
the attempts made to reduce human difference and independence. I see, however,
something much more. Later, Huxley writes that “In real life, life as it is
lived from day to day, the individual can never be explained away.” Well
written, Huxley. Indeed, the individual, I believe, can never be explained
away. To generalize society as a fairly uniform body of culture, education, and
values is to strip from it its great complexity. Individuals are the most
dangerous threat to totalitarian regimes, and I refuse to accept the argument
of something like the “Bokanovsky Process”. Nazi Germany and Hitler’s Reich
committed grand atrocities, it is true, but they were not without their
dissenters, rebels, and heroes. The individual is a constant of human
existence. “Thus, if Bismarck and Lenin had died in infancy,” Huxley begins a
paragraph, “our world would be very different from what, thanks in part to
Bismarck and Lenin, it now is”. The individual possesses great potential to
bring about change in their own society. In addition, an important reminder is
that technology is useless without a wielder, and while dictators may try to
use technologies to their full potential, there may always be the one hesitant bureaucrat
who experiences a conflict of duty.
All of the above writing may or may not be a complete
mess of editorial reaction. The subjects described and explored by Huxley are
of a very conflicting and deep nature. To compose a more focused and organized
essay would require more time, more research, and more inner-thought. Yet, I
believe my main points have been made clear, whether or not I myself fully
believe what I have written. Of all things, however, I am at least certain in
one regard: acceptance of a dark fate is a danger that cannot be afforded.
Allowing ourselves to fully believe in the coming of a totalitarian
dictatorship encourages passiveness. Any possible preventive measures are
neglected, and hope is extinguished, when the postulations of people like
Huxley are taken as near-prophecy. Still, it is through men and women like
Huxley that a serious reality-check is provided, and we may, as a society,
recognize potential threats and hazards in our progress.
