Aldous Huxley | The Prophet Who Predicted Our Modern World

Vote on what comes next: https://www.sleepyphilosophyradio.com/voteThe real danger was never the boot on the face.In this episode, we trace the full arc of Huxley's life and thought, beginning with the prophecy he delivered in Brave New World and ending with the afternoon of his death in Los Angeles on the day John F. Kennedy was shot. We follow him from Godalming to Eton, from the eye infection that nearly blinded him at sixteen to the satirical novels of the 1920s that made him the cleverest young writer in England. We enter Brave New World not as a plot to be summarized but as a philosophical argument about what humanity would sacrifice for comfort. We address, honestly, the famous comparison with Orwell, and we ask which of the two prophets has turned out to be more accurate for the liberal democracies of the twenty-first century. We follow Huxley through his turn toward pacifism in the 1930s, his move to California, his long engagement with the mystical traditions of East and West in The Perennial Philosophy, his mescaline experience of 1953 and the philosophical argument of The Doors of Perception, and his strange, ambitious last novel Island, in which he tried to imagine what a good civilization might actually look like. We close with his death, and with the question he leaves behind: in a world that offers infinite comfort and infinite distraction, what happens to the human capacity for meaning?Please listen only in safe, restful contexts.(0:00:00) The Last Warning(0:14:23) The Huxley Inheritance(0:28:47) The Satirist(0:43:08) Brave New World(0:57:06) Orwell Got It Half Right(1:12:30) The Pacifist(1:27:12) The Perennial Philosophy(1:42:15) The Doors of Perception(1:56:50) Island(2:11:55) The Prophet in the DesertSUGGESTED READINGAldous Huxley, Brave New World, Harper Perennial Modern Classics: https://amzn.to/4mRPRoeAldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell, Harper Perennial Modern Classics: https://amzn.to/4sTtBeMThese are affiliate links. At no extra cost to you, I earn a small commission if you purchase through them.All research and writing is done personally. Music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License.If this helped you rest, consider following Sleepy Philosophy Radio for more gentle, longform philosophy.