Everything's A Psyop.

source:
this is Aldis Huxley a man haunted by a
vision of Hell on Earth a searing social
critic Mr Huxley 27 years ago wrote
Brave New World a novel that predicted
that someday the entire world would live
under a frightful
dictatorship today Mr Huxley says that
his fictional world of horror is
probably just around the corner for all
of us we’ll find out why in a
moment
the Mike Wallace interview presented by
the American Broadcasting Company in
association with the fund for the
Republic brings you a special television
series discussing the problems of
survival and freedom in
America good evening I’m Mike Wallace
tonight’s guest Aldis Huxley is a man of
letters as disturbing as he is
distinguished born in England now a
resident of California Mr Huxley has
written some of the most electric novels
and social criticism of this
Century he’s just finished a series of
essays called enemies of freedom in
which he outlines and defines some of
the threats to our freedom in the United
States and Mr Huxley right off the bat
let me ask you this as you see it who
and what are the enemies of Freedom here
in the United States well I don’t think
you can say who in the United States I
don’t think there are any Sinister
persons deliberately trying to rob
people of their freedom
but I do think first of all that there
are a number of impersonal forces which
are pushing in the direction of less and
less freedom and I also think that there
are a number of technological
devices which anybody who wishes to use
can use to accelerate this process of
going away from freedom of imposing
control what are these forces and these
devices Mr H I should say that the there
are two main impersonal forces uh uh the
first of them is not exceedingly
important in the United States at the
present time though very important in
other countries this is the force which
in general terms can be called
overpopulation the the mounting pressure
of population pressing upon existing
resources and this of course is an
extraordinary thing something is
happening which has never happened in
the world’s history before I mean let’s
just take a a simple fact that between
the time of the birth of Christ and the
landing of the
Mayflower the population of the Earth
doubled it Rose from 250 million to
probably 500 million today the
population of the earth is rising at
such a rate that it will double in half
a century well why should overpopulation
work to diminish our
freedoms well in a number of ways I mean
the the um experts in the field like
Harrison Brown for example pointed out
that
in the underdeveloped countries actually
the standard of living is at present
falling that people have less to eat and
less Goods per capita than they had 50
years ago and as the position of these
countries the economic position becomes
more and more precarious obviously the
central government has to take over more
and more responsibility for keeping the
ship of State on an even ke and then of
course you’re likely to get um so social
unrest under such conditions with again
an
in an intervention of the central
government so I think you one sees here
a pattern which seems to be pushing very
strongly towards a totalitarian regime
and unfortunately as in all these
underdeveloped countries the only highly
organized political party is the
Communist Party it looks rather as
though they will be The Heirs to this uh
unfortunate process they will step into
the power position of power well then
ironically enough the one of the
greatest forces against communism in the
world the Catholic Church according to
your thesis would seem to be pushing us
directly into the hands of the
Communists because they are against
birth control well I think this strange
Paradox probably is
true there is
a it’s an extraordinary situation
actually I mean the one has to look at
it of course from a biological point of
view the whole essence of uh of
biological life on Earth is a question
of balance and what we have done is to
practice death control in a most uh
intensive manner without balancing this
with the the birth control at the other
end consequently the uh birth rates
remain as high as they were and death
rates have fallen substantially all
right then so much for the time being
anyway for
overpopulation another force that is
diminishing our freedoms well another
Force which I think is very strongly
operative in this country is the force
of what may be called over
organization as technology becomes more
and more complicated it becomes
necessary to have more and more
elaborate organizations more
hierarchical organizations and
incidentally the advance of technology
has been accompanied by advance in the
science of organization it’s now
possible to make organizations on a
larger scale than was ever possible
before and so that you have more and
more people living their lives out as
subordinates in these hierarchical
systems controlled by bureaucracies
either the bureaucracies of big business
or the bureaucracies of big government M
MH now the devices that you were talking
about Are there specific devices or uh
uh methods of communic
which diminish our freedoms in addition
to overpopulation and over organization
well there are certainly devices which
can be used in this way I mean let us uh
take after all piece of very recent and
very painful history is the uh
propaganda used by Hitler which was
incredibly effective I mean that what
were Hitler’s methods Hitler used Terror
on the one kind brute force on the one
hand but he also used a very efficient
form of uh of
propaganda which uh he was using every
modern device at that time he didn’t
have TV but he had the the radio which
he used to the fullest extent and was
able to impose his will on an immense
mass of people I mean the Germans were a
highly educated people well we’re aware
of all this but how do you equate
Hitler’s use of propaganda with the way
