Aldous Huxley (26 July 1894 – 22 November 1963) was an English writer and philosopher. He wrote nearly fifty books both novels and non-fiction works—as well as wide-ranging essays, narratives, and poems. In his most famous novel Brave New World (1932) and his final novel Island (1962), he presented his vision of dystopia and utopia, respectively. George Orwell, was an English novelist, essayist, journalist and critic. His work is characterised by lucid prose, biting social criticism, opposition to totalitarianism and mass surveillance. As a writer, Orwell produced literary criticism and poetry, fiction and polemical journalism; and is best known for the allegorical novella Animal Farm (1945) and the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949). The profound animation from 12:30 to 15:45 of this video is from “IN-SHADOW – A Modern Odyssey – Animated Short Film” by Lubomir Arsov The full Aldous Huxley audio us from his lecture at UC Berkeley in 1962. Please consider supporting After Skool on Patreon https://www.patreon.com/AfterSkool If you want to get in touch, feel free to send an email of visit https://www.afterskool.net Prints of the artwork available at https://teespring.com/stores/after-skool After Skool kid’s book https://www.amazon.com/Dont-Country-F… And please subscribe and hit the notifications bell to see future animations! Thank you! Special thank you to Michael and Joey on Patreon. Thank you for the support!
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today we are faced i think with the approach of what may be called the ultimate revolution the
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final revolution where a man can act directly on the mind body of his fellows well needless to say
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some kind of direct action on human mind bodies has been going on since the beginning of time
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but this has generally been of a violent nature the techniques of terrorism have been known from
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time immemorial and people have employed them with more or less ingenuity sometimes with the
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utmost crudity sometimes with a good deal of skill inquire acquired by a process of trial and error
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finding out what the best ways of using torch imprisonment constraints of various kinds but as
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i think it was a metanic said many years ago you can do everything with bayonets except sit on them
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that if you are going to control any population for any length of time you must have some measure
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of consent it’s exceedingly difficult to see how pure terrorism can function indefinitely
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it can function for a fairly long time but i think sooner or later you have to bring in
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an element of persuasion an element of getting people to consent to what is happening to them
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well it seems to me that the the nature of the ultimate revolution with which we are now faced
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is precisely this that we are in process of developing a whole series of techniques which
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will enable the controlling oligarchy who have always existed and presumably always will exist
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uh to get people actually to love their servitude this is the seems to me the the ultimate
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in malevolent revolution should we say and that there seems to be a general movement
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in the direction of this kind of ultimate revolution this this method of control
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by which people can be made to enjoy a state of affairs which by any
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decent standard they ought not to enjoy this i mean the enjoyment of of servitude
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and first let me talk about a little bit about the improvement even in the techniques of terrorism
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uh i think that there have been improvements pavlov after all made some extremely profound
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observations both on animals and on human beings and he found among other things that conditioning
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techniques applied to animals or humans in a state either psychological or physical stress
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senkins how to say very deeply into the mind body of the creature and where extremely difficult
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to get rid of that they seem to be embedded more deeply than other forms of conditioning
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in this context i would like to mention the extremely interesting chapters in dr william
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sargent’s battle for the mind where he points out how intuitively some of the great uh religious
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uh teachers leaders of the past a hit on the pavlovian method he he speaks specifically
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of wesley’s method of producing conversions which were essentially based upon a technique
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of heightening psychological stress to the limit by talking about hellfire and so making people
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extremely vulnerable to suggestion and then suddenly releasing this stress by offering the
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hopes of heaven and this is a very interesting chapter of showing how uh how completely on
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purely intuitive and empirical grounds a a skilled natural psychologist as wesley was could discover
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these pavlovian methods well as i say we now know the reason why these techniques worked and
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there is no doubt at all that we can if we want to uh carry them much further than was possible
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in the past and of course in the history of recent history of brainwashing both as applied to
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prisoners of war and to the lower personnel within the communist party in china we see that the
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pavlovian methods have been applied systematically and with with evidently with extraordinary
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efficacy i mean i think there can be no doubt that by the application of these methods a very large
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army of totally devoted people has been created the the conditioning has been driven in so to say
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by kind of psychological ionophoresis into the very depths of the people’s being and has got
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so deep that it’s very difficult for it ever to be rooted out and these methods i i think are a real
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refinement on the older methods of terror because they combine methods of terror with methods
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of acceptance method that the person who he subjected to a form of terroristic stress
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but for the purpose of inducing a kind of involuntary quotes acceptance of the state and
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the psychological state into which he has been driven and the state of affairs
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within which he finds himself so that as i say there has been i think a definite
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improvement shall we say uh in the even in the techniques of of terrorism well then we come to um
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consideration of other techniques of non-terroristic techniques for
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uh inducing consent and for inducing people to love their servitude first of all there are the
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methods connected with uh straight suggestion and and hypnosis i think we know much more about this
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subject and was was known in the past people of course have always known about suggestion and
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although they didn’t know the word hypnosis they certainly practiced it but we now i think
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know pretty clearly the sort of statistical structure of a population in regard to its uh
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to its suggestibility uh it’s very interesting when you look at the the findings in different
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fields i mean in the field of hypnosis in the field of administering placebos for example
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in the field of general suggestion in states of drowsiness or of light sleep you will find the
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same sorts of orders of magnitude continually cropping up you will find for example that the
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experienced hypnotists will tell one that the number of people the
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percentage of people who can be hypnotized with the utmost facility just like that
