Island (novel)
Encyclopedia
Island is the final book by English writer
Aldous Huxley
, published in 1962
. It is the account of Will Farnaby, a cynical journalist who is shipwrecked on the fictional island of Pala. Island is Huxley's utopia
n counterpart to his most famous work, the 1932 novel
Brave New World
, itself often paired with George Orwell
's Nineteen Eighty-Four
. The ideas that would become Island can be seen in a foreword he wrote in 1946 to a new edition of Brave New World:
decades, and were the subject of many of his nonfiction books of essays, including Brave New World Revisited, Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, The Doors of Perception
, and The Perennial Philosophy
. Some of these themes and ideas include overpopulation
, ecology
, modernity
, democracy
, mysticism
, entheogen
s, and somatotypes.
Common background elements occur in both Island and Brave New World, used for good in the former and for ill in the latter. Such elements include:
The culture of Pala is the offspring of a Scottish secular humanist
medical doctor, who made a medical visit to the island in the 19th century, and decided to stay and work with its Raja, who embodies the island's Mahayana
Buddhist tradition, to create a society that merges the best of East and West. The Old Raja's treatise Notes on What's What is a book within the book that explains Pala's philosophical foundations.
A central element of Palanese society is restrained industrialization, undertaken with the goal of providing fulfilling work and time for leisure and contemplation. For the Palanese, progress means a selective attitude towards technology, which Huxley contrasts to the underdeveloped poverty of the neighboring island of Rendang, and with the alienating overdevelopment of the industrialized West, chiefly through Will Farnaby's recollections of London
. The Palanese embrace modern science and technology to improve medicine and nutrition, but have rejected widespread industrialization. For example, hydroelectricity
is made available for refrigeration, so that surplus fresh food can be stored, improving nutrition and protecting against food shortages. Huxley viewed this selective modernization as essential for his "sane" society, even if it means that such a society is unable to militarily defend itself from its "insane" neighbors who wish to steal its natural resources.
The Palanese also circumspectly incorporated the use of "moksha
medicine", a fictional entheogen
taken ceremonially in rites of passage for mystical and cosmological insight. The moksha mushroom is described as "yellow" and not "those lovely red toadstools", e.g. the Amanita muscaria
; this description of the moksha medicine is suggestive of Psilocybe
mushrooms, a psychoactive that captivated Huxley during the latter half of his life. The recommended dosage of 400 mg, however, is in the dosage range of mescaline
as opposed to psilocybin
. Huxley had also been fascinated towards the end of his life by the potential benefit to humanity of substances such as mescaline
and LSD
. Brave New World and most of Huxley's other books were written before he first tried a psychedelic
drug in 1953.
Many of the ideas used to describe Pala as a utopia in Island appear also in Brave New World Revisiteds last chapter, which aims to propose actions which could be taken in order to prevent a democracy from turning into a totalitary world like the one described in Brave New World.
Huxley used a scene of two mantids (Gongylus gongyloides) mating to make philosophical observations about the nature of death. In another memorable scene, Will Farnaby watches a Palanese version of Oedipus Rex with a little girl. Will points out that in his version Oedipus pokes his eyes out. The girl replies that that is silly, since all the king had to do was stop being married to his mother.
The novel has served as the inspiration for the Island Foundation, a non-profit corporation "dedicated to the creation of a psychedelic culture."
From the Notes on What's What:
English literature
English literature is the literature written in the English language, including literature composed in English by writers not necessarily from England; for example, Robert Burns was Scottish, James Joyce was Irish, Joseph Conrad was Polish, Dylan Thomas was Welsh, Edgar Allan Poe was American, J....
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Leonard Huxley was an English writer and one of the most prominent members of the famous Huxley family. Best known for his novels including Brave New World and a wide-ranging output of essays, Huxley also edited the magazine Oxford Poetry, and published short stories, poetry, travel...
, published in 1962
1962 in literature
The year 1962 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*January 7 - In an article in the New York Times Book Review, Gore Vidal calls Evelyn Waugh "our time's first satirist."...