that propaganda if you will is used let
us say here in the United States
suggesting that there is a parallel
needless to say it’s not being used in
this way now but uh uh the point is it
seems to me that there are are methods
at present available methods Superior in
some respects to to Hitler’s method
which could be used in a bad situation I
mean I what I feel very strongly is that
we mustn’t be caught by surprised by our
own advancing technology this has
happened again and again in history
technology is advanced
this this change is social condition and
suddenly people have found themselves in
a situation which they didn’t foresee
and doing all sorts of things they
didn’t really want to do well now what
do you mean do you mean that we we
develop our television but we don’t know
how to use it correctly is that the
point that you’re making well at present
the television I think is being used
quite harmlessly it’s being used I think
I would feel it’s being used too much to
distract everybody all the time but I
mean imagine which must be the situation
in all communist countries where the
television where it exists is always
saying the same thing the whole time
it’s always driving along it’s not
creating a wide front of distraction
it’s creating a
one-pointed drumming in of a single idea
all the time it’s obviously an immensely
powerful instrument so you’re talking
about the potential misuse of the
instrument exactly we have a CL all
technology is in itself morally neutral
these are just Powers which can either
be used well or ill it’s the same thing
with atomic energy we can either use it
to blow ourselves up or we can use it as
a substitute for the coal and the oil
which are running out you’ve even
written about the use of drugs in this
light well now this is a very
interesting subject I mean in this book
which you mentioned this book of my
Brave New World uh I postulated a
substance called s which was a very
versatile drug it would make people feel
happy in small dose es it would make
them see Visions in medium Doses and it
would send them to sleep in large doses
well I don’t think such a drug exists
now nor do I think it will ever exist
but we do have drugs which will do some
of these things and I think it’s quite
on the cards that we may have drugs
which will profoundly change our mental
states without doing us any harm I mean
this is the the pharmacological
Revolution which has taken place that we
have now powerful mind-changing drugs
which physiologically Speaking are
almost Costless I mean they are not like
opium or like coca uh cocaine which uh
do change the state of mind but leave
terrible results physiologically and
morally Mr Huxley in your new essays you
state that these various enemies of
Freedom are pushing us toward a real
life Brave New World and you say that
it’s awaiting us just around the
corner first of all can you detail for
us what life in this Brave New World
which you fear so much what life might
be like well to start with I think this
kind of 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 uh
which was a very remarkable book George
orales 1984 where this book was written
at the height of the stalinist regime
and just after the Hitler regime and he
there he foresaw a dictatorship using
entirely the methods of Terror the
methods of physical
violence now I I think what what is
going to happen in the future is the
dictators will find as the old saying
goes that you can do everything with
bonit except sit on them but 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 in Brave New World partly by
these new techniques of uh of
propaganda they will do it by bypassing
the sort of 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 mean 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 situation where
they oughtn’t to be happy but let me ask
you this you’re talking about a world
that could take place within the
confines of a totalitarian state let’s
become more immediate more urgent about
it we believe anyway that we live in
democracy here in the United States do
you believe that this Brave New World
that you talk
about uh could
let’s say in the next quarter Century
The Next Century could come here to our
Shores I think it could I mean I I
that’s why I feel it’s so extremely
important here and now to start thinking
about these problems not to let ourself
themselves be taken by surprise by the
new advances in technology I mean the
for example in in regard to the use of
the of the drugs we know there’s enough
evidence now for us to be able on the
basis of this evidence and using a
certain amount of creative imagination
to foresee the kind of uses which could
be made in a by people of bad will with
these things and to attempt to to forall
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
forall I mean after all the price of
freedom is eternal
vigilance you write in enemies of
Freedom you write specifically about the
United States you say this writing about
American political campaigns you say all
that is needed is money and a candidate
who can be coached to look sincere
political principles and plans for
specific action have come to lose most
of their importance the personality of
the candidate the way he is projected by
the advertising experts are the things
that really matter well this is uh
during the last campaign there was a
great deal of uh this kind kind of
statement by the advertising managers of
the campaign par is this idea that the
the candidates had to be merchandised as
though they were soap or toothpaste and
that you had to depend entirely on the
personality and I mean the personality
is important but there are certainly
people with an extremely amiable
personality particularly on TV who might
not necessarily be very
good in Pol positions of political Trust
well do you feel that men like
Eisenhower Stevenson Nixon with
knowledge of forethought were trying to
pull the wool over the eyes of the
American public no but they were they
were being advised by powerful
advertising agencies who were making
campaigns of a quite different kind from
what had been made before and I think we
shall see probably uh all kinds of new
devices coming into the picture I mean
the for example this thing which got a
good deal of publicity last Autumn a
subliminal projection I mean as it
stands this thing I think is of no
menace to us at the moment but I was
talking the other day to one of the
people who has done most experimental
work in the psychological laboratory
with this was saying precisely this that
it is not at the moment a danger but
once you’ve established a principle that
something works you can can be
absolutely sure that the technology of
it is going to improve steadily and I
his view of the subject was that well
maybe they will use it to some extent in
the 1960 campaign but they will probably
use it a good deal and much more
effectively in the 1964 campaign because
this is the kind of rate at which
technology advances and we’ll be
persuaded to vote for a candidate that
we do not know that we are being
persuaded to vote exactly I mean this is
a rather alarming feature that you’re
being persuaded below the level of
choice and reason
in uh in regard to advertising which you
mentioned just a little ago in your
writing particularly in enemies of
Freedom you attack Madison Avenue which
controls most of our television and
radio advertising newspaper advertising
and so forth why do you consistently
attack the advertising ageny no I think
that advertisement plays a very
necessary role but the danger it seems
to me in a democracy is this I mean what
does a democracy depend on a democracy
depends on the individual voter making
an intelligent and rational choice for
what he regards as his enlightened
self-interest in any given circumstance
but what these people are doing I mean
what both for their particular purposes
for selling goods and the
dictatorial propagandists are doing is
to try to bypass the rational side of
man and to appeal directly to these
unconscious forces below the surface so
that you are in a way making nonsense of
the whole Democratic procedure which is
based on conscious choice or on rational
grounds of course well maybe maybe I you
have just answered this this next
question because in your essay you write
about television commercials not just
political commercials but television
commercials as such and how as you put
it today’s children walk around singing
beer commercials and toothpaste
commercials and then you link this
phenomenon in some way with the dangers
of a dictatorship now could you spell
out the connection or how do you feel
that you have done so sufficiently well
I mean here this whole question of
children I think is a terribly important
one cuz children are quite clearly much
more suggestible than the average
grownup and uh again suppose that
uh that for one reason or another all
the propaganda was in the hands of one
or very few agencies you would uh have
an extraordinarily powerful force
playing on these children after all are
going to grow up and be adults quite
soon uh I do think that uh this is not
an immediate threat but it it remains a
possible threat and you said something
to the effect in your essay that the
children of Europe used to be called
Canon father and here in the United
States they are television and radio
father well after all they you can read
in
the in the trade journals the most
lytical accounts of how necessary it is
to get hold of the children because then
they will be loyal brand buyers later on
but I mean again the you just translate
this into Political terms the dictator
says they will be loyal ideology buyers
when they’re grown up we hear so much
about brainwashing as used by the
Communists do you see any brainwashing
other than that which we’ve just been
talking about that is used here in the
United States other forms of
brainwashing not in the form that has
been used in China and in Russia because
this is
uh essentially the application of
propaganda methods the most violent kind
to individuals it’s not a shotgun method
like the uh the advertising method it’s
a way of getting hold of the person and
playing both on his physiology and his
psychology till he really breaks down
and then you can implant a new idea in
his head I mean the descriptions of the
methods are really blood curdling when
you you read them and not only the
methods apply to political prisoners but
the methods applied for example to the
training of the young communist
administrators and missionaries they
receive an incredibly tough kind of
training which may causes about 25% of
them to break down or commit suicide but
produces 75% of completely one-pointed
Fanatics the question of course that
keeps coming back to my mind is this
obviously politics in themselves are not
evil television is not in itself e evil
atomic energy is not evil and yet you
seem to fear that it will be used in an
evil way why is it that the right people
will not in your estimation use them why
is it that the wrong people will use
these various devices and for the wrong
motives well I think one of the uh of
the reasons is that these are all
instruments for obtaining power and
obviously the passion for power is one
of the
most moving pass s that exist in man and
after all this is all democracies are
based on the proposition that power is
very dangerous and that it’s extremely
important not to let any one man or any
one small group have too much power for
too long a time after what are the
British and American constitutions
except devices for limiting power and
all these new devices are extremely
efficient instruments for the imposition
of Power by small groups over large
message well you ask this question
yourself in enemies of Freedom I’ll put