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is about 20 20 percent that about uh corresponding number at the other end of the scale are very very
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difficult or almost impossible to hypnotize and that in between there lies a large mass of people
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who can with more or less difficulty be hypnotized that that they can gradually be if you work hard
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enough at it be we got into the hypnotic state and in the same way when the same sort of figures
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crop up again for example in relation to the administration of placebos a big experiment was
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carried out three or four years ago in the general hospital in boston on post-operative cases where
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several hundred men and women suffering comparable kinds of pain after serious operations were given
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injections whenever they asked for them whenever the pain got bad and the injections
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fifty percent of the time were of morph and fifty percent of the time were distilled water
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and about twenty percent of those uh who went through the experiment about twenty percent of
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them got just as much relief from the distilled waters from the morphia about 20 percent got no
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relief from the distilled water and in between were those who got some relief or got relief
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occasionally so here again we see the same sort of of distribution and i suspect also
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that it would not be at all difficult to recognize in very early childhood who were the those who
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were extremely suggestible who were those who extremely unsuggestible and who were those who
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occupied the intermediate space quite clearly if everybody were extremely unsuggestible organized
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society would be quite impossible and if everybody were extremely suggestible then dictatorship would
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be absolutely inevitable i mean it’s very fortunate we have people who are moderately
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suggestible in the majority and who therefore preserve us from dictatorship but to permit to
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organize society to to be formed but once given the fact that there are these 20 of highly
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suggestible people it becomes quite clear that this is a matter of enormous political importance
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uh for example any demagogue who is able to get hold of a large number of these 20
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of suggestible people and to organize them is really in a position to overthrow any
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government in any country and i mean i i think this uh after all we’ve had the most incredible
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example in recent years of what can be done by efficient methods of of
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suggestion and persuasion in the form of hitler anybody who’s read for example bullock’s life of
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hitler comes forth from this with a sort of horrified admiration for this infernal genius
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who who really understood human weaknesses i think almost better than anybody and who exploited them
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with all the resources then available i mean he knew everything i mean for example he knew
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intuitively this pavlovian truth that conditioning installed in a state of stress or fatigue
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goes much deeper than conditioning installed at other times this was why all his big speeches
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were organized at night he suspects because of this quite frankly of course in my country
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says this was done solely because people are tired at night and therefore much less
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capable of resisting persuasion than they would be during the day and we see in all his techniques he
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he was using he had discovered intuitively and by trial and error a great many of the of the
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weaknesses which we now know about on a sort of scientific way i think much more clearly than
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he does than he did but the fact remains that this differential suggests ability uh
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this susceptibility to hypnosis i do think has is something which has to be considered very
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uh carefully in relation to any kind of thought about democratic government i mean if there are 20
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of the people who can really be suggested into believing almost anything as evidently they can be
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then we have to take extremely careful steps to prevent the rise of demagogues who will
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drive them on into extreme positions and then organize them into very very dangerous
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armies private armies which may overthrow the overthrow the government well
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this as i say is in this field of pure persuasion i think we uh we do know much more than we did in
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the past and obviously we now have uh mechanisms for multiplying the demagogue’s voice and image in
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a quite hallucinatory way i mean the television and the radio hitler was making enormous use of
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the radio he could speak to millions of people simultaneously i mean this this alone of course is
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creates an enormous gulf between the modern and the ancient demagogue the ancient demagogue
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could only uh appeal to as many people as his voice could reach by the yelling at the
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at his utmost but the modern demagogue can touch literally millions at a time and
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and of course with his the multiplication of his image he can produce this kind of
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hallucinatory effect which uh is of enormous
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hypnotic and suggest suggestive importance in these techniques which where the object
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of application is the human being you’re obviously up against the most dangerous situation
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and what will be the temptation for those in power i mean after all we pray regularly not
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to be led into temptation and this is a very profound and important prayer i mean experience
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sadly shows that if we are tempted long enough and strongly enough we almost invariably succumb
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and that the the whole process of setting up a decent society is essentially setting up
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a society in which temptations to abuse power and shall be reduced to a minimum
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but these new techniques i i think do constitute a series of very powerful temptations
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which to those in authority maybe finally turn out to be irresistible i hope not but
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i think what you say is is something which we have to think about i mean that this might be
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applied with justification as you say in the highest patriotic and
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moral terms even in democratic societies i trust not but but one never knows
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in our world there will be no emotions except fear rage triumph and self-abasement
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the sex instinct will be eradicated we shall abolish the orgasm there will be no loyalty
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except loyalty to the party but always there will be the intoxication of power always at
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every moment there will be the thrill of victory the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is
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helpless if you want a picture of the future imagine a boot stamping on a human face forever
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the moral to be drawn from this dangerous nightmare situation is a simple one
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don’t let it happen it depends on you
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oh
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you
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