Aldous Huxley Complete Essay

 

     We have already gone through many interesting information upon truly outstanding people in our previous articles.A person who does not read much, might barely know Aldous Huxley if know at all. He is an English writer, a brother of biologist Julian Huxley and a grandson of biologist-Darwinist Thomas Huxley.

     In 1932 he published his novel anti- utopia entitled as Brave New World. The title was named after William Shakespeare`s The Tempest novel and a few ideas were taken by the writer from Bertrand Arthur Russell`s Scientific Worldview for the year 1931.

     Primarily, Huxley`s intention was to make fun of utopia accepted with such an enthusiasm by Herbert George Wells. If you want to know more, meet our writers and they will help you to get more knowledge upon this and many more matters you might be interested in. 

     In his Modern Utopia, Wells divided humanity on poetic (with outstanding minds), kinetic (smart and capable), boring and shallow. Even though he demanded to resist the boring ones and do not let the shallow ones to spread all over, he did not think that it is possible to improve some class through artificial selection. Complex interaction of heredities is impossible to follow and predict, he thought. Like people of Well`s future, inhabitants of Huxley`s world of XXVI century went through a lot, they went through the war and built a social rational order on the ashes of the past. But biologists and sexologists in Huxley`s world succeeded in solving the difficult game of heredities and were truly able to give birth to a new type of people.

     A reader gets to see a center of incubation and coordination in London, where the babies are produced as standard products through gathering conveyer. New revolutionary procedures make it possible to produce up to 96 embryos out of one egg. Due to gene engineering, the babies are classified into five classes, which roughly correspond to Well`s typology. Alpha plus is highly intellectual, it is above the rest. Going down, we meet the lowest class called epsilon minus, who carry coals, do the meaningless or degrading activities. Injection methods are strengthen with intensive and extensive updating programs. Applying electric shock therapy, hypnopedia or learning while sleeping, scientists are now able to graft every category of babies required features. Children will not only be able to accept their position in a society but love it. In accordance with Huxley, a truly revolutionary revolution should take place not in the outside world but in souls and flesh of people. There is no way a love for slavery may be established, except for the way of deep revolution in people`s souls. While selection corresponded to Well`s eugenics, formation of social conditions corresponded to tabula rasa, a blank page of the Enlightenment, according to which individuality was determined by the influence of environment and education. For utopians of the XXVI century, there were no doubts in this kind of development. If you control the environment and taught your children the principles of sense and morality, - you are doing fine. Souls of children are completely obeyed and there was no doubts about it. By means of hope for a reward and fear of punishment, it was possible to make perfect citizens out of them. Logic of Brave New World was the same, but results were not as they were expected to be: sense destroyed the feeling, morality destroyed the freedom and a perfect citizen became an automatically controlled robot. As he went forward with his picture of the future, the more his mockery of Wells spinned out of control. Huxley`s people of the future were listening to jazz bands, chew a bubble gum with reproductive hormones, took drugs and entertained themselves in “feelies”. It was a culture of instant gratification in a social order, which strived however, it could to make the falling-out smaller between desire and its realization. This freedom played a great both political and individual functions. For that matter, Huxley`s anti-utopia had something in common with pieces of advice of Marquise de Sade.In 1795, marquise de Sade was saying about direct connection between sexual freedom and political stability. Suppression of sexual desires will make it to where men will start displacing their anger onto authorities. If you let a man do whatever he wants, he will be satisfied and there will no feeling appear to make troubles for government, which so eagerly provides him with any object he desires.

     For de Sade it meant a legitimization of violence and total ignore of women`s rights, who were simply objects of public desires. Huxley`s utopia did not go that far ending with a necessity to train children in erotic games and considering a one-marriage life a type of social anomaly. Active principle remained the same. The more political and economic freedoms got less, the more sexual freedom strives for getting bigger. And a dictator will succeed encouraging this freedom. Together with a freedom to dream under the influence of a drug, movies and radio, it will help to accommodate his vassals with slaves who are their destiny.

     In 1937, Huxley moved to California. He was a pacifist so his views did not let him to receive American citizenship. Next year he meets Jiddu Krishnamurti and got interested in mystic teachings.

     In 1953, he voluntarily took part in experiments based on LSD influence on conscience. He wrote the following essays based on the received impressions: the Doors of Perception, Heaven, and Hell. Besides that, he continues experiments with drugs. Doors of Perception became a cult text and gave a title to the Doors band. In 1966, the band started performing in California.

     It was amazing how someone managed to write about changes in conscience under the influences of drugs and succeeded. Huxley did not try to become a guru, he was not obsessed with fixed ideas, he just took an unbiased look at his experience, vividly and interestingly described his feelings and convincingly developed new, intriguing ideas. Huxley`s books cannot be called a subliterary mystic. He seriously, with an absolutely scientific approach conducted a review in the area of mescaline hallucinogen use. Giving an estimation of how things are, he came up with a thought that he will be able to succeed more interesting results through changing the method of research. There were laboratory researching only before. Huxley started to use a little portions of mescaline himself and described what he felt. It turned out to be that the world of usual things can look totally different. He jumped to a conclusion that our brain normally screens extrinsic stimulus, which is not life-critical for a human-being but if such a screen will be shown under the influence of certain substances, the human being will witness a great phenomenological fire. Using mescaline, Huxley becomes a witness of the world perceived by the great artists such as Van Gogh and Blake.

     A term of a human potential came out of lectures Huxley had in innovatory Esalen institute opened in 1962. Even though he did not plan to stay in California until 1960`s, his staying there was a grain, which gave a rise to a blossom of alternative methods of seeing and existing.

     Aldous Huxley who felt well how Intellect carrying an imprisonment and Irrational – power, which makes everything possible, where one is able to see magic and witchcraft and immortality as a result tear a human being apart alongside the history of mankind, he searched for the last transformation not in the Christian hymns but in white crystals of LSD wrote that all the natural stimulators, drugs, relaxants, hallucinogens, known to the modern botanists and pharmacologists were discovered by an early man and were used for ages. One of the first things Homo Sapiens did with its just developed rationality and self-conscience was him to direct it on searching the ways to pass over an analytical thinking or at least to erase for some time an isolating realization of oneself. Trying everything he could find in the fields and forests, he followed what seemed to be good in the context of that point and time meaning changing the quality of conscience made him different, it does not matter how, from every day feeling and thinking.

     Psychedelic ideas of Aldous Huxley influenced activity of many idols of the youth: William Burroughs, Carlos Castaneda, Ken Kesey, Timothy Leary, Jim Morrison and others.             

     The principle of sexual freedom was central in this society.              

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