The Educational Prophecies of Aldous Huxley

The Visionary Legacy of Brave New World, Ape and Essence and Island

Ronald Zigler

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317565758
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Theory & Practice

The visionary legacy of Aldous Huxley is as relevant today as ever. Huxley possessed a sober understanding of the human condition as well as an inspired vision of the human potential. This volume presents an interdisciplinary examination and appreciation of Aldous Huxley's three visionary novels – Brave New World (1932), Ape and Essence (1948), and Island (1962) – to reveal the extent to which Huxley's prognoses into our possible futures was prophetic. The author assesses each novel to reveal the foresights that define our current educational, social, religious, political, and economic institutions, while also exposing our conflicts within those institutions.

This volume examines the educational, cultural and technological changes that have shaped our society since Huxley's work, with special reference to the enduring legacy of educational philosopher John Dewey. It offers profound insights into the educational forces and moral foundations of our society that shape us, both inside and outside of our schools. It is the first of its kind to focus exclusively on all three of Huxley's visionary novels and detail their relevance to our world today.

1
Visionary for the Twentieth Century

“Prophecies of the future, if they are to be intelligent, not merely fantastic, must be based on a study of the present: for the future is the present projected.”¹

Aldous Huxley, The Outlook for American Culture: Some Reflections in a Machine Age, 1927

Huxley as Prophet and Social Visionary

This is a study of the social visions of Aldous Huxley. Huxley was and remains a leading visionary of the twentieth century. Several factors contribute to Huxley’s status as an authentic and unique visionary for our time. First, he not only possessed a sober understanding of the human condition and the challenges that this condition imposes on us, but he also held a deep appreciation for the human potential, the liberating possibilities that lie within us, and the communities we may yet create. Huxley was among those rare, gifted individuals who are extremely well read and knowledgeable about multiple fields of study: a true polymath of both the sciences and the humanities. On this account he was able to formulate a multi-disciplinary appreciation for the human condition as well as the human potential. Furthermore, Huxley’s understanding constantly incorporated our ever-expanding knowledge of human nature as reflected in scientific inquiry. Because he read about new and emerging fields of scientific research, especially in the social and biological sciences, his ideas often, if not always, have stood the test of time on account of his capacity to imaginatively project the implications of various fields of scientific study—hence his continued relevance in spite of our advances since his death in 1963.

Huxley combined his understanding of our species and our world with an appreciation of the manner in which culture and society both shape and are shaped by an essential core of slowly changing and evolving human nature—a core that we all share. In addition, his understanding of human history provided him a context in which he could ascertain how culture and human nature interact over time—in ways that are sometimes predictable. And finally, the last attribute that Huxley possessed secured his position as a true visionary: he was able to intelligently imagine our potential developmental trajectories as individuals and as a society—trajectories that could emerge on account of the interaction among a plethora social and technological changes that have uniquely distinguished the twentieth century. Indeed, prophecy itself has been defined as the artistic linking of tradition and aspiration—i.e., the patterns of our past and the goals we hold for our future.² However, when it comes to our aspirations or goals, we need to keep in mind an observation made by the American philosopher John Dewey: “men hoist the banner of the ideal, and then march in the direction that concrete conditions suggest and reward.”³ For this reason, when we consider our “aspirations” as a society, we must contemplate not merely our overtly stated ideals but also the general trajectory of social, political, and technological changes that are profoundly impacting our society. His capacity to interpret this trajectory is what makes Huxley a visionary and, quite possibly, a prophet as well.

Huxley’s status as a prophet and visionary is not illustrated simply in Brave New World, his most famous novel. Rather, Huxley’s skill as a visionary thinker is also reflected in two other works of fiction that are less widely read: Ape and Essence (1948) and Island (1962). Unlike other so-called visionaries or prophets, Huxley did not bequeath upon us a single vision of a likely future. Rather, he recognized that prophesy, much like science, is guided by a working hypothesis—a hypothesis that must be open to change, revision, or rejection as warranted by the passage of time and the accumulation of new understandings. Consequently, following the 1932 publication of Brave New World, Huxley added two more prophetic visions. Together, these three visionary novels constitute three distinct working hypotheses, which describe potential future scenarios for human social life and organization. Consequently, a full and accurate appreciation of Huxley’s contribution as a visionary is not possible without a consideration of all three of these works. For this reason the current study will examine these three narratives—what they have in common, how they differ, and what they say about Huxley’s understanding of the human potential and our possible fates as a species.

Shaping the Mind of a Visionary: Some Pivotal Experiences in Huxley’s Life

When Aldous Huxley initially surfaced as a prominent writer in the 1920s, he emerged as an important contributor to what became known as the “novel of ideas.”⁴ As such, Huxley advanced a literary form in which the ideas articulated by his characters often take precedence over the characters of the novel themselves. However, after Brave New World, some literary critics observed that Huxley’s novels had begun to shift away from the dramatization of ideas and more toward their explicit exposition—something that Brave New World does in places as well. It was believed, among some of these critics, that Huxley the essayist was becoming more prominent than Huxley the novelist, even in his fictional writings. In many respects, all three visionary novels we will examine might be characterized this way insofar as Huxley uses certain characters extensively as mouthpieces for his ideas—much in the same way as the Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky did. Not surprisingly, Dostoyevsky was someone whose novels Huxley greatly admired. In fact, in the conclusion to Brave New World Revisited, (a series of essays Huxley wrote marking the twenty-fifth anniversary of Brave New World) Huxley did not hesitate to underscore the significance of a fundamental insight expressed by the Grand Inquisitor of Dostoyevsky’s parable from The Brothers Karamazov. It is an insight about the potential incompatibility between the human quest for freedom and the quest for happiness. This is an insight that also animates Brave New World and is explicitly articulated by Mustapha Mond—an important character and philosophical mouthpiece from this novel.

Unfortunately, Huxley is still most commonly viewed in the academic world today as primarily a literary figure, in spite of the fact that fewer than half of his fifty published books were novels, short stories, poetry, or plays. Most of Huxley’s writing was nonfiction in which he examined social, moral, and philosophical issues. His three visionary novels—Brave New World, Ape and Essence, and Island—simply provided Huxley a compelling means for advancing his social, moral, and philosophical ideas: ideas that he often addressed in greater length and detail in his nonfiction essays. On this account, a full appreciation of these three novels requires an equal consideration of Huxley’s corresponding writings as an essayist as well as his other works of nonfiction.

Among his corpus of nonfiction writings, arguably Huxley’s most renowned may be the two essays he published in the 1950s that examined his experience with the psychedelic drug mescaline: these essays were The Doors of Perception (1954) and Heaven and Hell (1956).⁵ No extended discussion of Aldous Huxley is possible without an acknowledgment of his experiments with psychedelic chemicals such as mescaline, psilocybin, and LSD. In fact a consideration of the ideas advanced in these two aforementioned essays is necessary to fully understand and appreciate Huxley’s final, true utopian vision—Island, published in 1962. As suggested, in a comparable manner, there are other nonfiction writings that are equally relevant to a fuller appreciation of Brave New World as well as Ape and Essence.

Regarding Huxley’s experiments with psychedelics, it is certainly undeniable that they deeply influenced his life and shaped his final, true utopian vision. However, these drugs were not the only important influences on his life, and it would be a mistake to dismiss Island or any of Huxley’s novels for that matter, on account of his experiments with what are, today, still somewhat controversial chemicals. In fact, one might even ask why Huxley had not experimented with such substances earlier in his career. Especially given the previous acknowledgment of William James in his monumental study, Varieties of Religious Experience, that his own experience with nitrous oxide led him to infer that there are certainly realms of human consciousness, unlike our ordinary waking state, that hold significance for human life.⁶ Huxley was undoubtedly aware—much earlier in his life—of the role that such drugs have played as a catalyst for visionary experiences in many religions. His reference to the drug “soma” in Brave New World reflects his reading (some may claim mis reading) of the role of a drug in the Vedic texts of ancient Indian religion. What is nonetheless clear, if we consider the entire trajectory of changes that were to distinguish Huxley’s own life—from the writing of Brave New World through his completion of Island—is not only that psychedelic drugs changed him but that he also began to change in very important ways long before his experiments with psychedelics in 1954. Included among these changes was his very attitude toward these mind-altering substances themselves. Let us consider how Huxley’s attitude toward mind-altering substances changed during his lifetime, as this will help to explain some of the differences we can discern between Huxley’s three visionary novels.

Brave New World, it might be observed, reflects Huxley’s initial view of the use of an imaginary drug that could function as a safe “opiate” for the people in order to render them compliant to the demands of the state. As suggested, however, later in his life Huxley revised this assessment. First of all, Huxley came to believe that as humans we all have a “deep-seated urge to self-transcendence.”⁷ As he declared, “always and everywhere, human beings have felt the radical inadequacy of their personal existence, the misery of being their insulated selves and not something else, something wider.”⁸ Consequently, the urge toward self-transcendence is an urge for a kind of liberation that goes beyond the limits of the insulated ego. However, while we may possess a fundamental drive toward an experience of transcendence, Huxley made a critical distinction between two very different forms of transcendence that may seem to satisfy this drive: upward transcendence and downward transcendence. While either form of transcendence permits us to move beyond the limits of our insulated egos, they are nonetheless worlds apart with very different implications for human life. Downward transcendence is exemplified by alcoholic intoxication and other “toxic short cuts” toward self-transcendence.⁹ In addition, self-transcendence in the downward direction may be sought in what Huxley termed “herd poison” or “crowd intoxication.”¹⁰ What distinguishes these two routes to self-transcendence as “downward” and undesirable is that such indulgences undermine our autonomy, our powers of reasoning, and our capacity for moral choice. Furthermore, downward transcendence whether in the form of alcoholic or crowd intoxication undermines our capacity for “upward” or psychologically healthy transcendence. Yet, Huxley suggested, downward transcendence becomes a more prominent option specifically when we fail to successfully foster upward transcendence. Brave New World is clearly a society that is built upon the widespread cultivation of downward transcendence. In this respect, we can view Huxley’s final novel, Island, as the author’s attempt to describe a society committed to the advancement of upward transcendence—it is a vision that articulates Huxley’s most compelling reasons why healthy, upward transcendence is an essential educational objective, worthy of lifelong pursuit.

Returning to our consideration of real and imaginary chemicals like “soma” or mescaline, we can now see how Huxley perceived these kinds of chemicals as cultivating two very different forms of transcendence. He thus made it clear later in his life that certain drugs and chemicals were damaging, addictive, and led to dependency in exchange for a temporary euphoria: i.e., promoting downward transcendence; while other chemicals—i.e., psilocybin, mescaline—have, for thousands of years, played a much different role in human life, prompting a visionary experience of upward transcendence and sometimes of mystical consciousness itself. These latter psychedelic chemicals are neither addictive nor seriously harmful to the nervous system; furthermore, they hold potential for human well-being that has made them worthy of scientific research. This is because, as indicated, these drugs have the potential to promote an experience of mystical consciousness—upward transcendence. The unique characteristics of these drugs have led religious studies scholar Huston Smith to refer to them as entheogens—a word that denotes a non-addictive, mind-altering substance, which may occasion (not necessarily cause) an experience with significant religious or spiritual import.¹¹ In recent years, scientific research on psychedelics has been renewed. Some of this research has focused on the treatment of end-of-life anxiety. As indicated above, these “entheogens” play a noteworthy role in the utopian culture depicted in Island.

As stated, the ingestion of psychedelics was not the only important, transformative experience in Huxley’s life worthy of our consideration in order to better understand his visionary novels. Certainly, one might even suggest that psychedelics were far from the most important catalyst of personal transformation. Furthermore, it should be emphasized that Huxley did not believe that psychedelic chemicals themselves were either the only or the most important means of cultivating psychologically healthy, upward transcendence. What is not widely appreciated (except among Huxley scholars) is the personal change Huxley had undergone during his adult life long before his encounter with psychedelics and the development of his theory of transcendence. These personal changes, as suggested, account for some of the distinct differences among his three visionary novels, as well as changes in the topics he addressed in his nonfiction writings. Those changes were increasingly exemplified in Huxley’s literary output that emerged shortly after the publication of Brave New World in 1932. However, the seeds of a personal transformation were beginning to germinate even prior to the publication of Brave New World. What follows is a consideration of the origin of this personal transformation.

Up to the point at which he wrote and published his most famous novel, the younger Huxley was widely deemed to exemplify the cynical, God-denying, nihilistic spirit of the postwar 1920s. And given...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Permissions
• 1 Visionary for the Twentieth Century
• 2 Brave New World: Pseudo-Utopian Vision and Populist Nightmare
• 3 Ape and Essence: Dystopian Neurotheological Vision and Theocratic Nightmare
• 4 An Island for the New Age: A True Utopian Vision
• 5 The Future of Our Prophecies
• Index