THE PHILOSOPHY OF RESPONSIBLE FREEDOM 41.ALDOUS HUXLEY AND BRAVE NEW WORLD: THE DARK SIDE OF PLEASURE [& The Dark Side Of Huxley As C.I.A. MKUltra Fellow Traveller]
Online, Ongoing, Free, & Freeing--Friday, Aug 11, 9pm; Saturday, Aug 12, 9pm; Sunday, Aug 13, 9am New Zealand time
STUBBLEBINE INTERVIEW WITH JAN IRVIN
GENERAL STUBBLEBINE, Commanding General of the U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command, ADMITS DURING AN INTERVIEW with researcher Jan Irvin, TO ALDOUS HUXLEY BEING THE HEAD OF THE MKULTRA PROGRAM.
ALDOUS HUXLEY AND BRAVE NEW WORLD: THE DARK SIDE OF PLEASURE
From the transcript of the Academy of Ideas video:
“None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.” (Goethe) These words were written by Goethe nearly 200 years ago, but are perhaps more relevant in our time than they were in his. For many people assume we live in a free society simply because the West has not morphed into a dystopian hell like the one depicted in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. Tyranny, most people believe, would be overt in nature, it would be obvious, and all would recognize it. But is this really the case? Or could we be living in a society analogous to the one depicted by Aldous Huxley in his dystopian novel Brave New World. Could it be that technology, drugs, pornography, and other pleasurable diversions have created a citizenry too distracted to notice the chains which bind them?”
https://academyofideas.com/2018/06/aldous-huxley-brave-new-world-dark-side-of-pleasure/
PERSONAL WORLD CLOCK https://tinyurl.com/bdef97z7
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NOTE: WE WILL BE VIEWING THE ENTIRETY OR PARTS OF THE MATERIALS BELOW IN NUMERICAL ORDER.
0.STUBBLEBINE INTERVIEW WITH JAN IRVIN The History of Propaganda, Feb 8, 2023 Video 1:40
GENERAL STUBBLEBINE, Commanding General of the U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command, ADMITS DURING AN INTERVIEW with researcher Jan Irvin, TO ALDOUS HUXLEY BEING THE HEAD OF THE MKULTRA PROGRAM.
1.CHILLING SPEECH FROM ALDOUS HUXLEY (AS FEATURED IN ENDGAME) galaxything, May 23, 2012. Video 2:47
“This speech from Aldous Huxley was not just prophetic. Huxley was a man in the know, about world plans and agendas set for the future of humanity by the ruling elite of which he was associated. This particular clip was taken from Alex Jones's film 'EndGame'.”
2.DID ALDOUS HUXLEY HELP CREATE MK-ULTRA?! | Occult, Mind Control & Psychedelics Thoughts on Thinking, Oct 9, 2021. Video. 12:15
3.ALDOUS HUXLEY, GEORGE ORWELL & THE FABIAN SOCIETY Miss Qniverse, Aug 5, 2021
4.ALDOUS HUXLEY ON TECHNODICTATORS Blank on Blank, Sept 14, 2016 Video 6:05
"If you want to preserve your power indefinitely, you have to get the consent of the ruled" - Aldous Huxley
5.DR. RIMA LAIBOW, M.D. – “HUXLEY’S BRAVE NEW WORLD” – #175. LogosMedia, Aug 2022. Video 1:37:18
42:18>
https://rumble.com/vm97qk-dr.-rima-laibow-m.d.-huxleys-brave-new-world-175.html
6.THE BOOK THAT PREDICTED THE FUTURE: BRAVE NEW WORLD BY ALDOUS HUXLEY IN 10 MINUTES! Jay Dyer Jay Dyer, July 17, 2023. Video 10:10
7.HOW DARWIN, HUXLEY, AND THE ESALEN INSTITUTE LAUNCHED THE 2012 AND PSYCHEDELIC REVOLUTIONS – AND BEGAN ONE OF THE LARGEST MIND CONTROL OPERATIONS IN HISTORY logosmedia, Jan Irvin, August 28, 2012
8.MKULTRA AND INTEL COMMUNITY DATABASE Gnostic Media
TheBrain Visualization of Connections, hyperlinks
9.JOE ATWILL AND JAN IRVIN – MANUFACTURING THE DEADHEAD By Joseph Atwill, October 21, 2014
https://postflaviana.org/manufacturing-deadhead/
10.HUXLEY'S MUSLIM PLEASURE PARADISE JAN IRVIN JOE ATWILL Alex’s Gulag, March 8, 2020. 2:52
11.68 YEARS AGO, ALDOUS HUXLEY LAID THE GROUNDWORK FOR THE PSYCHEDELIC RENAISSANCE Inverse, by Ido Hartogsohn, Jan. 2, 2022
“This is how one ought to see, how things really are.”
For Huxley, mind-altering drugs harbored a promise to quench a deep running thirst of human existence:
“If we could sniff or swallow something that would, for five or six hours each day, abolish our solitude as individuals, atone us with our fellows in a glowing exaltation of affection and make life in all its aspects seem not only worth living, but divinely beautiful and significant, and if this heavenly world transfiguring drug were of such a kind that we could wake up the next morning with a clear head and an undamaged constitution—then, it seems to me, all our problems (and not merely the one small problem of discovering a novel pleasure) would be wholly solved and earth would become a paradise.”
https://www.inverse.com/mind-body/when-aldous-huxley-opened-the-doors-of-perception
12.DESIGNING A BRAVE NEW WORLD: EUGENICS, POLITICS, AND FICTION JOANNE WOIAK
Aldous Huxley, writing shortly after the 1932 publication of Brave New World, despaired about the real-world significance of one of his novel’s principal themes:
“About 99.5% of the entire population of the planet are as stupid and philistine . . . as the great masses of the English. The important thing, it seems to me,
is not to attack the 99.5% . . . but to try to see that the 0.5% survives, keeps its
quality up to the highest possible level, and, if possible, dominates the rest. The
imbecility of the 99.5% is appalling—but after all, what else can you expect?”
Aldous Huxley to J. Glyn Roberts, July 19, 1933, Quoted in David Bradshaw, “Introduction,” The Hidden Huxley: Contempt and Compassion for the Masses 1920–36 London: Faber and Faber, 1994.
13.A NOTE ON EUGENICS OCTOBER 1927 ALDOUS HUXLEY Vanity Fair
https://archive.vanityfair.com/article/1927/10/a-note-on-eugenics
14.ALDOUS HUXLEY, SHORT OF SIGHT New Yorker, by Clive James, March 10, 2003
The man who knew everything couldn’t see that his longed-for state of being already existed.
15.ALDOUS HUXLEY'S HEARST ESSAYS Edited James Sexton, 1994
https://archive.org/details/aldoushuxleyshea0000huxl
16.CH. 10 HUXLEY’S SLUMP: PLANNING, EUGENICS, AND THE ‘ULTIMATE NEED’ OF STABILITY BY DAVID BRADSHAW
The Art of Literary Biography, edited by John Batchelor
Huxley wrote on how to solve the current political crisis. He repeatedly sanctioned the bypassing of parliamentary opposition to Soviet-style planning as a matter of the utmost gravity and expedience. There is certainly enough evidence to suggest that his interest in eugenics was no less fervid than that of his fellow-writers.
