Huxley's Brave New World in 2002
by Berit Kjos - 2002
See also Brave New World Revisited
--Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death (NY: Viking Penguin, Inc., 1985), vii-viii."Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture.... In [Orwell's] 1984... people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they're controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that we love will ruin us."
Note: Postman suggests that Huxley, not Orwell, was right. I believe that if Huxley was right, Orwell's reality will follow. New Age optimists, who believe man's inherent goodness will lead him on an upward journey to spiritual perfection, have, in Huxley's words, "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions."
Eighteen-year-old Rosemary Goldworthy had "eagerly awaited" the birth of her twins. But she would never hold them in her arms. When her babies were 22 weeks old, she began to hemorrhage and was taken to a hospital where the tiny girls were born. The babies - one dead and one living -- were put in plastic bags and left next to the heartbroken mother.
"The firstborn was alive. She kicked and cried, but the nurse stuffed her in a plastic bag and knotted it. Rosie saw the baby's leg kicking through the plastic bag,” said the grieving grandfather, Jack Goldsworthy. "The second baby was stillborn and also placed in a plastic bag.... They were her first children, and they left the two bodies right in front of her eyes for her to see." [1]
Shocking? Perhaps not to young people raised on today's media diet of sex, violence and propaganda for population reduction and animal rights. Though this incident happened in Johannesburg, South Africa, last June, it brings a sober reminder of America's growing indifference to traditional values and to the inherent worth of human life. Such a shift from moral absolutes to a changeable consensus brings devastating consequences. Deut 8:10-20
"You see it's not about 'compassionate conservatism' or saving lives," says columnist Paul Proctor. "That's just the party line.... No, it's really about reducing human life to a marketable commodity for the rich and powerful by persuading us as Hitler did Germany, that it's all for a good cause."[2]
The media debate has been strangely silent about the erratic lab results, inflated promises and viable alternatives to embryonic stem cell research. The articles "Stem cells from skin grow into brain tissue" and "Adult Stem Cells More Effective Than Those From Aborted Babies" remind us that when we turn from a wrong way in obedience to God, He provides a better way. [Prov 3:5-7] But His better ways rarely provide global leaders with the justification needed to win public consent to their unspoken ends.
We are looking at a world where international leaders view "human resources" -- called "human capital" by the [UN] World Bank -- as products that must be developed, managed, monitored and measured for their continual worth to the global village. Each community must be assessed and its "social capital" monitored. The latter refers to its worth based on the compliance of its people and the absence of dissent or conflict. Federal incentives and disincentives are then used to conform the community to national and international standards. But globalist leaders won't mention these offensive facts.
Instead they want us to envision a world without war -- a global village where young and old would welcome the United Nations' global ethic, live by its Earth Charter, and consent to what Al Gore called "a wrenching transformation of society."[3] This new world would encourage sexual license but use swift reprisal to quench dissent and resistance. It would mandate group consensus and community service, but its "peace and unity" would abolish all the rights and freedoms Americans take for granted.
Aldous Huxley outlined this vision well in his 1932 fantasy, Brave New World. Most of its points are fast becoming reality:
Group thinking has replaced individual views. [Brainwashing in America]
Communal "feelies" or sensory experiences are encouraged. [A New Way of Thinking]
Casual sex is obligatory (see chart) and mandatory pills prevent pregnancy. [Sex Ed and Global Values]
Children are socialized for a collective society and the global workforce. Molding Human Resources (list continues below box)
Toddlers are raised only to the level of literacy needed for their specific work. New "Literacy" for a New World
The euphoric drug, Soma, is used to control the masses. It would calm tempers, bring peace and happy feelings, even stir mystical or religious experiences.
In control of all land, the state provides managed vacations to selected places. [World Heritage 'Protection']
People are kept too busy with work and trivia to think or complain. [Mainstream Media]
All must participate in mystical group rituals invoking a universal god. [Solidarity]
Peer pressure and constant surveillance ensure compliance. [Using Teen Violence to Justify Control]
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"The love of servitude cannot be established except as the result of a deep, personal revolution in human minds and bodies. To bring about that revolution we require, among others, the following discoveries and inventions. First, a greatly improved technique of suggestion through infant conditioning.... "Second, a fully developed science of human differences, enabling government managers to assign any given individual to his or her proper place in the social and economic hierarchy (Round pegs in square holes tend to have dangerous thoughts about the social system and to infect others with their discontents.) "Third, a substitute for alcohol... more pleasure-giving than gin or heroin. "Fourth... a foolproof system of eugenics, designed to standardize the human product and so to facilitate the task of the managers."[5] Brave New World |
The similarities between our world and Huxley's vision shouldn't surprise us. Aldous' brother, Julian Huxley, became the first Secretary-General of UNESCO. Promoting the same socialist and humanist values as education pioneer John Dewey, he brought his brother's vision into the United Nations and helped lay the foundations for a global management system. Through the World Heritage Convention and other treaties and declarations, it would oversee the world's most scenic places and help standardize human resource development around the world.
Our current education system is little more than the American branch of what UNESCO, in 1973, called a "continuous and integrated process" of "lifelong learning." Its outrageous psycho-social experiments were designed to indoctrinate our children with beliefs, values and thinking processes that replace Biblical faith and factual thinking. Today, the tragic cultural consequences are used to justify more of the same.
Resistance is costly. A girl who refuses to endorse the gay lifestyle is labeled homophobic. A boy who appreciates traditional gender roles will score low in the new affective (feeling-based) school assessments. A man who refuses to participate in sensitivity training is fired. They simply don't measure up to the new standard for tolerance.
Some churches are faithful and courageous enough to take a stand and speak God's truth. But much of the church is bending over backwards to avoid offense, meet the "felt needs" of their potential members and dialogue with the world's new facilitators. Many turn a blind eye as their children follow peers into the new paradigm where bad is good and good matches the global vision.
Dewey, the Huxley brothers and their utopian followers might have been pleased with the world's "progress" toward their envisioned end. But they didn't understand human nature. In their arrogant pursuit of a better world, they ignored the lessons of history and mocked the Bible as a moral compass. The result is a world gone wild with boundless lust, lies and life-changing experimentation in forbidden realms.
God shows us that true peace and unity come through only Christ, not through genetic manipulation, psycho-social indoctrination or behavior modification. "These things I have spoken to you that in Me you may have peace," said Jesus after giving his disciples some scary glimpses of future trials. "In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world." John 16:33
1. Dead fetuses left with mother
2. Stem Cell Research - It's not about saving lives
3. Al Gore, Earth in the Balance; Ecology and the Human Spirit (Houghton Mifflin, 1992), page 274.
4. Brave New World (New York: HarperCollins, 1932), page 19-21.