Nathan Reichenbach

If I’m being honest with myself, I haven’t been making time to write my research paper outside of school yet.  This is not good, because it’s due next Friday, which is extremely soon.  Yet, all hope is not lost, and I’m still confident that I’ll get the paper done, but I know that I should really start to expand on my research and writing outside of school if I want to explore the ideas that Huxley writes, and truly make sense of them.  I’m aware that I’ll have to put a good amount of time into researching the ideas that Huxley writes, considering much of them are allusions and require context to be understood in their entirety.

This is not to say that I haven’t started writing my paper yet, since I have a lot of it done in my writer’s notebook, but what I need to start doing is putting the ideas I’ve developed about my book onto the computer in an organized way.  I’m still not fully sure of how all the chunks I’ve written will fit together, so I’m going to go through the rubric and try and organize them effectively.

For now, here’s a picture of Huxley on top of the cactus, peyote, which contains the psychedelic drug, mescaline.  This plant along with the drug is definitely a source of inspiration for Huxley in writing Island, so I plan on citing it.

While listening to the book Team Human by Douglas Rushkoff, these thoughts have been floating around my mind recently, so I thought I’d organize them into words for my own sake:

To put the common, primordial, human values that tie us all together (socializing, experiencing natural beauty, humor, etc..) behind the values that are proliferated by man made structures/systems like money, social media, Television, etc, would mean that we would be sacrificing my most human (in an evolutionary sense) and visceral values to be replaced with platforms that exist within spaces in which it is impossible for them to be aligned with what is natural for humans to value.  For instance, take social media.  Social media platforms may have at first been created with the intent of bringing more people together, and allowing them to expand upon and stay updated on their social web.  Yet, alongside this goal of “enriching” the social connections of humans, will always be the goal of making a profit, since social media exists inside of another space (the economy), where there will always be the goal of making a profit, as this is the leading incentive to invent and make a platform such as Facebook.  What I’m doubtful of is that companies like Facebook, Instagram, and Google are (moving forward,) programming their platforms with the goal of preserving our most human values.  Instead, what seems to be happening is that the platforms are designed with the primary goal of maximizing our time spent on these platforms by playing on our most automatic, unconscious biases and responses, since our time on these platforms results in a greater profit for them.  

Is this betrayal of the values that make us human a result of the driving force which is competition within a market?  If so, it makes me uneasy to think that this competition is taking place within another man made structure that is the marketplace.  Ultimately, what I’m trying to say is that when all man made structures/concepts/ideas are stripped away.  All we’re left with is our primordial values and desires, such as forming meaningful social connections.

With the future in mind, I’m worried that not enough man made platforms are being engineered with keeping in mind the goal of preserving our most human values.

Alright so it feels like I’ve been chugging along with this book for a long time now, definitely many months.  In an attempt to understand this dude Huxley and his perverse ideas and notions (at least for today’s Western standard), I began listening to his The Doors of Perception on audio book, where he recounts his experiences with taking the psychedelic drug, mescaline.  From listening to this, I’ve came across many quotes that help aid my understanding behind Huxley’s motivation and inspiration for writing Island.  I’m fairly certain that the line of thought Huxley follows in The Doors of Perception is directly responsible for the way he structured the ideal society, Pala, and its civilians in Island.

For instance, in The Doors of Perception, Huxley writes, “The urge to transcend self-conscious self hood, is as I have said, a principal appetite of the soul.  When for whatever reason men or woman fail to transcend themselves by means of worship, good works, and spiritual exercises, they are apt to resort to religions, chemical surrogates, alcohol, and goof pills in the modern west, alcohol and opiods in the East, Hashish in the Mohammedan world, alcohol and marijuana in Central America...” He then goes on to summarize, “the employment for religious purposes of toxic substances is extraordinarily widespread.” The relationship between religion and psychedelics can be traced back to the current part of Island that I’m reading, in which a group of teenagers, are each given a monitored dose of a psychedelic, and then led to a chapel where a religious ceremony is held.

Other memorable quotes from The Doors of Perception include...

“In mescaline experience the implied questions to which the “I” responds is of another order.  Place and distance cease to be of much interest.  The mind does its perceiving in terms of intensity of significance, profundity of existence, relationships within a pattern.”

At the moment, my book is telling me an anecdote of Dr. Andrew, one of the main founders of the island Pala, and also a practitioner of animal magnetism.  In this anecdote, Dr. Andrew’s medical services are requested to remove a tumor from the Raja’s face.  Huxley sets up the anecdote by explaining that with any usual, non metaphysical methods, this tumor would be impossible to remove.  However, once Dr. Andrew puts his patient under a trance using “animal magnetism,” Dr. Andrew is able to perform the surgery and save the Raja’s life with ease.

Reading this I was very skeptical and confused, since I’ve never heard of animal magnetism in my life.  Surely if this method was as powerful as Dr. Andrew claimed it to be, I would’ve heard of it in my lifetime.  So I looked it up, to find Wikipedia defining animal magnetism as, “ also known as mesmerism, was the name given by German doctor Franz Mesmer in the 18th century to what he believed to be an invisible natural force (Lebensmagnetismus) possessed by all living things, including humans, animals, and vegetables.“  My first reaction was what the hell is this shit, this man Huxley is clearly insane.   Why would he spend ten pages talking about some mystical practice?  What is his motivation to insert this passage on animal magnetism with such an elaborate buildup?

Recently my motivation to read my book has been a bit drained, and I haven’t posted in a few weeks.

