Radical References: Aldous Huxley’s ‘Ultimate Revolution’ (1962)

Posted: 13th September 2022

Hi all,

Back from creating music with ‘the doors’ ;)

The latest video is a little different:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JKoqezBJas

‘Radical References’ No.3:
Aldous Huxley’s ‘Ultimate Revolution’ (1962)

Ramblinactivist 2022/27, 12th September 2022.

For the referenced text and an audio podcast of this post, 
goto: http://www.fraw.org.uk/lwap/files/003/index.shtml


In 1962, Aldous Huxley, author of ‘Brave New World’, gave 
a speech to mark thirty years since its publication. Sixty 
years after that speech, and the Huxley’s prognostication 
of the populous learning to ‘love their servitude’ 
continues to evolve.

In this short video I summarise the main points of his 
speech, reducing the 35 minute/4,000 words down to around 
900 words and five minutes. If this wets your appetite for 
more, then you can find the original audio recording here:
https://archive.org/details/AldousHuxley-TheUltimateRevolution

Huxley’s general argument is that what he foresaw in the 
1930s was, in the ‘White Heat’ of the technological 
revolution of the late 1950s and 1960s, beginning to come 
true. Fast forward to today, and even the seemingly more 
outrageous aspects of the speech relating to electrodes in 
the brain is now part of an Elon Musk-funded research 
project. More importantly, at the core of Huxley’s 
viewpoint is an analysis which can be characterised as 
‘Neo-Luddism’, because it puts emphasis on the effect of 
new technology upon human commonality.

If you want to understand the contemporary crisis in 
politics, the mass media, and recent panics over ideas like 
‘The Great Reset’, then the work of Huxley, ‘Brave New 
World’, and his non-fiction follow-up ‘Brave New World 
Revisited’, offer a far more clear and concise view of what 
is happening today than much of the contemporary comment on 
these issues.

You can find more of these reviews in ‘Radical References’ 
here: http://www.fraw.org.uk/lwap/files/index.shtml

Also, to access a copy of the background track, created 
for this video, goto:
http://www.fraw.org.uk/blog/video/files/2022_27.shtml


Finally, it would really help to promote this work if you 
could follow, subscribe, or like my social media presence 
– which can be accessed from the link above. In today’s 
digital analytics popularity contest, all that button
pressing means something in this messed-up world.


Enjoy! :-)

P.