Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) in the forward to his exceptional cautionary tale, Brave New World , wrote:
"It is probable that all the world's governments will be more or less completely totalitarian even before the harnessing of atomic energy; that they will be totalitarian during and after the harnessing seems almost certain. Only a large-scale popular movement toward decentralization and self-help can arrest the present tendency toward statism. At present there is no sign that such a movement will take place."
Mr. Huxley, considered in his time by many as a cultural provocateur was also equally recognized as a brilliant intellect. The preceding quote also proves he was a talented visionary as well. This forward to his pivotal novel, written in 1931 (published in 1932) also proves that even 78 years ago Mr. Huxley's crystal ball clearly predicted what we, the citizens of the US, are facing now.
When we speak of totalitarianism, we may immediately bring to mind the old Soviet Union or perhaps any of a number of banana republic tin horn dictators. We might even recall the horrific reigns of terror by "presidents for life" Haitian Dr. François Duvalier, AKA "Papa Doc" or perhaps Idi Amin who during the period of 1977–1979 was president when Uganda was appointed to the United Nations Commission On Human Rights, ludicrous as that was given the many thousands murdered as a direct result of his bloody regime.
So it would seem unthinkable that in our "civilized" world...a supposedly enlightened world...we might still suffer the existence of totalitarian regimes. Even more, discovering ourselves headed in that disturbing direction ourselves!
But Mr. Huxley addressed this as well:
"There is, of course, no reason why the new totalitarianisms should resemble the old. Government by clubs and firing squads, by artificial famine, mass imprisonment and mass deportation, is not merely inhumane (nobody cares much about that nowadays); it is demonstrably inefficient and in an age of advanced technology, inefficiency is the sin against the Holy Ghost. A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to coerced, because they love their servitude. To make them love it is the task assigned, in present-day totalitarian states, to ministries of propaganda, newspaper editors and schoolteachers."
Ah yes, the "ministries of propaganda" EXACTLY as Mr. Huxley identified ...newspaper editors and school teachers. The picture begins to clear.
The successful modern totalitarian state government first seeks to dumb down it's populace while simultaneously indoctrinating with suitable propaganda. It then provides a steady lifetime diet of more propaganda while being sure to include distraction with "junk food" entertainment and activities. Figuratively speaking, Mr. Huxley's "soma", the "holiday away from reality" provided by the pharmacological hallucinogenic used to control the citizens in the Brave New World.
But wait! Why NOT mandate a state provided drug program to ensure an easy to rule serfdom? While a state mandated "sedation" program to keep it's citizenry in line isn't officially being promoted in the current radical administration (yet!) we might be forgiven for indulging in a bit of paranoid suspicion. Drugging by television, video, sports and other minding numbing distractions can only sedate so far! Doesn't the Obama administration's much celebrated health care program include an end of life "final solution"? "Take those pain pills, drift away and die like a good comrade of the state! Not to worry, the state has mandated lifetime sedation for your mourning family members!
Like Huxley's Savage in Brave New World, even the strongest of us may someday find ourselves waking from a state mandated drug-induced "holiday" crying "Oh my God, my God!" realizing too late that our government has killed God and replaced it with the State.
Fantasy? Don't be too sure. Imagine how the current leftist fiends could galvanize their power if they could legislate mandatory sedation to keep us pesky serfs in line?
Mr. Huxley writes further:
"The greatest triumphs of propaganda have been accomplished, not by doing something, but by refraining from doing. Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth. By simply not mentioning certain subjects, by lowering what Mr. Churchill calls an "iron curtain" between the masses and such facts or arguments as the local political bosses regard as undesirable, totalitarian propagandists have influenced opinion much more effectively than they could have done by the most eloquent silence is not enough."
Just this week (August 7, 2009) Mr. Obama, speaking to a "town hall crowd" http://www.breitbart.tv/obama-dont-want-the-folks-who-created-the-mess-to-do-a-lot-of-talking/ arrogantly sent a message to the citizens of our great country that he doesn't want to hear what we have to say! Those people whose forefathers toiled to build this country who support his lavish lifestyle and stroke his narcissist ego! Indeed, he hopes and prays the hard working people who steadfastly go about their business of producing the tax monies he intends to steal and redistribute will be intimidated into silence. Thus lowering the "iron curtain between the masses and such facts or arguments as the local political bosses regard as undesirable" as Mr. Churchill stated.
Further, Mr. Huxley continues:
"The love of servitude cannot be established except as the result of a deep, personal revolution in human minds and bodies. To bring about that revolution we require, among others, the following discoveries and inventions. First, a greatly improved technique of suggestion--through infant conditioning and, later, with the aid of drugs, such as scopolamine."
Keep in mind Mr. Huxley wrote this in the early thirties and we have many more available drugs to provide the aid to control he suggests. Then what of "infant conditioning?" Just how early in childhood will an overbearing state require our to children be enrolled in and be subject to mandatory attendance at government training centers...or public schools as we once knew them? Will we one day deposit month's old babies in government facilities, returning many years later to reclaim a souless stranger? But more importantly, when will we choose to STOP offering up our infants to the state's brain washing?