. It is the account of Will Farnaby, a cynical journalist who is shipwrecked on the fictional island of Pala. Island is Huxley's utopia
Utopia
Utopia is an ideal community or society possessing a perfect socio-politico-legal system. The word was imported from Greek by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book Utopia, describing a fictional island in the Atlantic Ocean. The term has been used to describe both intentional communities that attempt...
n counterpart to his most famous work, the 1932 novel
1932 in literature
The year 1932 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*E. V. Knox replaces Sir Owen Seaman as editor of Punch magazine.*Samuel Beckett's first novel, Dream of Fair to Middling Women, is rejected by several publishers....
Brave New World
Brave New World
Brave New World is Aldous Huxley's fifth novel, written in 1931 and published in 1932. Set in London of AD 2540 , the novel anticipates developments in reproductive technology and sleep-learning that combine to change society. The future society is an embodiment of the ideals that form the basis of...
, itself often paired with George Orwell
George Orwell
Eric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist...
's Nineteen Eighty-Four
Nineteen Eighty-Four
Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell is a dystopian novel about Oceania, a society ruled by the oligarchical dictatorship of the Party...
. The ideas that would become Island can be seen in a foreword he wrote in 1946 to a new edition of Brave New World:
If I were now to rewrite the book, I would offer the Savage a third alternative. Between the Utopian and primitive horns of his dilemma would lie the possibility of sanity... In this community economics would be decentralist and Henry-GeorgianGeorgismGeorgism is an economic philosophy and ideology that holds that people own what they create, but that things found in nature, most importantly land, belong equally to all...
, politics KropotkinesquePeter KropotkinPrince Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin was a Russian zoologist, evolutionary theorist, philosopher, economist, geographer, author and one of the world's foremost anarcho-communists. Kropotkin advocated a communist society free from central government and based on voluntary associations between...
co-operative. Science and technology would be used as though, like the Sabbath, they had been made for man, not (as at present and still more so in the Brave New World) as though man were to be adapted and enslaved to them. Religion would be the conscious and intelligent pursuit of man's Final End, the unitive knowledge of immanent TaoTaoDao or Tao is a Chinese word meaning 'way', 'path', 'route', or sometimes more loosely, 'doctrine' or 'principle'...
or LogosLogos' is an important term in philosophy, psychology, rhetoric and religion. Originally a word meaning "a ground", "a plea", "an opinion", "an expectation", "word," "speech," "account," "reason," it became a technical term in philosophy, beginning with Heraclitus ' is an important term in...
, the transcendent GodheadGodheadGodhead , may refer to:*Deity*Divinity, the quality of being God*Conceptions of God*Godhead , the totality of gods, in Platonism the Transcendent One....
or BrahmanBrahmanIn Hinduism, Brahman is the one supreme, universal Spirit that is the origin and support of the phenomenal universe. Brahman is sometimes referred to as the Absolute or Godhead which is the Divine Ground of all being...
. And the prevailing philosophy of life would be a kind of Higher UtilitarianismUtilitarianismUtilitarianism is an ethical theory holding that the proper course of action is the one that maximizes the overall "happiness", by whatever means necessary. It is thus a form of consequentialism, meaning that the moral worth of an action is determined only by its resulting outcome, and that one can...
, in which the Greatest Happiness principle would be secondary to the Final End principle – the first question to be asked and answered in every contingency of life being: "How will this thought or action contribute to, or interfere with, the achievement, by me and the greatest possible number of other individuals, of man's Final End?"
Major themes
Island explores many of the themes and ideas that interested Huxley in the post-World War IIWorld War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
decades, and were the subject of many of his nonfiction books of essays, including Brave New World Revisited, Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, The Doors of Perception
The Doors of Perception
The Doors of Perception is a 1954 book by Aldous Huxley detailing his experiences when taking mescaline. The book takes the form of Huxley’s recollection of a mescaline trip which took place over the course of an afternoon, and takes its title from William Blake's poem The Marriage of Heaven and Hell...
, and The Perennial Philosophy
The Perennial Philosophy
The Perennial Philosophy is a 1945 book by Aldous Huxley, published by Harper & Row in the US. It was published in the UK in 1946 by Chatto & Windus.-Social and political context:...
