Aldous Huxley, The Dictatorship Of The Future

In this clip taken from a 1958 interview by Mike Wallace with Aldous Huxley, Huxley talks about how he thinks that the dictatorships of the future will take shape. Here's a partial transcript from the interview:

"The dictatorship of the future, I think will be very unlike the dictatorships which we've been familiar with in the immediate past. I mean, take another book prophesying the future, which was a very remarkable book, George Orwell's 1984. There he foresaw a dictatorship using entirely the methods of terror; methods of physical violence. I think what is going to happen in the future is that dictators will find, as the old saying goes, that they can do everything with bayonets except sit on them. If you want to preserve your power indefinitely you have to get the consent of the ruled. And this they will do partly by drugs as I foresaw in "Brave New World", partly by these new techniques of propaganda. They will do it by bypassing the rational side of man and appealing to his subconscious and his deeper emotions and his physiology even. And so making him actually love his slavery. I think this is the danger, that actually people may be in some ways happy under the new regime. But they will be happy in situations where they ought not to be happy. That's why I think it's so extremely important here and now to start thinking about these problems not to let ourselves be taken by surprise by the new advances in technology. I mean for example in regard to the use of the drugs, there's enough evidence now for us to be able on the bases of this evidence and using a certain amount of creative imagination to foresee the kind of uses which could be made by people of bad will with these things, and to attempt to forestall this. And in the same way I think with these other methods of propaganda we can foresee and we can do a good deal to forestall. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance."

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Dave Wallace July 23, 2023 at 11:39pm

In this clip taken from a 1958 interview by Mike Wallace with Aldous Huxley, Huxley talks about how he thinks that the dictatorships of the future will take shape. Here's a partial transcript from the interview:

"The dictatorship of the future, I think will be very unlike the dictatorships which we've been familiar with in the immediate past. I mean, take another book prophesying the future, which was a very remarkable book, George Orwell's 1984. There he foresaw a dictatorship using entirely the methods of terror; methods of physical violence. I think what is going to happen in the future is that dictators will find, as the old saying goes, that they can do everything with bayonets except sit on them. If you want to preserve your power indefinitely you have to get the consent of the ruled. And this they will do partly by drugs as I foresaw in "Brave New World", partly by these new techniques of propaganda. They will do it by bypassing the rational side of man and appealing to his subconscious and his deeper emotions and his physiology even. And so making him actually love his slavery. I think this is the danger, that actually people may be in some ways happy under the new regime. But they will be happy in situations where they ought not to be happy. That's why I think it's so extremely important here and now to start thinking about these problems not to let ourselves be taken by surprise by the new advances in technology. I mean for example in regard to the use of the drugs, there's enough evidence now for us to be able on the bases of this evidence and using a certain amount of creative imagination to foresee the kind of uses which could be made by people of bad will with these things, and to attempt to forestall this. And in the same way I think with these other methods of propaganda we can foresee and we can do a good deal to forestall. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance."

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