"Second, a fully developed science of human differences, enabling government managers to assign any given individual to his or her proper place in the social and economic hierarchy. (Round pegs in square holes tend to infect others with their discontents.) "
Celebrate diversity! African Americans, Spanish Americans, Native Americans, etc., etc., unite and segregate! Poor people, envy the middle class. Middle class, envy the rich. But get in your place and STAY there!
Didn't civil rights leaders of the past toil and even die to end segregation? The late Dr. Martin Luther King shared his dream, that of seeing his children being "judged by the content of their character, rather than the color of their skin." By any measure of reason, the current philosophy embraced by the left... pigeon-holing people into "diverse" sub-groups be they ethnic, socio-economic, gender,age or any number of other sub-groups...must be considered as divisive rather than uniting us all as Americans. This philosophy of division and segregation does NO honor to Dr. King's vision.
But what about the value of a diversity campaign...making sure we all know our "assigned place"...in this would be totalitarian state America? Why, it's value is to keep us estranged from each other!
By promoting estrangement through diversity the state aims to exploit misunderstanding and distrust between cultures and thereby keep us divided rather than celebrating our commonalities, the value of the "melting pot" tradition which will unite us and make us strong.
"Third (since reality, however utopian, is something from which people feel the need of taking pretty frequent holidays), a substitute for alcohol and the other narcotics, something at once less harmful and more pleasure-giving than gin or heroin."
California is considering making the production, use and sale of marijuana legal. Surely a good first step to a "less harmful and more pleasure giving" drug Mr. Huxley might agree. And WE might all agree that a marijuana sedated citizen is rarely a troublesome one...unlikely to question what his own family might be up to, much less his government!
" And fourth (but this would be a long-term project, which it would take generations of totalitarian control to bring to a successful conclusion) a foolproof system of eugenics, designed to standardize the human product and so to facilitate the task of the managers."
Ah, eugenics...that micro-management dream without a heart or soul...culling the dead wood of humanity and preventing the presentation into life of that dead wood in the first place...
The tree logo of the 1921 International Eugenics Conference http://www.starlarvae.org/SL_graphics/Eugenics_Tree.JPG is a very telling symbol of what the earliest documented organizers of the eugenics movement believed should be incorporated judging the ideal human...one worthy to be born, or judged worthy to walk this earth after born. The temptation to be God is strong in the Godless. The Godless relegate the miracle of life to a simple function of cells and electricity thus finding the courage to decide who lives or dies...for the greater good of course!
One of the strongest tap roots on the Eugenics tree of life is labeled STATISTICS, with smaller roots leading down labeled POLITICS and ECONOMICS. Exhibit A: Obama's state run health care plan.
I rest my case.
Finally for the purposes of this blog argument against the totalitarian state, Huxley (remember, he wrote these thoughts in 1931) warned:
"Technically and ideologically we are still a long way from bottled babies and Bokanovsky groups of semi-morons*. But by A. F. 600*, who knows what may not be happening? Meanwhile the other characteristic features of that happier and more stable world--the equivalents of soma and hypnopaedia* and the scientific caste system--are probably not more than three or four generations away. Nor does the sexual promiscuity of Brave New World seem so very distant. There are already certain American cities in which the number of divorces is equal to the number of marriages. In a few years, no doubt, marriage licenses will be sold like dog licenses, good for a period of twelve months, with no law against changing dogs or keeping more than one animal at a time. As political and economic freedom diminishes, sexual freedom tends compensatingly to increase. And the dictator (unless he needs cannon fodder and families with which to colonize empty or conquered territories) will do well to encourage that freedom. In conjunction with the freedom to daydream under the influence of dope and movies and the radio, it will help to reconcile his subjects to the servitude which is their fate"
This observation is sadly all too real in our current society. Engage the senses and disengage critical thinking. A further observation should come as no surprise. Leftists and liberals FEEL first and think last...if at all.
Judgments made using purely emotion over intellect when dealing with our fellow humans is as great a crime as judgment using intellect alone! Much worse perhaps, as emotion is frequently based on prejudicial biases, relegating facts to the dim background.
Most appalling, the current degraded moral compass is formed and galvanized by the muck producing state media. Knowingly or unknowingly, today's parents are allowing the state to take control of their children's minds...and allowing their rapid descent into state managed serfdom!
From these state media outlets they are fed conflicting emotional signals. Remember, the state schools have killed critical thinking, replacing it with propaganda. Mixed signals bombard our society...Abort the human child, but save the dolphins! Preserve the life of the murderer on death row, but murder grandmother by withholding medical care when she reaches an arbitrarily state mandated age!
In short order, my comrades, we shall be begging the state for our ration of "soma"!
*Bokanovsky groups of semi morons: manufactured humans created in Huxley's Brave New World-see: http://www.huxley.net/bnw/sixteen.html
*A.F. 600: "After Ford"-the auto maker himself
*hypnopaedia: sleep learning-technique incorporated in the Brave New World
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