Hmmm, Huxley wrote a letter to Orwell....

[JackRiddler]

http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/03/19 ... world.html

In October of 1949, a few months after the release of George Orwell's dystopian masterpiece, Nineteen Eighty-Four, he received a fascinating letter from fellow author Aldous Huxley — a man who, 17 years previous, had seen his own nightmarish vision of society published, in the form of Brave New World. What begins as a letter of praise soon becomes a brief comparison of the two novels, and an explanation as to why Huxley believes his own, earlier work to be a more realistic prediction.

Wrightwood. Cal. 21 October, 1949

Dear Mr. Orwell,

It was very kind of you to tell your publishers to send me a copy of your book. It arrived as I was in the midst of a piece of work that required much reading and consulting of references; and since poor sight makes it necessary for me to ration my reading, I had to wait a long time before being able to embark on Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Agreeing with all that the critics have written of it, I need not tell you, yet once more, how fine and how profoundly important the book is. May I speak instead of the thing with which the book deals — the ultimate revolution? The first hints of a philosophy of the ultimate revolution — the revolution which lies beyond politics and economics, and which aims at total subversion of the individual's psychology and physiology — are to be found in the Marquis de Sade, who regarded himself as the continuator, the consummator, of Robespierre and Babeuf. The philosophy of the ruling minority in Nineteen Eighty-Four is a sadism which has been carried to its logical conclusion by going beyond sex and denying it. Whether in actual fact the policy of the boot-on-the-face can go on indefinitely seems doubtful. My own belief is that the ruling oligarchy will find less arduous and wasteful ways of governing and of satisfying its lust for power, and these ways will resemble those which I described in Brave New World. I have had occasion recently to look into the history of animal magnetism and hypnotism, and have been greatly struck by the way in which, for a hundred and fifty years, the world has refused to take serious cognizance of the discoveries of Mesmer, Braid, Esdaile, and the rest.

Partly because of the prevailing materialism and partly because of prevailing respectability, nineteenth-century philosophers and men of science were not willing to investigate the odder facts of psychology for practical men, such as politicians, soldiers and policemen, to apply in the field of government. Thanks to the voluntary ignorance of our fathers, the advent of the ultimate revolution was delayed for five or six generations. Another lucky accident was Freud's inability to hypnotize successfully and his consequent disparagement of hypnotism. This delayed the general application of hypnotism to psychiatry for at least forty years. But now psycho-analysis is being combined with hypnosis; and hypnosis has been made easy and indefinitely extensible through the use of barbiturates, which induce a hypnoid and suggestible state in even the most recalcitrant subjects.

Within the next generation I believe that the world's rulers will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis 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 and kicking them into obedience. In other words, I feel that the nightmare of Nineteen Eighty-Four is destined to modulate into the nightmare of a world having more resemblance to that which I imagined in Brave New World. The change will be brought about as a result of a felt need for increased efficiency. Meanwhile, of course, there may be a large scale biological and atomic war — in which case we shall have nightmares of other and scarcely imaginable kinds.

Thank you once again for the book.

Yours sincerely,

Aldous Huxley

[Nordic]

Seems he was right. I think the proof was the first time somebody was murdered over a pair of Nikes.

Or maybe it was a few years before that, when there was a near-revolution over Coke changing their flavor.

[Project Willow]

Thanks to the voluntary ignorance of our fathers, the advent of the ultimate revolution was delayed for five or six generations. Another lucky accident was Freud's inability to hypnotize successfully and his consequent disparagement of hypnotism. This delayed the general application of hypnotism to psychiatry for at least forty years. But now psycho-analysis is being combined with hypnosis; and hypnosis has been made easy and indefinitely extensible through the use of barbiturates, which induce a hypnoid and suggestible state in even the most recalcitrant subjects.

Thanks for this JR. In countless lab nurseries across the US, the CIA was birthing into reality Huxley's vision as he wrote this letter.

The voluntary ignorance of our fathers persists, in some part due the very tendency exemplified by this letter, to defend one's corner rather than work to integrate or synthesize the views and discoveries of others.

On edit:
I forgot to add that now voluntary ignorance aids the oppressors, but perhaps it always did.

