- It's a question of education, to teach people to be on their guard against the sort of verbal booby traps into which they're always being led, to analyze the kind of
things that are said to them. I think it's terribly important to insist on individual values, that every human being is unique. And it is of course on
this genetical basis that the whole idea of the
value of freedom is based. - [Mike Wallace] This is Aldous Huxley. A man haunted by a
vision of hell on Earth. Mr. Huxley 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. - There are a number of impersonal forces which are pushing in the direction
of less and less freedom. The first of them can be
called overpopulation. The whole essence of
biological life on Earth is a question of balance, and what we have done is
to practice death control in a most intensive manner, without balancing this with
birth control at the other end. In the underdeveloped countries, people have less to eat and less goods, and the central government
has to take over more and more responsibility for keeping the ship of state on an even keel. And then of course you're
likely to get social unrest under such conditions, with again an intervention
of the central government. One sees here a pattern which seems to be pushing very strongly towards
a totalitarian regime. - Are there specific devices, or methods of communication
which diminish our freedoms? - Well there are certainly devices which can be used in this way. Hitler used terror on the one kind, brute force on one hand. But he also used a very
efficient form of propaganda. He had 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
highly educated people. We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology. This has happened again
and again in history, 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. The presence of television I think is being used quite harmlessly, 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 drumming in the
single idea all the time. It's obviously an immensely
powerful instrument. 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. In this book of mine, Brave New World, I postulated a substance called soma, which was a very versatile drug. It would make people feel
happy in small doses, make them see visions in medium doses, and it would send them
to sleep in large doses. I think it's quite on the cards that we may have drugs, which will profoundly
change our mental state, without doing us any harm. Well, what is going to
happen in the future, is the dictators will find,
as the old saying goes, that you 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, partly by these new
techniques of propaganda. They will do it by bypassing the sort of rational side of man, and appealing to his subconscious, and his deeper emotions, 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 situations where they oughtn't to be happy. - [Mike] Writing about
American political campaigns, you say all that is needed is money, and a candidate who can be
coached to look sincere. - [Aldous] This is perhaps
this idea that the candidates had to be merchandised, as though they were soap or toothpaste. And that you had to depend
entirely on the personality, I mean personality is important, but there are certainly people with an extremely amiable personality, particularly on TV, who might not naturally be very good in positions of political trust. 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, is 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, on rational grounds. I must say I still believe in democracy, if we can make the best
of the creative activities of the people on top, plus those of the people on the bottom, so much the better. - [Mike] Mr. Huxley, I surely thank you for spending this half hour with us. And I wish you Godspeed, sir. - [Aldous] Thank you.
This is from an interview with Aldous Huxley, the author of Brave New World, from 1958. Here he discusses some of the forces that could lead our world to becoming more like the one which he depicted in his novel. While people often focus on social media and other technologies as the main factor leading to a rise in totalitarianism and reduced freedom, in this interview the first force which Aldous Huxley discusses is Overpopulation.