The nightmarish sci-fi novels Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (1931) and 1984 by George Orwell (1949), present the idea of totalitarian governmental control by the manipulation of man’s thoughts. In his 1958 commentary, Brave New World Revisited, Huxley made a comparison between these novels:
Brave New World Revisited, Huxley, 1958
https://archive.org/details/bravenewworldbra0000mart/page/202/mode/2up?view=theater
p. 5 The society described in 1984 is a society controlled almost exclusively by punishment and the fear of punishment. In the imaginary world of my own fable punishment is infrequent and generally mild. The nearly perfect control exercised by the government is achieved by systematic reinforcement of desirable behavior, by many kinds of nearly non-violent manipulation, both physical and psychological, and by genetic standardization.
Through Brave New World Revisited, we are given an idea of the new tack taken by antichristian forces:
p. 5 In the light of what we have recently learned about animal behavior in general, and human behavior in particular, it has become clear that control through the punishment of undesirable behavior is less effective, in the long run, than control through the reinforcement of desirable behavior by rewards, and that government through terror works on the whole less well than government through the non-violent manipulation of the environment and of the thoughts and feelings of individual men, women and children. Punishment temporarily puts a stop to undesirable behavior, but does not permanently reduce the victim’s tendency to indulge in it. Moreover, the psycho-physical by-products of punishment may be just as undesirable as the behavior for which an individual has been punished. Psychotherapy is largely concerned with the debilitating or anti-social consequences of past punishments.
Wikipedia, “Aldous Huxley”: ...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". In his letter, he predicted:
"Within the next generation I believe that the world's leaders will discover that infant conditioning and narcohypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience."
Both Brave New World and 1984 advocate for democratic socialism as the solution to avoid the godless tyranny of their fictional worlds. In addition to stoking the Cold War fear of godless Soviet and Communist tyranny itself, Huxley's Brave New World Revisited sheds light on a foundational principle being used to justify “inevitable” world governmental control: fear of over-population.
Brave New World, Huxley, 1958, Ch. 1 "Over-Population"
pp. 13-14 Over-population leads to economic insecurity and social unrest. Unrest and insecurity lead to more control by central governments and an increase of their power. In the absence of a constitutional tradition, this increased power will probably be exercised in a dictatorial fashion... It is a pretty safe bet that, twenty years from now, all the world's over-populated and underdeveloped countries will be under some form of totalitarian rule — probably by the Communist party.
...and if the normal flow of raw materials from the underdeveloped countries were deliberately interrupted, the nations of the West would find themselves in a very bad way indeed...
The United States is not at present an over-populated country. If, however, the population continues to increase at the present rate (which is higher than that of India's increase, though happily a good deal lower than the rate now current in Mexico or Guatemala), the problem of numbers in relation to available re-sources might well become troublesome by the beginning of the twenty-first century. For the moment overpopulation is not a direct threat to the personal freedom of Americans. It remains, however, an indirect threat, a menace at one remove. If over-population should drive the underdeveloped countries into totalitarianism, and if these new dictatorships should ally themselves with Russia, then the military position of the United States would become less secure and the preparations for defense and retaliation would have to be intensified. But liberty, as we all know, cannot flourish in a country that is permanently on a war footing, or even a near-war footing. Permanent crisis justifies permanent control of everybody and everything by the agencies of the central government. And permanent crisis is what we have to expect in a world in which over-population is producing a state of things, in which dictatorship under Communist auspices becomes almost inevitable.
The last section is particularly interesting, in light of the population shifts that have been manipulated within Europe and the U. S. in recent years. As we are faced with super inflation and limited access to medical care, we should expect to see men turning for help to the very corrupt governments who helped created the social upheaval.
Appealing to the Protestant American mindset, Huxley reminds his readers that religious institutions fail to address the dire threat of a growing world population. He warns that the world's greatest resources are being mishandled by the ignorant and irresponsible in "densely populated" regions. Thus, he implies that it is man’s Christian duty (or his representative government) to responsibly tackle the matter, in order to secure mankind’s freedom:
pp. 7-8 On the first Christmas Day the population of our planet was about two hundred and fifty millions — less than half the population of modern China. Sixteen centuries later, when the Pilgrim Fathers landed at Plymouth Rock, human numbers had climbed to a little more than five hundred millions. By the time of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, world population had passed the seven hundred million mark. In 1931, when I was writing Brave New World, it stood at just under two billions. Today, only twenty-seven years later, there are two billion eight hundred million of us. And tomorrow — what? Penicillin, DDT and clean water are cheap commodities, whose effects on public health are out of all proportion to their cost. Even the poorest government is rich enough to provide its subjects with a substantial measure of death control. Birth control is a very different matter.
...there are nowhere any religious traditions in favor of unrestricted death, whereas religious and social traditions in favor of unrestricted reproduction are widespread. For all these reasons, death control is achieved very easily, birth control is achieved with great difficulty... human numbers are now increasing more rapidly than at any time in the history of the species...
Moreover, the yearly increases are themselves increasing. They increase regularly, according to the rules of compound interest; and they also increase irregularly with every application, by a technologically backward society of the principles of Public Health...
At the rate of increase prevailing between the birth of Christ and the death of Queen Elizabeth I, it took sixteen centuries for the population of the earth to double. At the present rate it will double in less than half a century. And this fantastically rapid doubling of our numbers will be taking place on a planet whose most desirable and productive areas are already densely populated, whose soils are being eroded by the frantic efforts of bad farmers to raise more food, and whose easily available mineral capital is being squandered with the reckless extravagance of a drunken sailor getting rid of his accumulated pay.
...The problem of rapidly increasing numbers in relation to natural resources, to social stability and to the wellbeing of individuals — this is now the central problem of mankind; and it will remain the central problem certainly for another century, and perhaps for several centuries thereafter. A new age is supposed to have begun on October 4, 1957. But actually, in the present context, all our exuberant post-Sputnik talk is irrelevant and even nonsensical. So far as the masses of mankind are concerned, the coming time will not be the Space Age; it will be the Age of Over-population.
Huxley thus presents to Protestant readers the idea of Manifest Destiny on a world-wild scale. Yet, as an agnostic who embraced perennialism and pacifism, Huxley actually advocated for the secularization of society; a society in which God is made irrelevant, especially regarding “saving the planet” through population reduction.
The removal of even the notion of the one, true God from society has been a long-standing goal of the sons of Antichrist. This secularization, epitomized through movies like Soylent Green (Fleischer, 1973), has been repeatedly reinforced through the educational system, and children’s programming. We are indeed facing a New World in which men are not only continually being conditioned to want the godless things presented to them, but also to look to the government, rather than God, for solutions to manufactured or perceived problems.
Let’s remember that the ultimate goal in all of this is for the people of the world to gladly accept the peace and prosperity of Antichrist, a peace which will be supported by a New World false ecumenical religion. Thinking they are great thinkers, men like Aldous Huxley have simply been unwitting pawns along the way.
No comments:
Post a Comment