Aldous Huxley Essays (Examples)

He introduced the concept of the "Superman" when he argued how this individual is not only the ideal human of modern society, but he is also the model individual, for he was able to transcend the boundaries that morality and religion had put on humanity.

Thus, for him, the "Superman" already existed during his time, though the feat of transcending and not believing in morality can well be under way to a rapidly rationalizing society. Morality for Nietzsche was a spiritual hindrance that prevents people from further pursuing their self-interests in life as they bring into consideration questions and issues about morality. The individual who is able to pursue his/her self-interest without any doubt or hesitation would be the only one who will achieve self-actualization in life, thus becoming the individual which he labeled as the "Superman."

Huxley's "Brave New orld" showed a similar change in the order of society;…

Aldous Huxley

The purpose of this work is to explore Aldous Huxley's view of religion, his belief in "moderate" applicable use of mind-altering and mind-expanding drugs as well as the prediction he made for the future of mankind. This will be done through reading of his works, as well as one interview.

Aldous Huxley has been described as many things such as the great "English novelist," "essayist," "iconoclast," "social prophet," and "proponent of psychedelic drugs." orn Aldous Leonard Huxley on July 26, 1894, into a distinguished family of the intellectual elite due to his experiences was somewhat set apart from the family to which he was born. His mother died with Cancer when he was 14, that as well as other events in his life were the elements that set him apart. At age 16 he suffered from an eye illness that kept him from fighting in World War I…

Brave New orld, Aldous Huxley carefully chose the names of his characters to reflect their political connotations. As his characters struggle with the inherent problems with their "utopian" society, the character names constantly remind the reader of important political, economic, and social figures. As such, Huxley's use of character names like Bernard Marx, Lenina Crowe, and Benito Hoover reflects Huxley's concern over the types of methods used to control individuals in modern society.

In Brave New orld, Huxley explores a society set in the future. The novel expresses Huxley's fear that mankind would create a utopia that ultimately gave away everything that makes life worth living. In Huxley's Brave New orld, society is peaceful, and there is little disease poverty or social unrest. This comes at a price, however, as citizens of this world have given up family, art, love, science, religion, history, and individual thought.

Huxley's novel was first…

There will always be savages, and the attraction of savagery.

Huxley wrote Brave New orld as a warning. Today, in the age of test-tube pregnancy, genetic manipulation, powerful drugs and the mass media, it appears that his warning has gone unheeded and that America is on the road to the scientific utopia he describes. Certainly the world of the savages has been left behind, and for good reason. Modern Americans like their comfort: they prefer their houses heated and air-conditioned, they want to drive and fly rather than walk, they want food that is convenient and gives instant satisfaction, they do not want to be unhappy, they do not want to suffer ill-health, they do not want to grow old and die. Modern technology, from medicine to environmental engineering to genetics, is available to help them fulfil these desires. Meanwhile other desires people may have, for truth, justice, a freedom…

He deplores the hiding of true violence. That hornet reference really came down to this, Huxley says; "in other words, to go and throw thermite, high explosives and vesicants [i.e. chemical weapons...] upon the inhabitants of neighboring countries before they have time to come and do the same to us."

Another pet peeve of Aldous Huxley is the use of abstract entities like "man power" and "fire power"; and he dislikes the abstraction used often, "force." "You cannot have international justice...unless you are prepared to impose it by force," he hears the political leaders say. Democratic countries must be protected, the politicians say, by "use of force." After all, the author continues, "force" - when used in reference to human relations - has no "single, definite meaning." After all parents use "force" they insist that their children act in a certain way, but it does not imply that they are…

Whatever happened you vanished, and neither you nor your actions were ever heard of again" (Orwell, 1949, p.168).

Capitalism

Principles of mass production are very clear in the novels. Huxley for instance, applied the idea of mass production in human reproduction, since the people has abandoned the natural method of reproduction. Mass production as the conventional feature of capitalism and Huxley's novel reinforces such. He talked about the requirement of the World State about constant consumption, which is considered as foundation of its stability. Huxley apparently criticizes the commercial dependence of the world towards goods. Conditioning centers teaches people to consume. Orwell similarly provides criticism to capitalism as well: "The centuries of capitalism were held to have produced nothing of any value." The Proles are the symbols of the capitalist system as they constitute the working class who work in assembly lines.

Destruction of the concept of family

oth novels…

.F. Skinner, a behavioral learning theorist, states that behaviors are learned and learning is represented by a permanent change in behavior. The components of this theory are reinforcers -- good or bad. Most people think of reinforcers as rewards for good behavior. There are actually two types of reinforcers -- positive and negative. Positive reinforcers are when a stimulus is given, and negative reinforcers are when a stimulus is taken away. However, negative reinforcers are different than punishments. Punishing is when either taking away a positive reinforcer or adding a negative reinforcer.

He also says that changes in behavior are the result of an individual's response to events, or stimuli, in the environment. When a particular Stimulus-Response pattern is reinforced, the individual is conditioned to respond. This pattern is known as Operant Conditioning, and the distinct characteristic of this is relative to previous forms of behaviorism, when the organism can…

Brave New orld

The two books 1984 and Brave New orld reflect futuristic views that are quite different and dichotomous. Indeed, 1984 reflects a world of dystopia and punitive government while the work Brave New orld reflects one of more utopian conditions but is no less controlled and crafted by a master plan. The noted social critic Neil Postman postulates that Huxley's version of the world in Brave New orld more closely matches that of our current actual world. However, while there is some grain of truth to that, there are some facets of Brave New orld that are not in place now and the chances of that changing in the foreseeable future is practically nil in the view of the author of this report.

Analysis

First up on this report will be a compare and contrast of the two works in general terms. First off, an obvious difference between…

Like Khan, Huxley focused on the sensations of the person (himself) having the mystical experience. During his experience, Huxley felt he had no impairment in his mind or gaze, an intensity of vision without an outer and imposed substance to induce the hallucination, and had a sense that his impetus of motion or will was impaired into a state of stasis (a direct contrast with Khan's focus on the ability of music to provide motion to parallel the nature of the divine). Above all, Huxley called his sense of harmony through visual means mystical because his visual experience eliminated any sense of division inner/outer divide in perception. As he looked at the flower, and Huxley felt he was becoming the flower.

This stands in direct contrast to Kepler's schema of harmony, which is dependant upon perceptions of distinction from outside, as an observer perceives defined opposites. Kepler's definition of harmony…

Technological Culture. