Brave
New World Revisited by Aldous Huxley, 1958, Excerpts
Whenever the economic
life of a nation becomes precarious, the central government is forced to assume
additional responsibilities for the general welfare. It must work out elaborate
plans for dealing with a critical situation; it must impose ever greater restrictions
upon the activities of its subjects; and if worsening economic conditions
result in political unrest, or open rebellion, the central government must
intervene to preserve public order and its own authority. More and more power
is thus concentrated in the hands of executives and their bureaucratic
managers.
In a capitalist
democracy, such as the United States, it is controlled by what Professor C.
Wright Mills has called the Power Elite. This Power Elite directly employs
several millions of the country’s working force in its factories, offices and
stores, controls many millions more by lending them the money to buy its
products, and, through its ownership of the media of mass communication,
influences the thoughts, the feelings and the actions of virtually everybody.
To parody the words of Winston Churchill, never have so many been manipulated
so much by so few.
Industry, as it
expands, draws an ever greater proportion of humanity’s increasing numbers into
large cities. But life in large cities is not conducive to mental health; nor
does it foster the kind of responsible freedom within small self-governing
groups, which is the first condition of a genuine democracy. City life is
anonymous and, as it were, abstract. People are related to one another, not as
total personalities, but as the embodiments of economic functions or, when they
are not at work, as irresponsible seekers of entertainment. Subjected to this
kind of life, individuals tend to feel lonely and insignificant. Their
existence ceases to have any point or meaning.
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