Brave New World and Brave New World Revisited
Aldous Huxley
Here is an abstract of presentation at Balliol College, U. of Oxford, on 3rd September, 2013, by Dr. A. A. MUTALIK-DESAI, Dharwad, India.
Enemies of Freedom:
Brave New World
to Brave New World
Revisited: (Aldous
Huxley’s Reassessment in the 1950s), by A. A. MUTALIK-DESAI,
Dharwad, India
That all through his life Aldous Huxley was
concerned with a utopian order is a staple of Huxley scholarship. Also
acknowledged is his advocacy of humanely utilizing known frontiers of knowledge
to make life wholesome and worthwhile, to build “a desirable society....[in
which the] highest [human] potentialities” might be actualized. In this respect
Huxley moved away from the choices John Savage was given. In a letter to
Leonard Huxley (1932) he said, “at
moments like the present,...the great world is like one vast lunatic asylum.”
In BNWR
(1959), after witnessing three decades of political upheavals, ideological
extremes, financial crises and a world war, Huxley once again examined the enemies
of freedom. They were the same as
before: pressures of exploding over-population, more ominous was the
ever-growing level of militarization, unbridled nationalism, frightening centralization
of power, wheels of propaganda (whether in democracies or totalitarian regimes)
spinning off self-aggrandizing falsehoods, increasing dominance of the “hidden
persuaders,” attempts at controlling the human mind employing the newest tools
proffered by applied science, continued neglect of the kind of education,
verbal and non-verbal, which free societies need, and which education can move
one closer to reason and compassion and to diversity rather than a
deterministic and Procrustean model. What was Huxley’s panacea in 1959? Actualize human, desirable potentialities. Turn
inward. Look to eastern religions, “Applied Mysticism,” the Tantrick approach,
Hindu and Buddhist notions of love, auto-suggestive techniques. His trust in
wise employment of drugs was perennial: “If pharmacological methods work in
illness, might they not also work in health”? In sum, he looked far and wide
where there was even a glimmer of hope. Unlike other futurists he frequently returned
to the challenges implicit in his utopian dreams. Nicolas Berdiaeff’s wise
counsel he had heeded even in 1932.
I hope to examine his unwavering dedication
to the cause and his prescriptions.
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