. Some of these themes and ideas include overpopulation
Overpopulation
Overpopulation is a condition where an organism's numbers exceed the carrying capacity of its habitat. The term often refers to the relationship between the human population and its environment, the Earth...
, ecology
Ecology
Ecology is the scientific study of the relations that living organisms have with respect to each other and their natural environment. Variables of interest to ecologists include the composition, distribution, amount , number, and changing states of organisms within and among ecosystems...
, modernity
Modernity
Modernity typically refers to a post-traditional, post-medieval historical period, one marked by the move from feudalism toward capitalism, industrialization, secularization, rationalization, the nation-state and its constituent institutions and forms of surveillance...
, democracy
Democracy
Democracy is generally defined as a form of government in which all adult citizens have an equal say in the decisions that affect their lives. Ideally, this includes equal participation in the proposal, development and passage of legislation into law...
, mysticism
Mysticism
Mysticism is the knowledge of, and especially the personal experience of, states of consciousness, i.e. levels of being, beyond normal human perception, including experience and even communion with a supreme being.-Classical origins:...
, entheogen
Entheogen
An entheogen , in the strict sense, is a psychoactive substance used in a religious, shamanic, or spiritual context. Historically, entheogens were mostly derived from plant sources and have been used in a variety of traditional religious contexts...
s, and somatotypes.
Common background elements occur in both Island and Brave New World, used for good in the former and for ill in the latter. Such elements include:
| Theme comparison | |
|---|---|
| Island | Brave New World Brave New World Brave New World is Aldous Huxley's fifth novel, written in 1931 and published in 1932. Set in London of AD 2540 , the novel anticipates developments in reproductive technology and sleep-learning that combine to change society. The future society is an embodiment of the ideals that form the basis of... |
| Drug use for enlightenment and self-knowledge | Drug use for pacification and self-medication |
| Group living (in the form of Mutual Adoption Clubs) so that children would not have unalloyed exposure to their parents' neuroses | Group living for the elimination of individuality. |
| Trance states for super learning | Trance states for indoctrination |
| Assisted reproduction Reproductive technology Reproductive technology encompasses all current and anticipated uses of technology in human and animal reproduction, including assisted reproductive technology, contraception and others.-Assisted reproductive technology:... (low-tech artificial insemination Artificial insemination Artificial insemination, or AI, is the process by which sperm is placed into the reproductive tract of a female for the purpose of impregnating the female by using means other than sexual intercourse or natural insemination... ) |
Assisted reproduction (high-tech test-tube babies) |
| Freely-available contraception Contraception Contraception is the prevention of the fusion of gametes during or after sexual activity. The term contraception is a contraction of contra, which means against, and the word conception, meaning fertilization... to enable reproductive choice, expressive sex |
Mandatory contraception, socially-mandated recreational and promiscuous sex |
| Dangerous climb to a temple, as spiritual preparation | Violent Passion Surrogate |
| Parrots trained to utter uplifting slogans | Ubiquitous disembodied mechanical voices |
The culture of Pala is the offspring of a Scottish secular humanist
Secular humanism
Secular Humanism, alternatively known as Humanism , is a secular philosophy that embraces human reason, ethics, justice, and the search for human fulfillment...
medical doctor, who made a medical visit to the island in the 19th century, and decided to stay and work with its Raja, who embodies the island's Mahayana
Mahayana
Mahāyāna is one of the two main existing branches of Buddhism and a term for classification of Buddhist philosophies and practice...
Buddhist tradition, to create a society that merges the best of East and West. The Old Raja's treatise Notes on What's What is a book within the book that explains Pala's philosophical foundations.
A central element of Palanese society is restrained industrialization, undertaken with the goal of providing fulfilling work and time for leisure and contemplation. For the Palanese, progress means a selective attitude towards technology, which Huxley contrasts to the underdeveloped poverty of the neighboring island of Rendang, and with the alienating overdevelopment of the industrialized West, chiefly through Will Farnaby's recollections of London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
. The Palanese embrace modern science and technology to improve medicine and nutrition, but have rejected widespread industrialization. For example, hydroelectricity
Hydroelectricity
Hydroelectricity is the term referring to electricity generated by hydropower; the production of electrical power through the use of the gravitational force of falling or flowing water. It is the most widely used form of renewable energy...
is made available for refrigeration, so that surplus fresh food can be stored, improving nutrition and protecting against food shortages. Huxley viewed this selective modernization as essential for his "sane" society, even if it means that such a society is unable to militarily defend itself from its "insane" neighbors who wish to steal its natural resources.
The Palanese also circumspectly incorporated the use of "moksha
Moksha
Within Indian religions, moksha or mukti , literally "release" , is the liberation from samsara and the concomitant suffering involved in being subject to the cycle of repeated death and reincarnation or rebirth.-Origins:It is highly probable that the concept of moksha was first developed in...
medicine", a fictional entheogen
Entheogen
An entheogen , in the strict sense, is a psychoactive substance used in a religious, shamanic, or spiritual context. Historically, entheogens were mostly derived from plant sources and have been used in a variety of traditional religious contexts...
taken ceremonially in rites of passage for mystical and cosmological insight. The moksha mushroom is described as "yellow" and not "those lovely red toadstools", e.g. the Amanita muscaria
Amanita muscaria
Amanita muscaria, commonly known as the fly agaric or fly amanita , is a poisonous and psychoactive basidiomycete fungus, one of many in the genus Amanita...
; this description of the moksha medicine is suggestive of Psilocybe
Psilocybe
Psilocybe is a genus of small mushrooms growing worldwide. This genus is best known for its species with psychedelic or hallucinogenic properties, widely known as "magic mushrooms", though the majority of species do not contain hallucinogenic compounds...
mushrooms, a psychoactive that captivated Huxley during the latter half of his life. The recommended dosage of 400 mg, however, is in the dosage range of mescaline
Mescaline
Mescaline or 3,4,5-trimethoxyphenethylamine is a naturally occurring psychedelic alkaloid of the phenethylamine class used mainly as an entheogen....
as opposed to psilocybin
Psilocybin
Psilocybin is a naturally occurring psychedelic prodrug, with mind-altering effects similar to those of LSD and mescaline, after it is converted to psilocin. The effects can include altered thinking processes, perceptual distortions, an altered sense of time, and spiritual experiences, as well as...
. Huxley had also been fascinated towards the end of his life by the potential benefit to humanity of substances such as mescaline
Mescaline
Mescaline or 3,4,5-trimethoxyphenethylamine is a naturally occurring psychedelic alkaloid of the phenethylamine class used mainly as an entheogen....
and LSD
LSD
Lysergic acid diethylamide, abbreviated LSD or LSD-25, also known as lysergide and colloquially as acid, is a semisynthetic psychedelic drug of the ergoline family, well known for its psychological effects which can include altered thinking processes, closed and open eye visuals, synaesthesia, an...
. Brave New World and most of Huxley's other books were written before he first tried a psychedelic
Psychedelic
The term psychedelic is derived from the Greek words ψυχή and δηλοῦν , translating to "soul-manifesting". A psychedelic experience is characterized by the striking perception of aspects of one's mind previously unknown, or by the creative exuberance of the mind liberated from its ostensibly...
drug in 1953.
Many of the ideas used to describe Pala as a utopia in Island appear also in Brave New World Revisiteds last chapter, which aims to propose actions which could be taken in order to prevent a democracy from turning into a totalitary world like the one described in Brave New World.
Huxley used a scene of two mantids (Gongylus gongyloides) mating to make philosophical observations about the nature of death. In another memorable scene, Will Farnaby watches a Palanese version of Oedipus Rex with a little girl. Will points out that in his version Oedipus pokes his eyes out. The girl replies that that is silly, since all the king had to do was stop being married to his mother.
The novel has served as the inspiration for the Island Foundation, a non-profit corporation "dedicated to the creation of a psychedelic culture."
Quotations
"And always, everywhere, there would be the yelling or quietly authoritative hypnotists; and in the train of the ruling suggestion givers, always everywhere, the tribes of buffoons and hucksters, the professional liars, the purveyors of entertaining irrelevances. Conditioned from the cradle, unceasingly distracted, mesmerized systematically, their uniformed victims would go on obediently marching and countermarching, go on, always and everywhere, killing and dying with the perfect docility of trained poodles. And yet in spite of the entirely justified refusal to take yes for an answer, the fact remained and would remain always, remain everywhere -- the fact that there was this capacity even in a paranoiac for intelligence, even in a devil worshipper for love; the fact that the ground of all being could be totally manifest in a flowering shrub, a human face; the fact that there was a light and that this light was also compassion"
"History is the record of what human beings have been impelled to do by their ignorance and the enormous bumptiousness that makes them canonize their ignorance as a political or religious dogma."
From the Notes on What's What:
Nobody needs to go anywhere else. We are all, if we only knew it, already there. If I only knew who in fact I am, I should cease to behave as what I think I am; and if I stopped behaving as what I think I am, I should know who I am. What in fact I am, if only the Manichee I think I am would allow me to know it, is the reconciliation of yes and no lived out in total acceptance and the blessed experience of Not-Two. In religion all words are dirty words. Anybody who gets eloquent about BuddhaGautama BuddhaSiddhārtha Gautama was a spiritual teacher from the Indian subcontinent, on whose teachings Buddhism was founded. In most Buddhist traditions, he is regarded as the Supreme Buddha Siddhārtha Gautama (Sanskrit: सिद्धार्थ गौतम; Pali: Siddhattha Gotama) was a spiritual teacher from the Indian...
, or GodGodGod is the English name given to a singular being in theistic and deistic religions who is either the sole deity in monotheism, or a single deity in polytheism....
, or ChristChristChrist is the English term for the Greek meaning "the anointed one". It is a translation of the Hebrew , usually transliterated into English as Messiah or Mashiach...
, ought to have his mouth washed out with carbolic soapCarbolic soapCarbolic soap is a mildly disinfectant soap containing carbolic acid . Once widely available in the United States and the most common disinfectant cleaner in hospitals, it has disappeared from all but specialty retail stores. It is distributed to disaster victims for routine hygiene by the Red...
.
Good Being is knowing who in fact we are; and in order to know who in fact we are, we must first know, moment by moment, who we think we are and what this bad habit of thought compels us to feel and do. A moment of clear and complete knowledge of what we think we are, but in fact are not, puts a stop, for the moment, to the Manichean charade. If we renew, until they become a continuity, these moments of the knowledge of what we are not, we may find ourselves all of a sudden, knowing who in fact we are.
Faith is something very different from belief. Belief is the systematic taking of unanalysed words much too seriously. Paul's words, Mohammed's words, Marx's words, Hitler's words - people take them too seriously, and what happens?
What happens is the senseless ambivalence of history - sadism versus duty, or (incomparably worse) sadism as duty; devotion counterbalanced by organized paranoia; sisters of charity selflessly tending to the victims of their own church's inquisitors and crusaders. Faith, on the contrary, can never be taken too seriously. For faith is the empirically justified confidence in our capacity to know who in fact we are, to forget the belief-intoxicated Manichee in Good Being. Give us this day our daily Faith, but deliver us, dear God, from Belief.
Eastern religion references in the text
- The cosmic dance of ShivaShivaShiva is a major Hindu deity, and is the destroyer god or transformer among the Trimurti, the Hindu Trinity of the primary aspects of the divine. God Shiva is a yogi who has notice of everything that happens in the world and is the main aspect of life. Yet one with great power lives a life of a...
(NatarajaNatarajaNataraja or Nataraj , The Lord of Dance; Tamil: கூத்தன் ;Telugu:నటరాజ is a depiction of the Hindu god Shiva as the cosmic dancer Koothan who performs his divine dance to destroy a weary universe and make preparations for god Brahma to start the process of creation...
) - The legend of MuchalindaMucalindaMucalinda, Muchalinda or Mucilinda is the name of a naga , who protected the Buddha from the elements after his enlightenment....
- Buddha's Flower SermonFlower SermonWithin Zen, and thus from an emic perspective, the origins of Zen Buddhism are ascribed to what is rendered in English as the Flower Sermon, in which Śākyamuni Buddha transmitted direct prajñā to the disciple Mahākāśyapa. In the original Sino-Japanese, this story is called nengemishō...