I could make excuses like the book isn’t exactly JUICY yet.  If it was JUICY I feel like I would be more ready to sit down with the book and grind it out.  But I feel like I’ve been drudging through the past chapter that seems to go on about the “Southeast Asia Petroleum” and “royal initiates.”  

Also, something that is difficult is the book’s constant use of allusions, which are understandably difficult to understand, since they are allusions from 1962.  A lot of these allusions are Huxley using famous deceased people’s names as adjectives, such as “Baudelaire” and “Voltairean.”  The thing is, these are used in an obscure context that would make no sense to the person who doesn’t know who these people are.  For instance, Huxley writes, “and the bony, emphatic mask of Savonarola positively twinkled with his Voltairean smile.”  How the hell would I know what a Voltairean smile is unless I had the internet to look it up!?  Even with the internet, I can’t really find what a Voltairean smile even means.  What did Huxley expect people to do in the 1960′s reading his book who couldn’t even begin to conceive of a “Voltairean smile”?  I feel like to an extent maybe his audience is people who will readily understand these allusions.

Some other allusions include, “Antinous,” “Manichean,” and a lot of “Savonarola.”

When describing the main character, Will Farnaby, Susilia McPhail reflects that he has, “’The physique of a Messiah.  But too clever to believe in God or be convinced of his own mission’” (Huxley 28). Reading this made me curious of what Huxley’s own views on religion were, so I began to look it up.  

I found that, in Brave New World, Huxley satirizes the “feel good” religions that involve dancing and tambourine smacking and singing.  While he has explored man’s disillusionment with organized religion in Brave New World, he still could be appropriately labeled as a spiritual man, and has apparently attempted to get in touch with spiritual creatures.  He has also taken various hallucinogenic drugs in his time and written multiple books on his experiences with them.  (https://www.enotes.com/homework-help/what-was-aldous-huxleys-backround-religion-how-173469)

No matter the book, I think it’s immensely important to understand the context of the author’s life at the time the book is written if one wishes to understand the motivation behind the theme, purpose, and characters within that book.   Furthermore, one must understand the context surrounding the author’s life, and the time period in which the author is writing, and how the historical context might shape their writing. To look into the context and have a solid grasp of the author’s possible motivations is something I don’t do enough, and I’m going to make an effort to do for Island.  

So far, I’m enjoying reading my book, although I’m a bit confused by how what went on in the first few pages.  My current understanding is that Will Farnaby got into a car accident which killed Molly, who was someone he loved dearly.  But I think that this might’ve been a dream?  I'm definitely going to go back and re read those pages.  

After looking back at the first few pages, I’m pretty sure that the main character, Will Farnaby, was in fact dreaming or in some sort of dream state, as he lied mangled on the island he’d just washed up on.  Yet, why would Huxley begin the book with a dream?  I think this was to establish the (what I think is going to be) central theme of the book -- that a lot of unnecessary suffering roots from not paying attention to the present moment, and letting your mind wander to the past or present.  While Will Farnaby is in this dream state, his stream of thoughts is constantly interrupted by birds on the island who are chirping “Attention.”

What I’m still confused about is who is Molly? And if Will’s initial dream is of someone dying in a car crash, how did this dude wash up on an island?

When I was picking a book, I wasn’t that concerned with choosing a work of fiction that would only satisfy my interests.  For one, I try to be open to whatever I read, and find ways so that while a book may not be inherently interesting, there are always things I can take away from it.  I even sometimes enjoy reading about things that I wouldn’t think would interest me, because often through the exposure of unfamiliar ideas, that is what will push me to think differently and become a better reader.  So, in line with this thinking, I picked a book that I thought would interest me, but that I also was aware would be a fairly difficult read for me.  

I’d heard the book I chose, Island by Aldous Huxley, being mentioned by a few authors I’ve read in the past year.  First, Eckhart Tolle in The Power of Now mentions how the society in Island is inhabited by talking birds, which are constantly blurting “Attention!” and “Here and Now!”  I found Tolle’s book to be extremely helpful in my own life, the thesis being that to be content and at ease, all you truly need to do is focus your attention on the present moment.  I was curious of how and why Huxley would incorporate this claim into a work of fiction, but at the time I decided to not read it.  Then about a week ago, I heard Sam Harris mention the book again on a podcast about mindfulness, which made my curiosity intensify.

I was first introduced to the idea that Island might be a difficult read when my eyes fell upon the first Goodreads review for the book, where the critic, layman Tom, gave the book 2/5 and began his review with “ This book was simply unbearable to read. “  This was definitely not something I wanted to hear as possible reader of the book.  Still, I chose not to let his review affect my decision to read the book.  I’m always skeptical of reviews of anything, and the biases or hidden agendas that the reviewer might have, resulting in a skewed review.  Reviews are, after all, subjective; but still, this was the top review for the book, meaning that it got the most up votes, so it surely must hold some truth to it.

Now that I’ve just woken up

From a 3 hour nap on a Saturday night,

It’s time to knock out some math homework.  

Take that you mother function. I’m gonna

Beat my college essays to death

With a foreign object. Next, what I’ll do

Is I’ll read Infinite Jest

3 times. Then I’m gonna go stand

In front of a library and get people

To sign a petition to start school later

so I don’t have to take so many naps.  

I’m gonna send in a job application

To Google, but only after first learning

Python.  Last, I’m gonna rewrite the

Declaration of Independence.

I’m a snake that’s shedding all my

Layers of procrastination until all that’s