Perhaps it is the approaching doom of 2012 (have you noticed it yet, or are these first weeks and months of the year just the same old thing), but I have been drawn back to the two great futuristic works of the 20th century: 1984 and Brave New World. Orwell’s work, 1984, was actually much more familiar to me, having read it several times to observe the scary world where the government watches everything we say or do. Since today, here in Florida, is the election primary day (mostly focused on the Republican candidates), I thought it apt to bring up the power of these two looks at what our future was assumed to become, and where we still might go.
Aldous Huxley’s book published in 1932 was less familiar to me, so as I began to search for it, I was captured by how well he had seen the future, at least at points. That he was writing against materialism and hedonism was an even stronger connection for myself since so much of my writing and thinking is aimed against those same things. In my mind, the future that Huxley wrote about has become true, at least as far as everything exists for our own pleasure and we have lost connection for things that are real.
In 1958, Huxley wrote Brave New World Revisited. This work is not fiction, but rather a series of essays where Huxley comments on the world as it is, as it is different or the same from his work of 26 years ago. In there, he starts by saying that while he had hope the world might turn out well, “I feel a good deal less optimistic than I did when I was writing Brave New World. The prophecies made in 1931 [when he wrote BNW] are coming true much sooner than I thought they would.”
Reading his ideas now, in early 2012, is an interesting exercise. I was captured by many of his 1958 thoughts, and so, what follows, are quotes from Huxley and brief comments of mine.
- Huxley first wrote about the threat of overpopulation. Since, as you should know, the world hit 7 billion people, doubling over from the world of Huxley which was approaching 3 billion in 1958. To this threat, Huxley wrote “the probability of over-population leading through unrest to dictatorship becomes a virtual certainty. . . .If the newly formed dictatorships were hostile to [still democratic countries], and if the flow of raw materials from the underdeveloped countries were deliberately interrupted, the nations of the West would find themselves in a very bad way.” Well, if you know our history, you know that oil in particular has become that very resource that underdeveloped countries could use to threaten the West. The oil embargoes of the 1970s ruined economies, led to wars about oil, political unrest in Iran and our further complicated relationship in the Middle East.
- Huxley then wrote about the decline of quality and morality of a culture. OF course, this would be highly inflammatory today (as probably my post will be), but Huxley was unafraid to speak prophetically about the world actually depicted in the movie Idiocracy. That movie’s basic premise was that lesser intelligent people will continue having babies, while more intelligent people will not (whether due to not wanting to raise more kids or concerns about the population of the planet, the end result is the same). So, according to the movie, at some point in the future, society is overwhelmed by too many people who simply do not have the mental capacity for wise choices or decision-making. Now, listen to Huxley—in an overcrowded world, aided by supposed improvements in the medical field that allows people to live longer, “the physical health of the general population will show no improvement, and may even deteriorate. And along with a decline of average healthiness there may well go a decline in average intelligence.” So, he wonders, what happens to a country like the USA? “For how long can a society maintain its traditions of individual liberty and democratic government [if IQ and physical vigor are on the decline].” One doesn’t have to look too far in 2012 to see the results of this, at least on the physical level—the USA is an obese society and the cost to medical insurance continues to skyrocket because of it.
- Moreover, Huxley argues, foreseeing the complaints of the “Occupy Movement” (and many like it), where is the good to extend life, thus over-populating the planet if that dooms millions to live an undernourished life.? “The hundreds of thousands of human beings thus saved, and the millions whom they beget and bring to birth, cannot be adequately clothed, housed, educated or even fed….Quick death by malaria has been abolished; but life made miserable by undernourishment and over-crowding is now the rule, and slow death by outright starvation threatens even greater numbers.”
- Government, according to Huxley, was going to move to distract people, to keep them happy (perhaps “dumb, fat and happy” would have better represented his feelings). In the book, he wrote about some use of a drug, but 27 years later, he noticed that the real distraction would come from media. He mentioned that previous to the 20th century, the distractions within a society came infrequently (a 4th of July party, a church pageant, etc…), but now “For conditions even remotely comparable to those now prevailing we must return to imperial Rome, where the population was kept in good humor by frequent, gratuitous doses of many kinds of entertainment….But even in Rome there was nothing like the non-stop distraction now provided by newspapers and magazines, by radio, television and the cinema.” Huxley would have been devastated to learn about the Internet, gaming, facebook and twitter. Yet, his point is clearly demonstrated in our world today where, according to experts, the average person consumes 11+ hours of media content…and they somehow do it in 7.5 hours through the miracle (evil?) of multitasking.
- To Huxley, the real danger is to liberal government, that idea of “Government of the people,” where active citizens engage in governing themselves, typically through representatives from their own communities, protected by a written document of law (a constitution). With overpopulation and the ease at which the governing powers can distract the populace, self-government becomes nigh impossible and a dictator, or forces that act dictatorially (even constitutionally elected forces) can easily take over. Huxley believed that could easily happen through consumerism where the real dictatorial powers would be corporations. Having just gone through our own high holy day to the USA national religion of consumerism (Black Friday and the other holiday shopping associated with the late-October – early January period), it is easy to see how prescient Huxley was. He wrote, “In due course, [children] these living, talking records of television commercials will grow up, earn money and buy the products of industry…millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions of children are in the process of growing up to buy the local despot’s ideological product.”
- And if not corporations, then real dictators emerge because a republic like the USA cannot stand without invested citizens. “Self-government is in inverse ratio to numbers. The larger the constituency, the less the value of any particular vote. When he is merely one of millions, the individual elector feels himself to be impotent, a negligible quantity. The candidates he has voted into office are far away, at the top of the pyramid of power. Theoretically they are the servants of the people’ but in fact it is the servants who give orders and the people, far off at the base of the great pyramid, who must obey. Increasing population and advancing technology have resulted in an increase in the number and complexity of organizations, an increase in the amount of power concentrated in the hands of officials and a corresponding decrease in the amount of control exercised by electors, coupled with a decrease in the public’s regard for democratic procedures.” Please read that long quote again; get it locked into your mind. Huxley wrote that in 1958, not 2008. Obviously in this, he was clearly right. We are there now.
Huxley concluded his series of essays with a few jabs at what to do. Education, not surprisingly, was a part of his list. But also a warning to fight for who controls the definitions. If not challenged, then the controlling elite (media, the masses, corporations, government—any of these can be the controlling elite) are allowed to redefine words like freedom or democracy in the way that works best for them. We are, of course, seeing this happen in our day too.
We must continue to fight for freedom, just as long ago when the English were determined to get the right of habeas corpus, and did so initially through the Magna Carta in 1215 and then, defended by the Glorious Revolution of 1689. Freedom extends to our person, both physically and mentally, as well as our property.
But, we must decide to also look in the mirror and choose our own actions. No one made us shop like crazy through the holiday season, even though we knew we were in financial challenging times. No one made us overeat through the holidays, even though we knew we already were largely unhealthy.
In the end, the hope or ability to avoid the dystopic world of 1984 or Brave New World depends as much on ourselves as it does on the “powers that be.”