As a conflicted individual living through a period in which many other individuals were stripped of their personal freedoms and subjected to harsh life under a dictatorship, Aldous Huxley observed first-hand the methodologies of famous 19th century dictators and their control over their subjects in crowds and as individuals. His essay, titled Brave New World Revisited, further discusses some of the more provocative and slightly disturbing techniques found within his fabled society, and also warns of coming dangers like overpopulation and over-organization. Overpopulation, a problem still facing some of the world's most populous countries today, is described by Huxley as an "impersonal force which [is] now making the world extremely unsafe for democracy", and is "the central problem of mankind" (Huxley 240, 242). In the 19th centuries, among technological advances in medicine that extended the life span of the average man and women and the creation of the developed, modern metropolis that supported millions of people in a small space, overpopulation became an up-and-coming complication for the world's leaders (the world's population in 1951 was two million and eight hundred million). Huxley believed that this imbalanced birth to death ratio, caused by advances in medicine and food production, would lead to a host of other problems, placing economic strain on a nation and eventually endanger "social stability" and "the well-being of individuals" (Huxley 242). Overpopulation leads to strained existing resources, eventually creating economic insecurity within a nation, which then according to Huxley, would allow for "more control by central government and an increase in power" (Huxley 245). Therefore, overpopulation is one of the key factors in the development of an all-powerful totalitarianism dictatorship, as it allows for a gradual release of freedoms by the nation's people in order to obtain economic and social stability from their government.
As the world progresses into the 21st century where even more of these technological developments are available and the birth to death ratio becomes increasingly skewed, overpopulation is still a remaining danger to the loss of democracy. At 7 billion strong, the world stretches its limited natural resources, especially those required for fuel sources (i.e. petroleum, coal, natural gas). Food sources, while mostly plentiful in nations that are wealthy, are dependable on harvests and fluctuating market prices and thus, cannot be depended on by the people to provide for. Countries like China, which are facing large overpopulation calamities, have tried to implement a strict birth control policy like the One Child Policy, which have largely been unsuccessful due to the uncooperative attitude of the Chinese people. For the most part, the world grows and grows to even larger populations without much effort to combat the effects of overpopulation and its drawbacks, including the threat to democracy and the individual.
