Brave New World and Brave New World Revisited.
New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2005.
Book Information: Publisher; Google Books; Wikipedia; Amazon.com.
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Wikipedia Articles:
- Aldous Huxley (1894–1963).
- Brave New World (1932).
- Brave New World Revisited (1958).
- Dystopia.
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Audio, Video:
- Melvyn Bragg, David Bradshaw, Daniel Pick, Michele Barrett, "Aldous Huxley's Brave New World," In Our Time, BBC Radio 4, 09 April 2009.
- Seamus Perry, "Professor David Bradshaw," Faculty of English, University of Oxford, 14 September 2016.
- Barbara Cooke, "Professor David Bradshaw, 1955-2016," Waugh and Words, University of Leicester, 15 September 2016.
- Jeffrey Manley, "David Bradshaw (1955-2016) R.I.P.," The Evelyn Waugh Society, 16 September 2016.
- Paula Maggio, "In memoriam to David Bradshaw," Blogging Woolf, 19 September 2016.
- Janice S., "Remembering David Bradshaw," janicesextonart.blogspot.com, 15 October 2016.
- David Bradshaw, editor. The Hidden Huxley: Contempt and Compassion for the Masses 1920-36. London: Faber & Faber, 1994.
[Google Books; Amazon.com.]
USA edition published as: Between the Wars: Essays and Letters, Chicago: Ivan R. Dee Publishing, 1994.
[Google Books; Google Books, 2; Amazon.com.]
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- Daniel Pick, Wikipedia.
- Daniel Pick, Institute of Psychoanalysis, British Psychoanalytical Society.
- Daniel Pick, Birkbeck Institute for the Study of Antisemitism, Birkbeck College, University of London.
- Professor Daniel Pick, Emeritus Staff, School of Historical Studies, Birkbeck College, University of London.
- Daniel Pick. Brainwashed: A New History of Thought Control. London: Wellcome Collection, 2020. London: Profile Books, 2022.
[Publisher; Google Books; Amazon.com, 2020; Amazon.com, 2022.]
Anthony Cummins, Book Review, The Guardian, 28 June 2022. - Daniel Pick. Faces of Degeneration: A European Disorder, c.1848–c.1918. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.
[Publisher; Google Books; Amazon.com.] - Daniel Pick. The Pursuit of the Nazi Mind: Hitler, Hess, and the Analysts. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.
[Publisher; Google Books; Amazon.com.]
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- Professor Michèle Barrett, Professor Emerita of Modern Literary and Cultural Theory, School of English and Drama, Queen Mary College, University of London.
- Professor Michèle Barrett, her website.
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The Harper Perennial 2005 edition of Brave New World has a Forward by Christopher Hitchens.
Hitchens doesn't seem to acknowledge the pervasiveness of propaganda (and censorship) in the United States, which was especially heavy handed during 2002 and 2003 before and after the beginning of the Iraq War which Hitchens vigorously supported. This may have something to do with Hitchens' evolution across the 1990s and 2000s deeper into the mainstream media and his role as a propagandist for the Iraq War.
Hitchens seems to prefer Orwell's forecast of looming Western totalitarianism over Huxley's, that the hard version of Orwell should be feared more than the soft version of Huxley. I think the soft version has been present forever in the institutions of church, school and government; it got a strong boost during the First World War, and flourished across the Twentieth Century with the evolution of media technologies. Given this well established history I think it is only rational to expect that all areas of technological development will be exploited to further enslave the masses. Huxley's greater emphasis on biological and pharmacological technologies in contrast to Orwell seems to me important and complementary to the more overt tools of propaganda and physical force. I do not doubt that the human future will consist of a fusion of all available technologies to manage the masses. Note that Hitchens wrote a book about Orwell, Why Orwell Matters (2002).
On page xiv of Hitchens' Forward to Brave New World we find these questions:
Can the human being be designed and controlled, from uterus to grave, "for its own good"? And would this version of super-utilitarianism bring real happiness?
This quote reveals a fundamental misunderstanding by Hitchens. This is so fundamental that I think we should instead consider it a deliberate misdirection by Hitchens: he is diverting the reader's attention from the basic disjunction between the interests of the rulers and the interests of the masses. This basic divergence has been embedded in the characteristics and structures of every human society since they became organized civilizations. More recently the variously presented proposition that "the people rule" in the "democratic" republics said to characterize Western Civilization during the last 500 years is propaganda intended to habituate the masses to their subordinate condition. It is an illusion to think that the interests of the rulers are the same as the interests of the masses; and it is the role / duty / job of the propagandists of any / every civilized society to maintain this illusion. (The propagandists are the various spokesmen of / for the various institutions of the society: church, school, government, and now also business and "media". This includes, of course, the "public intellectuals": people like Christopher Hitchens.)
The rulers of the world have little regard for the "real happiness" of their subjects.
Towards the end of the book, in Chapters 16 and 17, the Controller and the Savage engage in an extended conversation on this exact topic. The Controller is very explicit about this. The rulers' highest value in the Brave New World is Stability and they have consciously and deliberately sacrificed Art, Science and Religion in order to maintain Stability.
We must ask ourselves: What are the highest values of the rulers of our world?
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