Aldous Huxley: over-rationalized Brave New World
In Brave New
World, Aldous Huxley offers a
frightening vision of the future. He wrote it after the Industrial Revolution and
World War I had deeply changed the world, and imagined how far this
transformation would take human society. He imagined a future in which mankind,
thanks to Science and Reason, had finally managed to take control over the
world and itself.
This Brave New World came at the prize of humanity losing
its soul. The reader discovers a dehumanized world based on the principles of
Henry Ford’s assembly line: mass production, homogeneity, predictability and unlimited
consumption of disposable consumer goods to satisfy society’s material needs. The
“good” news seems that yesterday’s war torn world had been replaced by a stable
global society unified under a “World State”. But the sad news was that in this
global rationalized world there was no room for human dignity and desire for
diversity. Over-rationalization had taken its toll to a point where Big Brother
in George Orwell’s 1984 would have had
nothing left to watch because the human desire for innovation and self-realization
had completely dried up. You might think that it is not possible to dehumanize
a society to such an extent. In Brave New
World however even the best hidden bit of humanity was put to sleep by the official
state drug soma, that had been developed to eliminate the need of religion and
personal desire for anything outside the World State.
Julian Huxley: scientific humanism to secure human values
Although Aldous’s Brave
New World did not come true entirely, dehumanization nevertheless took its
terrible toll during World War II which prompted the creation of United Nations.
14 years after his brother published his novel, Julian Huxley became the first
Director General of United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural
Organization (UNESCO). His responsibility was to determine how UNESCO could
prevent another holocaust by preventing critical thinking from being put to
sleep again by propaganda. Julian understood that a peaceful society could not
be – like Brave New World – based on
purely rational arrangements, but had to be founded “upon
the intellectual and moral solidarity of mankind”.
To build this human solidarity, he had to avoid the skylla
and charybdis of “exaggerated individualism” and “the philosophy of Facism in
which the State is regarded as embodying the highest values”. To reconcile
these extremes, he wrote, UNESCO must focus on the progress of humanity with a method
he called “scientific evolutionary humanism”. The scientific experimental method
of trial and error, he believed, was the best method for “embarking man upon
new possibilities”. His reliance on science was so strong that at some point his
thoughts strangely echoed the Nazi philosophy: “in the not very remote future
the problem of improving the average quality of human beings is likely to
become urgent; and this can only be accomplished by applying the findings of a
truly scientific eugenics.”
UNESCO’s emphasis on human values
His approach was nevertheless profoundly humanistic. Firstly
his desire for human progress was firmly based on the need to use science and “the
discussion method” to elaborate and establish human values on a global scale. A good example of this is UNESCO’s report on the philosophical principles of the
“rights of man”, which contributed to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Secondly, Julian Huxley was aware of the risks of uncontrolled and unquestioned
scientific progress. He therefore urged UNESCO to study the ethical
considerations of science and technology beyond purely economic considerations,
which the organization still does today.
The role of culture and art
Like his brother Aldous, Julian Huxley was afraid that exaggerated economic growth would cut society off from human values. He
emphasized the central role of culture and art for controlling this risk when he
writes about the consequences of industrialization: “In conjunction with laisser-faire and capitalist economic systems [industrialization] has not only
created a great deal of ugliness (much of it preventable), but has turned men
away from the consideration of beauty and art, and of their significance and
value in life – partly by its insistence on money values, partly by the
fascination exerted on the young mind by the products of mechanical invention”.
Art, he continues, is “the spearhead of [society’s] perception, the pioneer of
new modes of vision and expression. (…) For most people art alone can
effectively express the intangibles, and add the driving force of emotion to
the cold facts of information”. He was especially concerned by the declining
diversity of traditions and traditional knowledge, the pillars of society which
he observed “being undermined or wholly destroyed by the impact of Western
civilization, with its commercialism and individualism”.
Diversity and emotion as stronghold against dehumanization
What the dystopia Brave
New World and the utopia in Julian Huxley’s philosophy for UNESCO both
emphasize is the human desire for diversity as stronghold against
dehumanization and alienation. Julian’s plea for a global “pool” of traditions,
ideas and knowledge must not be seen as a standardization of contents itself,
but as the globalization of access to
contents like through the internet today. In the same way, his plea for a “world
government” was not meant to eliminate nations or communities of interests like
in the World State in Brave New World.
It was rather meant to encourage cross-pollination at a time where, Julian wrote,
“the scaffolding and the mechanisms for world unification have become
available”.
Reconnecting with our emotional and moral appreciation
The writings of both brothers leave us a legacy which
confronts us with the need to reconnect with our emotional and moral appreciation
of the world around us. It’s clear that both philosophy and art are crucial in
this endeavor as they stimulate the general process of enlarging the conceptual
and emotional capacity of mankind. Of course we all have our experience
of the world around us and of the future we are heading for, don’t we? But how well
are we equipped to interpret this experience? Are we doing okay? Are the
political and social structures we evolve in really fit to ensure our happiness
in the next few decades? And what is a good life after all?
To address this complexity we need art, philosophy and
social sciences in general. Art is needed because it can “express, as no other
medium can do, the spirit of a society, its ideas and purposes, its traditions
and its hopes.” Art also requires education: to support art production, but foremost to
appreciate art. Because “to expect to be moved and enriched by Giotto’s frescoes
in the Arena Chapel at Padua without some preparatory effort, is like expecting
a man with flabby untrained muscles to enjoy and to derive immediate benefit
from a twenty-five mile walk in the mountains”.
Conclusion: a balanced understanding, control and enjoyment
Julian Huxley's philosophy for UNESCO was never accepted by UNESCO's Member States. Member States considered that UNESCO's constitution was sufficient as a guideline, probably because they were not ready to accept some sort of Vatican for scientific humanism. As a consequence, Julian limited his term as a Director-General to two years. Nevertheless we can still draw inspiration from his philosophy and the principle on which he based it: “the world is potentially one, and human needs are the same in
every part of it – to understand it, to control it and to enjoy it”. This understanding, control and enjoyment can be improved by sharing it between small and big communities of interest. To prioritize quality over quantity, the challenge is to understand, control and enjoy in a balanced way. This means, as Charles Eisenstein puts it, to stop playing and messing around with earth’s gifts like children do with their toys. I don’t know what Eisenstein exactly means when he says that we need to put earth’s gifts “to their purpose”, but I think we should engage the debate on what this purpose is and start elaborating on its consequences. Maybe gratitude, as a natural response to earth’s gifts, can indeed be a useful guideline.
Based also on Van Helden, Andries (2001) Een halve eeuw UNESCO (Half a century of
UNESCO), Dutch National UNESCO Commission
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