Interview with Aldous Huxley

Some notes that were made when listening for the first time:

• We face great number of unique problems
• A huge population increase
• There has been an explosive advance in knowledge
• he says we suffer from a chronic revolution.
• Aldous fears for the hydrogen bomb.
• He is very pessimistic about the armorment race.
• He recognises the ecological change that is similiar to our modern day enviromental issues.
• Huxley is concerned about all of these things combined together.

 

3 Direct quotes:

"We are facing a great number of problems that are absolutely unique in history."

This is a wonderful introduction to this interview. Huxley is being asked about his opinion on a lot of topics related to the explosive growth of technology and population in the world, and I think that he describes the situation that the  world was in at that exact time in history very well.

"We are living in a world in a state of chronic revolution, chronic upheaval."

At the time of this interview the world was experiencing a revolution of both technological advances and social ideologies that were being produced left and right. It is not hard to imagine that such a transformation in everyday life can have quite the impact on the average human being and their thoughts and perception of the world around him or her.

We are not going to be able to solve the ecological problem made upon the earth, we are not going to be able to solve the problem of a species that is increasing with a rate of 50 million annually in a limited environment."

I was dumbfounded when I heard Huxley say this, because i couldn't imagine someone living in that age was already concerned with enviromental change and overpopulation. I grew up while being taught about sunstainable energy, overpopulation and other enviromental concerns that we are coping with as humanity as a whole. But Huxley is such a fantastic visionary that he already anticipates these problem back when this interview was recorded! Even nowadays there are still people, even some very powerful, that deny the growing environmental concerns and yet Huxley already knew about this such a long time ago.