https://academic.oup.com/book/7889/chapter-abstract/153133955?redirectedFrom=fulltext
17.ALDOUS HUXLEY AT THE CRADLE OF BIOETHICS Irina Golovacheva
https://www.academia.edu/41371187/ALDOUS_HUXLEY_AT_THE_CRADLE_OF_BIOETHICS
18.THE HIDDEN HUXLEY: CONTEMPT AND COMPASSION FOR THE MASSES 1920-36 Edited by David Bradshaw, January 1, 1994 AMAZON
Forewarned is not Forearmed, Chicago Herald and Examiner, 1931
19.ALDOUS HUXLEY’S LETTER TO GEORGE ORWELL
A Substack article on July 22, 2023 by Jon Miltimore, The Take, a fellow valuer of the Free Market was a serendipitous find for this Session 41 of my The Philosophy Of Responsible Freedom:
Huxley’s tone was polite and congratulatory, but he made it clear he believed his book more accurately predicted the future
20.A CONVERSATION WITH ALDOUS HUXLEY (1963) Biophily2, Jan 23, 2018
HUXLEY 16:23> “I greatly admire 1984, I think it's a very remarkable book, but my own feeling is that the scientific dictatorships of the future will probably resemble Brave New World more than they resemble 1984…I remember writing to Orwell shortly before he died, telling him how much I admire his book but saying that I did not think that his was the likely outcome”
21.WHEN FASCISM COMES TO AMERICA IT WILL BE WITH NIKE SNEAKERS AND SMILEY SHIRTS [Huxley’s Brave New World], NOT WITH BROWN AND BLACK SHIRTS & JACKBOOTS [Orwell’s 1984]
George Carlin knew the Totalitarian Takeover of America would happen via Huxley’s voluntary enslavement of drugs, sex, and consumerism rather than Orwell’s coercive boot to the non-obedient face.
GEORGE CARLIN SCHOOL PANEL ON FASCISM Johnny Akzam, Oct 21, 2015 Video 10:00
5:46> "When fascism comes to America, it will not be in brown and black shirts, it will not be with Jackboots. It will be Nike sneakers and smiley shirts, smiley, smiley.”
22.TEXTS AND PRETEXTS: AN ANTHOLOGY WITH COMMENTARIES
https://archive.org/details/dli.ministry.23731/page/n5/mode/1up
23.BRAVE NEW WORLD | OFFICIAL TRAILER | PEACOCK June 26, 2020. Video 1:48
“You are an essential part of a perfect social body. Brave New World streaming now on Peacock. Based on Aldous Huxley’s groundbreaking 1932 novel, Brave New World imagines a utopian society that has achieved peace and stability through the prohibition of monogamy, privacy, money, family, and history itself.”
24.IN PEACOCK’S ‘BRAVE NEW WORLD,’ EVERYONE IS VERY HAPPY… OR SO IT SEEMS Foundation for Economic Education, Jen Maffessanti, September 5, 2020
One key component that confers true happiness is missing. “In the new Peacock original series Brave New World, as well as the 1932 Aldous Huxley novel it’s based on, happiness in the fictional society of New London is mandated by the powers that be. Everyone in New London is genetically engineered and psychologically conditioned to be suited to, and satisfied with, a specific role in their society. They’re encouraged to the point of compulsion to engage in every kind of hedonistic indulgence imaginable. There are no difficult decisions to be made. And for those pesky times when discomfort or anxiety rear their ugly heads, the perfectly effective, perfectly side-effect-free drug Soma is there to smooth it away.”
https://fee.org/articles/in-peacock-s-brave-new-world-everyone-is-very-happy-or-so-it-seems/
25.THE "PERFECT" SOCIETY IS AN EPIC DISASTER Foundation for Economic Education, Sept 5, 2020. Video 30:32
“Aldous Huxley’s 1932 novel Brave New World has finally gotten the TV treatment it deserves. The Peacock original series of the same name clings pretty tightly to Huxley’s original story, and the few modern additions make a lot of sense. Brave New World shows us the fictional, futuristic setting of New London, where the World State cleanly and scientifically runs everything and everyone completely. Babies are not born, but “hatched” in a lab, genetically engineered from “conception” and psychologically conditioned from infancy to be perfectly suited to their caste-specific duty. And while Brave New World routinely gets labeled as a dystopian story, it seems more accurate to say it’s a utopian story that’s just as terrifying as its grittier counterparts like George Orwell’s 1984. New London is clean, technologically advanced, and wealthy. Its residents have access to all the food, consumer goods, entertainment, and Soma they could want. Every conceivable hedonistic desire is indulged. And yet, something insidious lurks beneath the gleaming surface of New London.”
