Psychological conditioning is more powerful than intimidation and violence.
John Leake
In a letter dated October 21, 1949, Aldous Huxley thanked George Orwell for sending him a copy of Nineteen Eighty-Four. He praised the book, but also offered some friendly criticism in which he proposed that his dystopian vision in Brave New World was the more likely direction in which the world was heading.
Key points of Huxley’s letter include the following:
- The Ultimate Revolution: Humans will be managed through internal, psychological, and biological means rather than external force.
- Love Your Servitude:
Huxley argued that the ruling oligarchy would find “less arduous and
wasteful ways of governing” than the “boot-on-the-face” approach, by
“suggesting people into loving their servitude”.
- Technological Control: He predicted that the future would be more like Brave New World, in which people are made to feel comfortable in their enslavement.
- Efficiency vs. Sadism: Huxley believed that the continuous, sadistic punishment in 1984
was too energy-consuming. Instead, governments and technologists would
prioritize a more “efficient” form of control based on pleasure and
distraction.
Huxley concluded his letter by stating: “I feel that the nightmare of Nineteen Eighty-Four is destined to modulate into the nightmare of a world having more resemblance to that which I imagined in Brave New World.”
During
the COVID-19 pandemic, with its lockdowns, masking, vaccine mandates,
and censorship, it seemed to me that Orwell’s vision was coming true.
However, I now wonder if Huxley was right—that is, that psychological
conditioning is a more effective way of controlling people than
intimidation and violence.