I Read Aldous Huxley
Huxley had some great thoughts and it's worth reading at least parts of his work. But (and this is my subjective feeling) the man maybe brilliant... he can't write. His ideas and ponderings are worth absorbing, but he totally misses the quality to produce a good novel that keeps people invested in his work. Of course some of his works are academical and not meant for pure enjoyment but he wrote a little bit of fiction too.
The work I personally like the most, is also one that rarely gets mentioned. People that have a notion of Huxley ussually talk about his dystophian novel "Brave New World" and people that are intrested in the 60's hippy / psychedelic movement will remember "the doors of perception". But my favourite still remains "Island".
"Island" is what Hans Achterhuis would call a typical "Utopian" book. The protagonist comes to a place in the world that is hidden from everything we know, and in this region a utopian-society was created. The protagonist falls in favor (or at least doesn't get killed) by the inhabbitants, and they lead him/her around. It talks about how it functions and what the overal ideologie of this landscape it. It talks about the datasets and ideas used to create it. A large part of the books is always ideological and some sort of a blue print of what it actually means. All the actors in the utopian world seem happy with their choice of living there, for them it's super duper great! (Altough we don't know if the writers tought the same. There are good theories why Thomas Moore wrote his "Utopia" as a sort of a joke, to show how silly this kind of thinking really is) And the utopia-model is always super appealing to the reader... however (as Achterhuis also asks) if you start looking deeper into the model of the society, you probably don't want to live there. There is always something substaining the ideal world, something that we could really question in a moral sense. Two other books (from the top of my head) that show this pattern are for instance "Utopia" (Thomas Moore) and "Atlas Shrugged" (Ayn Rand).
"Island" is a little bit diffrent when it comes to moral problems with it. I've not really seen people really argue with it in a moral way. Maybe I just haven't found the literature yet. It's also less known, and it ends with the destruction of the utopian model. Bit of a sad note. But one small part always lingered in my brain. And that's what I actually wanted to share with you peeps out there.
This is a small part... where the person that leads the protagonist around talks about why their island looks like it does. And maybe, it's worth reading and thinking about it. The protagonist mentions a force (can also be an institution) that is outside himself (even outside society), in this particulair case "God". He kinda blames this force for what is happening and sees it as a "Cosmic Joke". But the person on the island directly intervenes and corrects the protagonists' train of thought. Little piece of data, that might make you think.
[quote]"Keeping babies alive," he said, "healing the sick, preventing the sewage from getting into the water supply—one starts with doing things that are obviously and intrinsically good. And how does one end? One ends by increasing the sum of human misery and jeopardizing civilization. It's the kind of cosmic practical joke that God seems really to enjoy."
He gave the young people one of his flayed, ferocious grins. [b]"God has nothing to do with it,"[/b] Ranga retorted, [b]"and the joke isn't cosmic, it's strictly man-made. These things aren't like gravity or the second law of thermodynamics; they don't have to happen. They happen only if people are stupid enough to allow them to happen. Here in Pala we haven't allowed them to happen, so the joke hasn't been played on us. We've had good sanitation for the best part of a century and still we're not overcrowded, we're not miserable, we're not under a dictatorship. And the reason is very simple: we chose to behave in a sensible and realistic way."[/b][/quote]
In an earlier part... The protaganonist was reading a book from the island... and found the folowing part. Also something that stick with me up until now.
[quote][b]Me as I think I am and me as I am in fact—sorrow, in other words, and the ending of sorrow. One third, more or less, of all the sorrow that the person I think I am must endure is unavoidable. It is the sorrow inherent in the human condition, the price we must pay for being sentient and selfconscious organisms, aspirants to liberation, but subject to the laws of nature and under orders to keep on marching, through irreversible time, through a world wholly indifferent to our well-being, toward decrepitude and the certainty of death. The remaining two thirds of all sorrow is homemade and, so far as the universe is concerned, unnecessary.[/b][/quote]
If you ever read Island from Huxley... let us know.
