Thursday, October 2, 2014

Brave New World?

There is, of course, no reason why the new totalitarianisms should resemble the old.  Government by clubs and firing squads, mass imprisonment and mass deportation, is not merely inhumane (nobody cares much about that nowadays); it is demonstrably inefficient -- and in an age of advanced technology, inefficiency is the sin against the Holy Ghost.  A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude.

Aldous Huxley, 1946 forward to Brave New World.

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