Huxley and His "Brave New World" on "Island".

It’s been a while since I’ve written, probably because I haven’t read as much as I should have. I just finished Aldus Huxley’s “Island” (his last work) with the following comments:

Huxley, like all other idealists, is an advocate for a system of thought, a system of societal organization, and a system of economics which cannot credibly be anything less that a totalitarian, imposed and brutal system. Huxley likes to dress this pig up really pretty and spray lots of perfume on it, but it is simply an imposed system.

Huxley’s system (found on the island of Pala) is founded (according to him) on decency, liberty, and rational thought. However, the definitions of these are the definitions that Huxley creates. The island is one of free love and sexual openness as well as a restricted economy that stymies the entrepreneur. Drugs and contraceptives are openly free and available while the borders are closed and inaccessible. Children are removed from their parents and there is an elaborate system of instruction (or brainwashing) that goes on.

The problem of this whole system is that Huxley assumes that everyone would agree that this is the most decent, liberating and rational system. What if they don’t? He answers that with brainwashing.

Huxley hates the transcendent God giving us an epistemology. He wants to give the epistemology. The problem with this is that someone has to be God and impose the epistemology so that things actually work. Who’s it going to be?

Huxley’s system, even in his own books, always dies.