Russell described a future where free will would be scientifically erased at school

H. G. Wells called for a “revolution in education,” and Sir Julian Huxley gave the United Nations its philosophy of education. But what was education really meant to do in this new world system?

To answer that, we turn to prolific author, public intellectual and Nobel Prize winner Lord Bertrand Russell. Russell was the grandson of Lord John Russell, who had been British prime minister twice. Born into an aristocratic family, he studied mathematics at Trinity College, Cambridge and graduated with First Class Honors.

With over 70 books and over 200 published articles to his name, writing both fiction and non-fiction, Russell was as far from the fringe as you can get. He collaborated with Einstein on the Russell–Einstein Manifesto, had a lively public correspondence with H. G. Wells and contributed essays and lectures to the Fabian Socialists.

In his writings, Russell often warned about the dangers of science and technology. He presented himself as a voice of reason, using logic and rational thought to guide public opinion. People could trust his ideas, repeat them, and rely on him instead of forming their own. But given his proximity to the academic and scientific elite of his day, could we be more accurate in reading his cautionary words not was warnings, but as revelations of the method?

In his 1952 book The Impact of Science on Society, Russell emphasized the power of science:

‘We have seen that scientific technique increases the importance of organizations, and therefore the extent to which authority impinges upon the life of the individual. It follows that a scientific oligarchy has more power than any oligarchy could have in pre-scientific times.’

And described how it would affect the minds of children who underwent government schooling:

‘Where all children go to school, and all schools are controlled by the government, the authorities can close the minds of the young to everything contrary to official orthodoxy.’

Russell, like Huxley, candidly announced what would happen to individual personhood:

‘It is to be expected that advances in physiology and psychology will give governments much more control over individual mentality than they now have even in totalitarian countries. Fichte laid it down that education should aim at destroying free will, so that, after pupils have left school, they shall be incapable, throughout the rest of their lives, of thinking or acting otherwise than as their schoolmasters would have wished.’

and reinforced Wells’ assertion that this open conspiracy would be based on biology:

‘Diet, injections, and injunctions will combine, from a very early age, to produce the sort of character and the sort of beliefs that the authorities consider desirable, and any serious criticism of the powers that be will become psychologically impossible. Even if all are miserable, all will believe themselves happy, because the government will tell them that they are so.’

The end result of a scientifically reformed education system is obvious to Russell: technical management of belief and behavior of each child, that would last the rest of their life. This would be a crucial step in the establishment of the world system.

In Part 4^[1] we turn to another descendant of the scientific elite, Sir Charles Galton Darwin, whose tour de force The Next Million Years extrapolated this system out into the furthest reaches of the future.

1. This is the third of a 9-part email series sent by Nick Heys to spread his personal journey and document the open plan for world control discoveries achieved in his book reviews. I thought it would be useful to have them all archived. If you prefer to receive this content in your inbox, free of charge, simply sign up for the newsletter at ContinuityOfControl.com. ↩