The Final Revolution
An Address by Aldous Huxley, 1959
He wanted to get the professors out of their separate pigeonholes, to meet together in a concentrated effort to pool their specialized knowledge and to bring it out into the world. And after nearly seventy years, this remains one of our enormous problems. How to make the best of both worlds: the world of specialization, which is absolutely necessary, and the world of general communication and interest in the larger affairs of life, which is also necessary…
We see then that many of the most important ethical truths flow quite naturally and simply from scientific facts, and I feel very strongly that this kind of bridging between the world of pure science and the world of ethics should be made from the earliest age…
For example, if one compares medieval psychology or the psychology of the 16th Century with the poetry of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, one perceives the enormous superiority of the literary artists to the scientific man of the period. The same is true of Shakespeare…
Official psychology, scientific psychology does not begin to catch up with literary psychology until well into the second half of the 19th century. It’s incredible to perceive the barrenness of the official psychology doctrine of the period in comparison with the literary psychology of such novelists as Balzac or Dickens or George Eliot or Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy…
Our problem is to adapt a language which is not now suitable in describing the continuum of mind and body, a universe of complete continuity…
Ideally, for example, we ought to be able to talk about a mystical experience simultaneously in terms of theology, of psychology, and of biochemistry. This is a pretty tall order, but unless we can do something of the kind, it will remain extraordinarily difficult for people to think about this continuous web of life, to think about it as a continuum, and not in terms of the old Platonic and Cartesian dualism which so extraordinarily falsifies our picture of the world…
The Final Revolution, as I see it, is the application to human affairs, both on the social level and on the individual level, of technology. Now what is technology? Technology, technique in general, I suppose, is the application in a perfectly conscious and rational way of well-thought-out methods of doing things efficiently. The watchword is “efficiency” …
In general we may say that the more complicated the physical machinery is, the more complicated does the organization have to become in the society which uses these machines…
But compared with the efficiency of police forces even in the democratic state today, these people were wildly inept. And there was a great deal of individual liberty, simply because the people on top couldn’t get hold of the masses…
There is an immense mass of information about everybody in the hands of the central government which never existed before. This thing for which David was punished has now reached an eminence which was absolutely unimaginable even 100 years ago…
I think we will see a further technicization, a further usurpation by the central authority of functions which used to be in the hands of private people…
Propoganda may be defined as opposed to rational argument, argument based upon facts. Argument based on facts aims at producing an intellectual conviction; propoganda aims, above all, at producing reflex action…
The technicization of the means of getting at the human unconscious presents an enormous danger to our whole traditional conception of democracy and of liberty. It seems to make complete nonscense of the democratic process, which, after all, is based upon the assumption that voters make rational choices on the basis of facts…
What is becoming, I think, quite clear now is that the dictatorships of the future probably will not be based on terror, as the dictatorships of the immediate past have been, the dictatorships of Hitler and Stalin. Terror is an extremely wasteful, stupid and inefficient method of controlling people. The Romans discovered this many years ago. As far as possible they tried to rule their empre by consent and not by mere coercion. And we are now in a position to do far better than the Romans, because we have this enormous armory of techniques which will permit the rulers to make their subjects actually like their slavery…
And it seems to me perfectly in the cards that there will be within 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, brain washing, or brain washing enhanced by pharmacological methods. And this seems to me to be, The Final Revolution…
The question of spontaneity is terribly important, and it is actually one of the great enemies of technique. A human being in a highly technicized productive unit is simply not allowed to be spontaneous. It just interferes with the plan laid down in advance by the engineers and technicians who decide how he should work, and in this way he, the human being, is profoundly diminished, because he is not permitted to be spontaneous…
Analysis kills spontaneity.
Analysis kills spontaneity. The grain once ground into flour springs and germinates noi more. ~ Henri Frederic Amiel
Point taken …
A good amount of info here. We are fortunate to have a few ahead of their time for these special nuggets or wisdom.
HAPPY 4TH OF JULY
IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.
The unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America,
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, —That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.
We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.