Aldous Huxley has a little talk with you
Yes, yes, I’m well aware that Huxley died in 1963, over fifty years ago. In death, he had the strange fate of being eclipsed by JFK, who was assassinated on the very same day (C.S. Lewis died that day too, by the way).
I have read most of Huxley’s books, even some of the more obscure ones, and his Brave New World continues to impress and amaze me with the detail and creativity of its dystopic vision, so different from that of Orwell and yet equally brilliant.
This interview is from 1958, and the questioner was Mike Wallace. Huxley may get a few unimportant details wrong—for instance, subliminal messages turned out not to be the tool he thought they might become—but on the big picture he could not have been more correct. When I watch him and listen to him, I get an overwhelming impression of a powerful intellect that has spent an entire lifetime pondering the Big Questions, attempting to express answers in words that any simpleton (that is, everyone else) can understand, and to do it without any condescension or arrogance whatsoever. Huxley seems to be searching for elegant simplicity of expression, and I think he attains it:
Huxley states once the principle is established that subliminal messaging works the technology will be improved… how
can you be sure subliminal messages did not turn out not to be the tool he thought they might become?
[send money to Talnik send money to Talnik send money to Talnik]
Spot on! as the Brits say. Thanks Neo.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLqHv0xgOlc
Bezmenov also has some stuff up on youtube these days.
Huxley would have had great interest in the things I had researched and picked up.
The Leftist media and the American Conformity was extremely strong back then. So strong that questioning it seemed insane.
The slaves think they are free. That is the great benefit and glory of the 3.0 system.
Talnik:
You’ll have to get a little more SUBliminal than that for it to work 🙂 .
But more seriously, I was thinking of the fact that research indicates subliminal advertising doesn’t work very well, if at all.
Huxley came from a long line of scientists, and he had a great interest in science. If you recall Brave New World, it featured a lot of science of the imaginary future. One theme that ran through it was the idea of learning (or rather, programming) while asleep through the playing of recorded suggestions. Considering that the book was published in 1932, you can see how early Huxley was ruminating on such things.
The Peter Kreeft book about the three of them mentioned in the Daily Beast link is short and quite good. Has it really been 34 years since it came out? I am old.
If you recall Brave New World, it featured a lot of science of the imaginary future. One theme that ran through it was the idea of learning (or rather, programming) while asleep through the playing of recorded suggestions.
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As I recall, though, the early efforts at subliminal programming and education failed horribly in the book. The subjects could recite the facts in response to very specific questions, but didn’t actually know the things that they were saying. The state ended up taking the lessons learned from the mess and reapplying the subliminal “teaching” methods toward entirely different goals.
I was at my parents for dinner tonight and they had on ABC news, which was covering the S.C. republican primary. They had their reporter standing in a church with in the background, perhaps 4-6 voters waiting their turn to vote. It gave the impression that few people vote republican, that the republican party now attracts few voters. Later, they covered a poll where exiting voters were asked if they felt betrayed by the Republican leadership… 44% said that no, they didn’t feel betrayed at all…
I’d say that subliminal messages, (few voters in line) coupled with leftist coverage is working every bit as well as Huxley feared. That 44% of republican voters are evidently happy with McConnell, Ryan, Boehner, etc… clearly supports that media messaging works. The subliminal messaging is subtle, a misleading premise stated as fact, a deceitful phrase here, a deceptive image there, important facts left out of the ‘story’…
Geoffrey: you’re right, and that sort of messaging is nonstop in the Pravda Media. Another example is the way they framed the “Visuals” of our protest marches (e.g., the Glenn Beck rally in Washington, attended by ~ half a million people, versus far more sparsely attended rallies by Leftists, shot like they have 50 times as many people as they do (just iris in, boys).
They’re also careful about whom they select to interview, how they cut the interviews together, etc., etc. Sergei Eisenstein is right, the emotional impact of film is all in the editing/juxtapositioning.
“Zombie” (under cover in San Francisco) has a series of photo essays about this at zombietime.com.
http://www.zombietime.com/
Zombie makes a point of photographing the Communists, racists, and moslem radicals that the Pravda Media airbrushes out of leftwing protests.
See especially this thread: “Anatomy of a Photograph”:
http://www.zombietime.com/sf_rally_september_24_2005/anatomy_of_a_photograph/
It starts with what the leftwing San Francisco Chronicle shows the public, then as you scroll down, you see what Zombie captured. . . .
Here’s a link to a lecture given by Max Weber in 1918, titled “Politics as a Vocation“, in which among other undertakings Weber details the growing role of journalism and propaganda in politics. He sees fairly far, this fellow Weber. It’s worth a read.
I’m going to reread BRAVE NEW WORLD. A few months ago, I reread 1984 — and some of it’s still going round and round in my head.
“Do it to Julia…”
miklos:
“Do it to Julia!” has long been a running joke among my in-laws (ex-husband’s family). In the book I know it’s not the least bit funny, but in life it can be quite handy.
A nice statement in wiki about this interview (thanks, Neo): “Huxley had deeply felt apprehensions about the future the developed world might make for itself. From these, he made some warnings in his writings and talks. In a 1958 televised interview conducted by journalist Mike Wallace, Huxley outlined several major concerns: the difficulties and dangers of world overpopulation; the tendency toward distinctly hierarchical social organisation; the crucial importance of evaluating the use of technology in mass societies susceptible to wily persuasion; the tendency to promote modern politicians, to a naive public, as well-marketed commodities.[23]
Except for the overpop, he is right on. We few have known that and done what? More importantly, what have our Dear Leaders, sworn to protect and defend and uphold the Constitution, done? At local, state and Federal levels?
Which is why Scalia’s loss is so very profound, despite the wonders of his son Paul’s Homily at the Mass today. Those of you who are not Catholics may wish to reconsider.
Except for the overpop, he is right on.
Don’t ignore the details. Welfare families and one parent households are over popping, and so is Islam.
The causes are broken down so finitely, that you can’t look at it from the human population rate. Go down into the sub cultures.
The Art of Propaganda has gone far beyond the trick they tried with subliminal messaging. But of course, only humans who have a significant number of man hours in the field would know what’s really going on. To others, they are incapable of using it, but they are capable of learning how to be used by it, which is similar enough to comprehend. Even to a person that can’t conduct propaganda techniques like Hollywood, they may eventually figure out that they aren’t immune to it and how much they are affected by it.
Ignore details? Moi?
I was citing Huxley’s stated concerns.
That we in the Free (ahem) World are besieged by propaganda 24/7/365 would come as no surprise to Huxley.
The question that comes to mind is whether Huxley would be surprised by our craven submission today or not. I think not.
I live in South Carolina, and I’ve noticed a LOTS of Trump signs in the yard of houses owned by blacks who very likely have voted reliably Democrat for the past many, many, many years now. Which tells me: they don’t like Bernie or Hillary, like what Trump is saying, and it’s not necessarily “Republicans” voting for the “Republican” candidate.
his family was a bunch of pips, and his writing was a lot about his brothers projects and end results…
I was citing Huxley’s stated concerns.
Propaganda and deception starts with half the truth, and it goes down hill from there.
By pointing out the world’s population decline (which is due to K vs R reproduction strategies and other economic realities) and pretending that this was the truth applied across the world, the details were sacrificed for the narrative.