Aldous Huxley to George Orwell: My Hellish Imaginative and prescient of the Future is Higher Than Yours (1949)

In 1949, George Orwell obtained a curi­ous let­ter from his for­mer highschool French instructor.

Orwell had simply pub­lished his floor­break­ing ebook 9­teen Eighty-4, which obtained glow­ing opinions from nearly each cor­ner of the Eng­lish-speak­ing world. His French instructor, because it hap­pens, was none oth­er than Aldous Hux­ley, who taught at Eton for a spell earlier than writ­ing Courageous New World (1931), the oth­er nice Twentieth-cen­tu­ry dystopi­an nov­el.

Hux­ley begins off the let­ter prais­ing the ebook, describ­ing it as “professional­discovered­ly impor­tant.” He con­tin­ues, “The phi­los­o­phy of the rul­ing minor­i­ty in 9­teen Eighty-4 is a sadism which has been automotive­ried to its log­i­cal con­clu­sion by going past intercourse and deny­ing it.”

Then Hux­ley change­es gears and crit­i­cizes the ebook, writ­ing, “Whether or not in actu­al reality the pol­i­cy of the boot-on-the-face can go on indef­i­nite­ly appears doubt­ful. My very own perception is that the rul­ing oli­garchy will discover much less ardu­ous and waste­ful methods of gov­ern­ing and of sat­is­fy­ing its lust for pow­er, and these methods will resem­ble these which I described in Courageous New World.” (Lis­ten to him learn a dra­ma­tized ver­sion of the ebook right here.)

Basi­cal­ly, whereas prais­ing 9­teen Eighty-4, Hux­ley argues that his ver­sion of the longer term was extra like­ly to come back to go.

In Hux­ley’s appear­ing­ly dystopi­an World State, the elite amuse the mass­es into sub­mis­sion with a mind-numb­ing drug known as Soma and an finish­much less buf­fet of casu­al intercourse. Orwell’s Ocea­nia, on the oth­er hand, retains the mass­es in verify with worry due to an finish­much less conflict and a hyper-com­pe­tent sur­veil­lance state. At first blush, they could look like they’re dia­met­ri­cal­ly opposed however, the truth is, an Orwellian world and a Hux­leyan one are sim­ply two dif­fer­ent modes of oppres­sion.

Whereas we haven’t fairly arrived at both dystopi­an imaginative and prescient, the pow­er of each books is that they faucet into our fears of the state. Whereas Hux­ley would possibly make you look askance at The Bach­e­lor or Face­ebook, Orwell makes you recoil in hor­ror on the gov­ern­ment throw­ing round phras­es like “enhanced inter­ro­ga­tion” and “sur­gi­cal drone strikes.”

You may learn Huxley’s full let­ter under.

Wright­wooden. Cal.

21 Octo­ber, 1949

Pricey Mr. Orwell,

It was very form of you to inform your pub­lish­ers to ship me a duplicate of your ebook. It arrived as I used to be within the midst of a bit of labor that required a lot learn­ing and con­sult­ing of ref­er­ences; and since poor sight makes it nec­es­sary for me to ration my learn­ing, I needed to wait a very long time earlier than with the ability to embark on 9­teen Eighty-4.

