the high divorce rate in the Western nations is hardlynsurprising.nOf course, there is the loser, who “can’t get no girlynaction.” This is the “kind of man who reads Playboy” andnchecks out the X-rated films from the Family Video Store.nTo be fair, even some of the Don Juans are addicted tonpornography. It helps to keep their interest up, even whennthe charms of Morgan or Tiffany grow stale. There isnnothing unusual or unnatural in this. In the beginning, anynsuccessful male had to be constantly on the alert for thenglimpse or scent of the attractive female who would makenhim “immortal with a kiss.” But pornography is the Big Macnof sex: it titillates and teases; it may even seem to satisfy fornthe moment. But the more you get, the sicker you become,nand eventually you forget what real food or real womenn(with real names) are like.nThis is the triumph of American democracy, to havencreated a line of succubi that haunt our waking dreamsnuntil we have lost our appetite for reality. Television, radio,nmovies, and electronic music might all be used, to a limitednextent, for some good purpose, and I am not immune tontheir pleasures, even their vicious pleasures. But we don’tnlimit them. We never turn the damn things off. Now, thenlatest advertising gimmick is to put giant TV screens intonhealth clubs and airports, alternating the soft-sell “entertainment”nsegments with hard-sell commercials. Ted Turner hasneven seduced schools into accepting his broadcasts, and thenonly complaints come typically from anticapitalist leftists.nPoor Ezra Pound, stuck in his cage outside of Pisa, wrotensome of the best verse of his later career, but transferred tonthe warm and dry St. Elizabeth’s loony bin, he turned outnvirtually nothing worth reading. Perhaps it had something tondo with the television blasting outside his room.nSuccubi, nightmares, simulacra. Even the lady of Shalottnwas “half sick of shadows.” We delight in them and wouldnnot trade them in for reality, even if we could. The schools,nas Dewey knew, made sure of that. By teaching nothing ofngrammar, literature, history, or theology, American schoolsn— public, private, and parochial — see to it that we grow upnknowing nothing of the world. Instead, we are trappednwithin a towering prison of images and abstractions, and anman might spend his life butting with his head and neverncrack through the deadening wall of lies. We are like thenvillains of old, so hardened in our ways that we cannotnrecognize virtue or beauty when we see it. I think of thenremarkable portrait of the “Innominato,” the unnamednrobber baron of Manzoni’s masterpiece, I Promessi Sposi,nbut even his conscience was stirred at the sight of thenhelpless Lucia. Today, a girl might be assaulted andnmurdered beneath our noses, and which of us wouldninterfere? So well have we learned our lessons.nOf all the 20th-century prophets who predicted doom fornour botched civilization, it was Aldous Huxley, who sawnmost clearly. In Nineteen Eighty-Four George Orwellnlooked at the surface symptoms of political repression andnofficial propaganda that characterized Nazi Germany andnStalinist Russia, and extrapolated. The Soviets playednOrwell’s game for seventy years, and it didn’t work. Huxley,non the other hand, looked closer to home in Britain andnAmerica and saw the future in California — a deracinatednculture based on hedonism, mood elevators, and compulsorynconsumption of useless articles that keep the worfdneconomy going. The control exerted by Huxley’s worldstatenover its people extends from genetically engineerednbabies raised in government nurseries and schooled innclasses on “elementary sex and elementary class consciousness”nto a lifetime of assigned duties, obligatory pleasures,nending in euthanasia for the public good. It is a happytalkingnNew World Order, where the greatest enemy of thenregime would be a Shakespeare-reading savage, capable ofnlove and hate.nThe totalitarian states of the 30’s and 40’s were, asnHuxley realized, too crude and negative in their methods:n”The most important Manhattan projects of the future willnbe vast government-sponsored enquiries into what thenpoliticians and the participating scientists will call ‘thenproblem of happiness’ — in other words, the problem ofnmaking people love their servitude.”nHuxley published Brave New World in 1932 and set thentale six centuries into the future. In 1946, in the foreword tona new edition, he revised his timetable: “Today it seemsnquite possible that the horrors may be upon us within ansingle century.” There were only two likely alternatives, hensuggested, either “a number of national, militarized totalitarianisms”nthreatening to blow up the world or else “onensupra-national totalitarianism, called into existence by thensocial chaos resulting from rapid technological progress . . .nand developing under the need for efficiency and stability,ninto the welfare-tyranny of Utopia.” Forty-five years later,nwe know it is the latter scenario that will be played out,nperhaps by the first years of the next millennium. In a similarnvein, Pound told his mother, “the art of letters will come tonan end before A.D. 2000.” If Pound and Huxley were bothncorrect, as I believe they were, then we can take comfort innthis reflection: come, the millennium, there will be fewnpeople around capable of reading Brave New World or anynother book produced by the lost civilization. <^nPetsnby John Nixon, Jr.nThe love they could not give to one anothernThey ultimately forced on quadrupeds —nPoor captive creatures, longing for the wildnBut getting love and table scraps. In time,nThe dog became a charming thespian.nIf tail-wagging and licking hands did notnDenote affection, then what could? Just listennTo that adoring bark. Pure joy. But nonAmount of condescending milk poured outnIn fractured saucers could persuade the catnTo view the thing as more than what it was:nSuave slavery. You cannot love your own,nThe velvet gait declares. I’ll not love you.nnnJANUARY 1992/13n