And what according to you was the worst and the best part of it?
The worst part for me... is that the guy can't write :D , but he does have some really deep thoughts :)
The work I personally like the most, is also one that rarely gets mentioned. People that have a notion of Huxley ussually talk about his dystophian novel "Brave New World" and people that are intrested in the 60's hippy / psychedelic movement will remember "the doors of perception". But my favourite still remains "Island".
"Island" is what Hans Achterhuis would call a typical "Utopian" book. The protagonist comes to a place in the world that is hidden from everything we know, and in this region a utopian-society was created. The protagonist falls in favor (or at least doesn't get killed) by the inhabbitants, and they lead him/her around. It talks about how it functions and what the overal ideologie of this landscape it. It talks about the datasets and ideas used to create it. A large part of the books is always ideological and some sort of a blue print of what it actually means. All the actors in the utopian world seem happy with their choice of living there, for them it's super duper great! (Altough we don't know if the writers tought the same. There are good theories why Thomas Moore wrote his "Utopia" as a sort of a joke, to show how silly this kind of thinking really is) And the utopia-model is always super appealing to the reader... however (as Achterhuis also asks) if you start looking deeper into the model of the society, you probably don't want to live there. There is always something substaining the ideal world, something that we could really question in a moral sense. Two other books (from the top of my head) that show this pattern are for instance "Utopia" (Thomas Moore) and "Atlas Shrugged" (Ayn Rand).
"Island" is a little bit diffrent when it comes to moral problems with it. I've not really seen people really argue with it in a moral way. Maybe I just haven't found the literature yet. It's also less known, and it ends with the destruction of the utopian model. Bit of a sad note. But one small part always lingered in my brain. And that's what I actually wanted to share with you peeps out there.
This is a small part... where the person that leads the protagonist around talks about why their island looks like it does. And maybe, it's worth reading and thinking about it. The protagonist mentions a force (can also be an institution) that is outside himself (even outside society), in this particulair case "God". He kinda blames this force for what is happening and sees it as a "Cosmic Joke". But the person on the island directly intervenes and corrects the protagonists' train of thought. Little piece of data, that might make you think.
[quote]"Keeping babies alive," he said, "healing the sick, preventing the sewage from getting into the water supply—one starts with doing things that are obviously and intrinsically good. And how does one end? One ends by increasing the sum of human misery and jeopardizing civilization. It's the kind of cosmic practical joke that God seems really to enjoy."
He gave the young people one of his flayed, ferocious grins. [b]"God has nothing to do with it,"[/b] Ranga retorted, [b]"and the joke isn't cosmic, it's strictly man-made. These things aren't like gravity or the second law of thermodynamics; they don't have to happen. They happen only if people are stupid enough to allow them to happen. Here in Pala we haven't allowed them to happen, so the joke hasn't been played on us. We've had good sanitation for the best part of a century and still we're not overcrowded, we're not miserable, we're not under a dictatorship. And the reason is very simple: we chose to behave in a sensible and realistic way."[/b][/quote]
In an earlier part... The protaganonist was reading a book from the island... and found the folowing part. Also something that stick with me up until now.
[quote][b]Me as I think I am and me as I am in fact—sorrow, in other words, and the ending of sorrow. One third, more or less, of all the sorrow that the person I think I am must endure is unavoidable. It is the sorrow inherent in the human condition, the price we must pay for being sentient and selfconscious organisms, aspirants to liberation, but subject to the laws of nature and under orders to keep on marching, through irreversible time, through a world wholly indifferent to our well-being, toward decrepitude and the certainty of death. The remaining two thirds of all sorrow is homemade and, so far as the universe is concerned, unnecessary.[/b][/quote]
If you ever read Island from Huxley... let us know.
And what according to you was the worst and the best part of it?
The worst part for me... is that the guy can't write :D , but he does have some really deep thoughts :)