Agree­ing with all that the crit­ics have writ­ten of it, I needn’t let you know, but as soon as extra, how advantageous and the way professional­discovered­ly impor­tant the ebook is. Could I communicate as a substitute of the factor with which the ebook offers — the ulti­mate rev­o­lu­tion? The primary hints of a phi­los­o­phy of the ulti­mate rev­o­lu­tion — the rev­o­lu­tion which lies past pol­i­tics and eco­nom­ics, and which goals at whole sub­ver­sion of the indi­vid­u­al’s psy­chol­o­gy and phys­i­ol­o­gy — are to be discovered within the Mar­quis de Sade, who regard­ed him­self because the con­tin­u­a­tor, the con­sum­ma­tor, of Gown­spierre and Babeuf. The phi­los­o­phy of the rul­ing minor­i­ty in 9­teen Eighty-4 is a sadism which has been automotive­ried to its log­i­cal con­clu­sion by going past intercourse and deny­ing it. Whether or not in actu­al reality the pol­i­cy of the boot-on-the-face can go on indef­i­nite­ly appears doubt­ful. My very own perception is that the rul­ing oli­garchy will discover much less ardu­ous and waste­ful methods of gov­ern­ing and of sat­is­fy­ing its lust for pow­er, and these methods will resem­ble these which I described in Courageous New World. I’ve had occa­sion latest­ly to look into the his­to­ry of ani­mal magazine­internet­ism and hyp­no­tism, and have been nice­ly struck by the best way by which, for a hun­dred and fifty years, the world has refused to take seri­ous cog­nizance of the dis­cov­er­ies of Mes­mer, Braid, Esdaile, and the remainder.

Half­ly due to the pre­vail­ing mate­ri­al­ism and half­ly due to pre­vail­ing respectabil­i­ty, 9­teenth-cen­tu­ry philoso­phers and males of sci­ence weren’t will­ing to inves­ti­gate the odd­er details of psy­chol­o­gy for prac­ti­cal males, comparable to politi­cians, sol­diers and police­males, to use within the area of gov­ern­ment. Because of the vol­un­tary igno­rance of our fathers, the appearance of the ulti­mate rev­o­lu­tion was delayed for 5 – 6 gen­er­a­tions. Anoth­er fortunate acci­dent was Freud’s inabil­i­ty to hyp­no­tize suc­cess­ful­ly and his con­se­quent dis­par­age­ment of hyp­no­tism. This delayed the gen­er­al appli­ca­tion of hyp­no­tism to psy­chi­a­attempt for a minimum of forty years. However now psy­cho-analy­sis is being com­bined with hyp­no­sis; and hyp­no­sis has been made straightforward and indef­i­nite­ly exten­si­ble by using bar­bi­tu­charges, which induce a hyp­noid and sug­gestible state in even essentially the most recal­ci­trant sub­jects.

With­within the subsequent gen­er­a­tion I imagine that the world’s rulers will dis­cov­er that toddler con­di­tion­ing and nar­co-hyp­no­sis are extra effi­cient, as instru­ments of gov­ern­ment, than golf equipment and pris­ons, and that the lust for pow­er might be simply as com­plete­ly sat­is­fied by sug­gest­ing peo­ple into lov­ing their servi­tude as by flog­ging and kick­ing them into obe­di­ence. In oth­er phrases, I really feel that the evening­mare of 9­teen Eighty-4 is des­tined to mod­u­late into the evening­mare of a world hav­ing extra resem­blance to that which I imag­ined in Courageous New World. The change might be led to on account of a felt want for elevated effi­cien­cy. Imply­whereas, in fact, there could also be a big scale bio­log­i­cal and atom­ic conflict — by which case we will have evening­mares of oth­er and scarce­ly imag­in­in a position varieties.

Thanks as soon as once more for the ebook.

Yours sin­cere­ly,

Aldous Hux­ley

Be aware: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this put up appeared on our web site in 2015.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Aldous Hux­ley Nar­charge His Dystopi­an Mas­ter­piece, Courageous New World

Aldous Hux­ley Tells Mike Wal­lace What Will Destroy Democ­ra­cy: Over­pop­u­la­tion, Medicine & Insid­i­ous Tech­nol­o­gy (1958)

George Orwell Iden­ti­fies the Essential Ene­my of the Free Press: It’s the “Intel­lec­tu­al Cow­ardice” of the Press Itself

George Orwell Explains in a Reveal­ing 1944 Let­ter Why He’d Write 1984

Aldous Hux­ley to George Orwell: My Hell­ish Imaginative and prescient of the Future is Wager­ter Than Yours (1949)

Aldous Huxley’s Most Beau­ti­ful, LSD-Help­ed Dying: A Let­ter from His Wid­ow

Jonathan Crow is a author and movie­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wooden Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions.