Monday 27 July 2009

Neil Clark and Aldous Huxley

A passage from yesterday's entry on Neil Clark's blog is an absolute classic:
[Aldous] Huxley also believed that modern marketing techniques, advertising and other forms of brainwashing used by the ruling elite to maintain their control would pose a far greater threat to human freedom- and humanity in general than the ‘old-style’ dictatorships that relied on terror.
Dictatorships relying on terror are still around, and Clark defends quite a few of them. Quite why he finds "modern marketing techniques" worse than "‘old-style’ dictatorships", when his rather naff and populist tastes are a product of them, is inexplicable.

Apparently Clark agrees with Huxley "that intelligence and kindness are inextricably linked"...