Monday, July 22, 2019

A Warning From SIX Decades Ago - Aldous Huxley interviewed by Mike Wallace : 1958 (Full)



.

.

.

In this 1958 interview with Mike Wallace, writer, Aldous Huxley explains why he believed, even then that the world he envisioned in his dystopian novel, "Brave New World" is just around the corner. (https://youtu.be/alasBxZsb40)

Here he discusses how overpopulation and technology had already increased the role of government and limited personal freedoms in the West.

His view was that the organization most prepared to fill the breach was the Commjnist Party, which already had a presence in every country around the world.

He also noted that Communism's biggest enemy at the time, the Roman Catholic Church, in opposing birth control, was unwittingly fueling overpopulation and the conditions most likely to bring about global Communism.

He also touched on, in a circumspect manner (given television's reliance on ad revenues)the role of mass communications and mass propaganda, that has given the few conglomerates that control most of the world's media, the ability to control both access to information and what views are "acceptable" and which ones aren't.

This capacity for mass manipulation has only increased and been honed over the intervening years.

As Huxley notes, the coming authoritarian dictatorship will be nothing like the ones of the early 20th Century, the coming one will control thought and opinion through the access to and manipulation of information. In that way people will not only support the authoritarian structure, but will feel they need it.

It's a poignant interview even today...
.

No comments:

American Ideas Click Here!