[brainpanhandler]

Skip to 25:00

"the average child entering kindergarten knows 200 corporate logos"

I can't find the survey he references.

Damn Orwell and Huxley for writing the blueprints.

[2012 Countdown]

This is AJs latest kick, calling the Gen. Pop. hypnotized and drugged up for suggestability.
On the first part, he cited anticdotal evidence of dubious nature, but he is accidentally correct in conclusion, and also right (imo) in that the mass drugging aids in this. He further suggests (again I suspect rightly) that INVOLUNTARY mass dosing of water supplies is taking place (see water runoff analysis/pharmacologial contents).

I also like that he is always talking about Edward Bernays (marketing), who is important.

[Elvis]

the CIA was birthing into reality Huxley's vision as he wrote this letter.

Do you (or any of y'all) think it was Huxley's "vision" in the sense that he desired it? In the letter he does characterize both Orwell's Nineteen Eighty Four and his Brave New World scenarios as nightmares. The letter doesn't suggest to me that Huxley finds any of this to be good; I take both books more as warnings rather than blueprints.

[Nordic]

Well yes, but others seem to have used them as blueprints.

[Elvis]

Well yes, but others seem to have used them as blueprints.

What I have gathered is that both Orwell and Huxley traveled in some elite circles and were probably hip to the kind of manipulations some of "the world's rulers" had in mind. So their fictional dystopias were likely drawn from those elite attitudes as much as from their own imaginations; I think that to some extent they were 'leaking' existing blueprints.

[Nordic]

Interesting! I never would have thought of that. Can you give us an example or two as to the circles these men travelled in? I have to confess I'm completely ignorant as to any of this.

[bks]

Huxley on social control and the "Ultimate Revolution" from Berkeley, 13 years later. Think it's been posted here before. One day I'll learn how to embed video [this is audio, though.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kf9oBZENUhI

[Elvis]

Interesting! I never would have thought of that. Can you give us an example or two as to the circles these men travelled in? I have to confess I'm completely ignorant as to any of this.

Now that I look for it, I can't find a reference that came to mind about artists, writers and intellectuals in England hanging out with the Cliveden Set---

The Cliveden Set were a 1930s right-wing, upper class group of prominent individuals politically influential in pre-World War II Britain, who were in the circle of Nancy Astor, Viscountess Astor. The name comes from Cliveden, the stately home in Buckinghamshire, which was then Astor's country residence. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cliveden_set

In 1893 the estate was purchased by the American billionaire William Waldorf Astor (later 1st Lord Astor) who made sweeping alterations to the gardens and the interior of the house, but lived at Cliveden as a recluse after the early death of his wife. He gave Cliveden to his son Waldorf on the occasion of his marriage to Nancy Langhorne in 1906 and moved to Hever Castle.

The young Astors used Cliveden for entertaining on a lavish scale.[13] The combination of the house, its setting and leisure facilities offered on the estate - boating on the Thames, horse riding, tennis, swimming, croquet and fishing - made Cliveden a destination for film stars, politicians, world-leaders, writers and artists. The heyday of entertaining at Cliveden was between the two World Wars when the Astors held regular weekend house parties. Guests at the time included: Charlie Chaplin, Winston Churchill, Joseph Kennedy, George Bernard Shaw, Mahatma Gandhi, Amy Johnson, F.D. Roosevelt, H.H. Asquith, T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia), A.J. Balfour and the writers Henry James, Rudyard Kipling, and Edith Wharton. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cliveden

Mahatma Gandhi, huh? I guess that certainly shows that not everyone partying at Cliveden was a Fascist.