26.BRAVE NEW WORLD BY ALDOUS HUXLEY, COURSE HERO, 27 VIDEOS
Brave New World | Plot Summary | Aldous Huxley. Video 3:31
Brave New World | Character Analysis | Aldous Huxley. Video 3:01
Brave New World | Themes | Aldous Huxley. Video 2:36
27.Aldous Huxley and Brave New World: The Dark Side of Pleasure. Academy of
Ideas, June 22, 2018. Video 8:42
https://academyofideas.com/2018/06/aldous-huxley-brave-new-world-dark-side-of-pleasure/
The following is a transcript of this video.
“None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.” (Goethe). These words were written by Goethe nearly 200 years ago, but are perhaps more relevant in our time than they were in his. For many people assume we live in a free society simply because the West has not morphed into a dystopian hell like the one depicted in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. Tyranny, most people believe, would be overt in nature, it would be obvious, and all would recognize it. But is this really the case? Or could we be living in a society analogous to the one depicted by Aldous Huxley in his dystopian novel Brave New World. Could it be that technology, drugs, pornography, and other pleasurable diversions have created a citizenry too distracted to notice the chains which bind them?
When Brave New World was first published in 1931 Huxley did not consider the dystopian world he depicted to be an imminent threat. Thirty years later however, following the Second World War, the spread of totalitarianism, and the great strides made in science and technology, Huxley changed his opinion and in a speech given in 1961, he put forth the following warning:
“There will be, in the next generation or so, a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing dictatorship without tears, so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them, but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda or brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods. And this seems to be the final revolution.” (Aldous Huxley, Tavistock Group, California Medical School, 1961)
In the future, according to Huxley, ruling classes would learn that control of a populace could be achieved not only with the explicit use of force, but also with the more covert method of drowning the masses in an endless supply of pleasurable diversions.
“In 1984”, Huxley explains, “the lust for power is satisfied by inflicting pain; in Brave New World, by inflicting a hardly less humiliating pleasure.” (Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited)
How, one may ask, can pleasure be used to deprive people of their freedom? To answer this question, we must discuss operant conditioning, which is a method of modifying an organism’s behavior.
In the 20th century, the Harvard psychologist B.F. Skinner performed a famous set of experiments in which he tested different methods of introducing new behaviours in rats. These experiments brought to light how “the powers that be” can condition humans to love their servitude. In one set of experiments, Skinner attempted to cultivate new behaviours via positive reinforcement; he provided the rat with food anytime it performed the desirable behavior. In another set of experiments, he attempted to weaken or eliminate certain behaviours via punishment; he triggered a painful stimulus when the rat performed the behavior Skinner wished to eliminate.
Skinner discovered that punishment temporarily put an end to undesirable behaviours, but it did not remove the animal’s motivation to engage in such behaviors in the future. “Punished behavior”, writes Skinner, “is likely to reappear after the punitive consequences are withdrawn.” (B.F. Skinner, About Behaviorism) Behaviors that were conditioned via positive reinforcement, on the other hand, were more enduring and led to long-term changes in the animal’s behavioural patterns.
Huxley was familiar with Skinner’s experiments and understood their socio-political ramifications. In Brave New World and his subsequent works, Huxley predicted the emergence of a “controlling oligarchy” (Huxley) who would conduct similar experiments on human beings to condition docility and minimize the potential for civil unrest. Skinner, like Huxley, also understood the social implications of his experiments, but he believed, contrary to Huxley, that operant conditioning could be used by social engineers for the greater good, leading to the development of a scientifically managed utopia. The following passage from Skinner’s book Walden Two, however, reveals that such mass-conditioning would in reality make possible a pernicious form of tyranny – one in which the masses would be enslaved, yet feel themselves to be free.