the I’ll put your own question back to
you you ask this in an age of
accelerating
overpopulation of accelerating over
organization and ever more efficient
means of mass
communication how can we preserve the
integrity and reassert the value of the
human
individual you put the question
now here’s your chance to answer it Mr
HX well this is obviously first of all
it’s a question of Education uh I think
it’s terribly important to insist on
individual values I mean what is h there
is a tendency as um You probably read a
book by white the organization man a
very interesting valuable book I think
where he speaks about the new type of
group morality group ethic which uh
speaks about the group as though the
group Were Somehow more important than
the individual but this seems as far as
I’m concerned to be in contradiction
with what we know about the genetical
makeup of human beings that every human
being is unique and it is of course on
this uh genetical basis that the whole
idea of the value of freedom is based
and I think it’s extremely important for
us to stress this in all our educational
life and I would say it’s also very
important to to teach people to be on
their guard against the sort of verbal
booby traps into which they’re always
being led to to analyze the kind of
things that are said to them well I
think there is this whole educational
side and I think there are many more
things that one could do to to
strengthen uh people and to make them
more aware of what was being done you’re
a prophet of
decentralization well yes if this is
feasible it’s one of the TR is it seems
to me I mean many people have been
talking about the importance of
decentralization in order to give back
to the voter a sense of direct power I
mean the voter in an enormous electorate
feels quite impotent and his vote seems
to count for nothing this is not true
where the electorate is small and where
he is dealing with a with a a group
which he can manage and understand and
if one can as Jefferson after all
suggested break up the units into
smaller and
smaller units and so get a real
self-governing democracy well that was
all very well in Jefferson’s day but how
can we revamp our economic system and
decentralize and at the same time meet
militarily and economically the the the
tough challenge of a country like Soviet
Russia well I think the answer to that
is that there are it seems to me that
you the production industrial production
is of two kinds I mean there are some
kinds of industrial production which
obviously need the most tremendously
high centralization like the making of
automobiles for example but there are
many other kinds where you could
decentralize quite easily and probably
quite
economically and that you would then
have this kind of decentralized life
after all you begin to see it now if you
travel through the South this
decentralized uh texture industry which
is springing up there Mr hux let me ask
you this quite
seriously is freedom
necessary as far as I’m concerned it is
yes is it necessary for a productive
Society yes I I should say it is I mean
a genuinely productive Society I mean I
think you could produce plenty of goods
without much freedom but I think the
whole sort of
creative life of man is ultim L
impossible without a considerable
measure of individual freedom of the
initiative creation all these things
which we value and I think value uh
properly are impossible without a large
measure of Freedom well Mr hutley take a
look again at the country which is in
The Stance of our opponent any way it
would seem any way it would seem to be
there Soviet Russia it is strong and
getting stronger economically militarily
at the same time it’s developing its art
forms pretty
well um it seems not unnecessarily to uh
to squelch the creative urge among its
people and yet it is not a free Society
it’s not a free Society but here is
something very interesting that those
members of the society like the
scientists who are doing the creative
work are given far more freedom than
anybody else I mean it’s a privilege
aristocratic society in which provided
that they don’t poke their noses into
Political Affairs these people are given
a great deal of prestige a considerable
amount of freedom and a lot of money I
mean there this is a very interesting
fact about the new Soviet regime and I
think what we’re going to
see is a a people on the whole with very
little freedom but with an oligarchy on
top enjoying a considerable measure of
freedom and a very high standard of
living and the people down below the
epsilons down below enjoying very little
and you think that that kind of
situation can long endure I think it can
certainly endure much longer than a
situation in which everybody is uh is
kept down CU I mean they can certainly
get their technological and scientific
results on such a basis well the next
time that I talk to you then perhaps we
should investigate further the
possibility of the establishment of that
kind of a society where the where the
drones work for the queen bees up above
well but yes but um I must say I still
believe in democracy if we can make the
best of of the creative activities of
the people on top plus those of the
people on the bottom so much the better
Mr Huxley I surely thank you for
spending this half hour with us and I
wish you God’s speed sir thank
you Alis Huxley finds himself these days
in a peculiar and disturbing position a
quarter of a century after prophesying
an authoritarian state in which people
were reduced to cyphers he can point at
Soviet Russia and say I told you so the
crucial question as he sees it now is
whether the so-called free world is
shortly going to give Mr Huxley the
further dubious satisfaction of saying
the same thing about
us stay tuned for a preview of next
week’s interview till then Mike Wallace
good
[Music]
[Applause]
night
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