Orwell was perhaps too young for that heyday, but he later knew people connected with Cliveden and the right:

In November 1943, Orwell was appointed literary editor at Tribune [...] He was still writing reviews for other magazines, and becoming a respected pundit among left-wing circles but also close friends with people on the right like Powell, Astor and Malcolm Muggeridge. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Orwell

Historian Carroll Quigley writes:

This society has been known at various times as Milner's Kindergarten, as the Round Table Group, as the Rhodes crowd, as The Times crowd, as the All Souls group, and as the Cliveden set. ... I have chosen to call it the Milner group. Those persons who have used the other terms, or heard them used, have not generally been aware that all these various terms referred to the same Group. It is not easy for an outsider to write the history of a secret group of this kind, but, since no insider is going to do it, an outsider must attempt it. It should be done, for this Group is, as I shall show, one of the most important historical facts of the twentieth century. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carroll_Quigley

(from The Anglo-American Establishment: From Rhodes to Cliveden)

More simply, we can look at the schools Orwell attended: St. Cyprian prep school, where "Orwell attacked the presence of "nouveaux riches" and aristocrats"; Wellington College, not too shabby; and Eton---"referred to as 'the chief nurse of England's statesmen'." That's a good start right there at making acquaintances among some of "the better families."

So far I'm slighting Huxley (I must tear myself away from this computer for awhile!) but, for now, since this is about both Orwell and Huxley, there's this coincidence (no really!):

Blair [Orwell's real name] was briefly taught French by Aldous Huxley who spent a short interlude teaching at Eton. Stephen Runciman, who was at Eton with Blair, noted that he and his contemporaries appreciated Huxley's use of words and phrases,[23] but there is no evidence of contact between Orwell and Huxley at Eton outside the classroom.

Anyway, apologies for the cursory Wikipaste, that's all I can do for the moment, hopefully others know more about it.

[AhabsOtherLeg]

Sadly (very sadly) in later life Orwell gave up the names of 37 of his fellow journalists and accquaintances to MI5, revealing them as communists or Soviet sympathizers (admittedly, one of them later turned out to be a full-on KGB asset). I like to think he was just very ill (he was) or "seduced" into it by the young female foreign office type they sent to him (possible) but it's equally likely he just hated them for being Soviet-supporting communists. Which is kind of fair enough, since the Soviet Union was horrific. But still... MI5... 'Course they'd always maintained a massive file on him anyway, and he was never exactly a friend of theirs.

Orwell was even a cop at one point, though - a colonial policeman in Burma (pretty terrible at it, by his own account). The boot on the human face was an everyday reality in large parts of the colonial world. Still is, come to think of it.

I don't know about him hanging with any secretive elites, though. Sure you're not thinking of H.G. Wells, Elvis, with his eugenics parties for the intellectual ubermenschen, and his belief in a one-world state?

[AhabsOtherLeg]

Huxley on social control and the "Ultimate Revolution" from Berkeley, 13 years later. Think it's been posted here before. One day I'll learn how to embed video [this is audio, though.

Bks, I Youtubed your Youtube so we can Youtube your Youtube.

[Stephen Morgan]

Sadly (very sadly) in later life Orwell gave up the names of 37 of his fellow journalists and accquaintances to MI5, revealing them as communists or Soviet sympathizers (admittedly, one of them later turned out to be a full-on KGB asset). I like to think he was just very ill (he was) or "seduced" into it by the young female foreign office type they sent to him (possible) but it's equally likely he just hated them for being Soviet-supporting communists. Which is kind of fair enough, since the Soviet Union was horrific. But still... MI5... 'Course they'd always maintained a massive file on him anyway, and he was never exactly a friend of theirs.

Weren't as famous for their evil then as now. And soviet-supporting communists did shoot Orwell in the throat. See also.

Orwell was even a cop at one point, though - a colonial policeman in Burma (pretty terrible at it, by his own account). The boot on the human face was an everyday reality in large parts of the colonial world. Still is, come to think of it.

I don't know about him hanging with any secretive elites, though. Sure you're not thinking of H.G. Wells, Elvis, with his eugenics parties for the intellectual ubermenschen, and his belief in a one-world state?

Well, Orwell was a tramp for a bit, as written about in Down and Out in Paris and London. Obviously he fought fascism until they shot him in the throat too.

[AhabsOtherLeg]

And soviet-supporting communists did shoot Orwell in the throat.

That was definitely a contributory factor in his dislike of them, I reckon. Interesting that his Dad was in the Opium Department of the British Raj. They didn't have to hide or use euphemisms for their imperial drug-dealing in those days. All legal and above-board.