“Now that we know how positive reinforcement works, and why negative doesn’t, we can be more deliberate and hence more successful, in our cultural design. We can achieve a sort of control under which the controlled…nevertheless feel free. They are doing what they want to do, not what they are forced to do. That’s the source of the tremendous power of positive reinforcement—there’s no restraint and no revolt. By a careful design, we control not the final behavior, but the inclination to behave—the motives, the desires, the wishes. The curious thing is that in that case the question of freedom never arises.” (B.F. Skinner, Walden Two)
In Brave New World, the main “reward” used to condition subservience via positive reinforcement was a super-drug called Soma. “The World Controllers”, writes Huxley, “encouraged the systematic drugging of their own citizens for the benefit of the state.” (Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited) Soma was ingested daily by the citizens of Brave New World as it offered what Huxley called a “holiday from reality” (Aldous Huxley). Depending on the dosage, it stimulated feelings of euphoria, pleasant hallucinations, or acted as a powerful sleep-aid. It also served to heighten suggestibility, thus increasing the effectiveness of the propaganda which the citizens were continuously subjected to.
“In Brave New World the soma habit was not a private vice; it was a political institution…” writes Huxley. “The daily Soma ration was an insurance against personal maladjustment, social unrest and the spread of subversive ideas. Religion, Karl Marx declared, is the opium of the people. In the Brave New World this situation was reversed. Opium, or rather Soma, was the people’s religion.”(Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited)
But the World Controllers of Brave New World did not rely on Soma alone. Sexual promiscuity was promoted by the State as another tactic to ensure everyone enjoyed their servitude. The slogan “Everyone belongs to everyone else” was drilled into the minds of the citizens from a young age, and with the institutions of monogamy and the family abolished, everyone was able to indulge their sexual impulses without hindrance. The constant access to sexual gratification served to help ensure the citizens were too distracted to pay attention to the reality of their situation.
State-sanctioned entertainment also played an important role in creating the “painless concentration camp” of Brave New World. What Huxley called “non-stop distractions of the most fascinating nature” were used by the state as instruments of policy to drown the minds of its citizens in a “sea of irrelevance”.
The parallels which exist between Brave New World and societies of the modern day are undeniable. In Brave New World Revisited, published in 1958, Huxley asked himself how future social engineers could convince their subjects to take drugs “that will make them think, feel, and behave in the ways [they] find desirable.”(Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited) He concluded: “In all probability it will be enough merely to make the pills available.”(Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited) Today, an estimated one in six Americans are on some form of psychotropic drug. An opioid crisis has spread across the West. The ability to gratify sexual impulses online has led many into the clutches of pornography addiction; and smart phones and other technologies provide mindless and pleasurable distractions which consume the attention of most people, most of the day. To what extent these diversions are intentionally pushed upon us and to what extent they are spontaneous responses to consumer demand, is unclear. But whatever the answer, the reality is that a distracted and dumbed down population simply lacks the mental resources to resist their enslavement.
Until the modern cry of “Give me television and hamburgers, but don’t bother me with the responsibilities of liberty” (Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited) is replaced by the cry “Give me liberty, or give me death” (Patrick Henry), freedom will not prevail. Rather, so long as people trade their liberty for pleasures and comfort, the type of social conditioning Huxley warned of will only become more refined and effective as technologies advance and more insight is gained regarding how to predict and control human behaviour. Whether the majority of us will be able to resist this type of manipulation, or whether we will even want to, remains to be seen.
If the current trends continue, humanity may soon be divided into two groups. There will be those who welcome their pleasurable servitude, and those who choose to resist it for the sake of retaining not just their liberty, but their humanity. For as the former slave Frederick Douglass noted in the mid-19th century, long before Huxley wrote Brave New World, when a slave becomes a happy slave, he has effectively relinquished all that which makes him human.
“I have found that, to make a contented slave,” writes Douglass “it is necessary to make a thoughtless one…He must be able to detect no inconsistencies in slavery; he must be made to feel that slavery is right; and he can be brought to that only when he ceases to be a man.” (Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass)