Treasure Trove of Interviews - Including Aldous Huxley in 1958

A treasure trove of interviews by Mike Wallace from 1957 to 1960 is available at the link below. The first thing you will notice in these interviews in the last 1950's is that they were meaningful, they were not 90 second clips where the interviewer berated the interviewee. You will find that actual meaningful content was communicated. This does not say as much about CNN or Fox News as it does about the shift in culture and communication.

The second thing to notice is that nothing has changed. If you were born later, like me, you have probably grown up learning about the fight between liberals and conservatives and assumed that it has never been as partisan as it is now. Watch these and learn that nothing has changed. The same issues confronting us in 2011 are the issues confronting the people in 1957. The non-confrontation of issues is designed. It is why even elected politicians won't raise the issues they campaign on until the year before their next campaign and why they won't schedule the solution to start until the month after the next election. If the left didn't have the right as a boogie man to put before the voters and the right didn't have the left then you might actually vote your conscience instead of voting for the second worst solution.

Lastly, and more on topic the second link is the interview with Aldous Huxley. If you do not know of Aldous Huxley, he was a writer that lived from 1894 to 1963 best known for Brave New World. His early works included novels on the dehumanizing aspects of scientific progress. In general, he was a humanist pacifist which became interested later in life in psychedelics, parapsychology and philosophical mysticism. I am largely opposed to Huxley's view points but in this interview I am largely in agreement.

* In 1930, Aleister Crowley dined with Huxley in Britain.

The Mike Wallace Interview Collection
Mike Wallace Interview - Aldous Huxley - May 18th, 1958

The following are quotes from Huxley which ring true:

A democracy which makes or even effectively prepares for modern, scientific war must necessarily cease to be democratic. No country can be really well prepared for modern war unless it is governed by a tyrant, at the head of a highly trained and perfectly obedient bureaucracy.

Everyone who wants to do good to the human race always ends in universal bullying.

Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth. By simply not mentioning certain subjects... totalitarian propagandists have influenced opinion much more effectively than they could have by the most eloquent denunciations.

Science has explained nothing; the more we know the more fantastic the world becomes and the profounder the surrounding darkness.

So long as men worship the Caesars and Napoleons, Caesars and Napoleons will duly arise and make them miserable.

To his dog, every man is Napoleon; hence the constant popularity of dogs.

In the interview with Mike Wallace, Huxley discusses a futuristic slavery, a slavery in which the slaves are happily content to be ruled through distraction and chemical conditioning. Hard to argue that his vision of the world has not come true.

reply to post by ararisq


Brilliant video. Thanks for the post - S + F.

I've always loved the constrasts between Huxley's and Orwell's vision of an oncoming dystopia. Personally, i'm more inclined to think Huxley had a better vision of things to come.

Wish there were more TV shows with such meaniful content as this.

Although, i can see many of Huxley's warnings being ignored today, there are gems amongst the rough. I quite enjoyed the debate on BBC News Night the other night where they had "Sam Harris" as guest. That warmed my heart. I'm still adament that the BBC is not as biased as American media corporations such as FOX and CNN. (Perhaps a little bias on my part!)

Hope is not lost. Keep up the interesting posts that provoke some deep thinking

Peace!

EDIT TO ADD:

Question - Of which points or argument Huxley makes, do you disagree with?

S&F

never knew Crowley dined with Huxley ....would have liked to been a fly on that lunch table

when I was in intermediate school in the Mid 80's "Brave New World" was required reading in 1 of my classes ...

can't remember which 1....

I ask my wife who is 10 years younger than I & a veracious reader if she had ever read it ...during her education or recreation ?

and to my surprise she had never heard of the title or the author

looks like this 1 is next for her kindle

Originally posted by awake_and_aware
Question - Of which points or argument Huxley makes, do you disagree with?

I am not a humanist or philosophical mystic which Huxley became and therefore I disagree with quite a lot of what Huxley believed but he was a brilliant man none the less.

I equate more with Ravi Zacharias whom has also commented on Huxley:

When we consider pleasure, we do a tremendous injustice if we find the entertainment media to be the sole culprit of promoting illegitimate pleasure or hedonism. The subject is far too complex a web, which we have all shared in spinning.

What role, for example, has higher education played? Has it been any less a force in causing young minds to stumble? The reality is that there is nothing so vulgar left in human experience for which some educator from some institution cannot be found to justify it. In the name of literary license, anything passes off as permissible.

But thankfully, there are also voices of caution from higher education, such as Neil Postman’s. In his book Amusing Ourselves To Death, he contrasted the futuristic visions of George Orwell’s 1984 and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World:

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who would want to read one…. 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 that we would become a trivial culture…. As Huxley remarked: the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.”

In 1984 people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.

I think Postman is right. Any pleasure—whether good or illegitimate can make us slaves. Hunger for even the simple pleasure of food may become a life-dominating drive. Oscar Wilde said, “The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it.” He’s got it wrong. The unrestrained appeasement of desire only expands hungers. Does not our experience tell us so?

It is true. The fences of our moral pasture have been torn down, leaving us much room to graze. But let us remember what G.K. Chesterton once said: Any time you pull down a fence, always ask why it was put there in the first place.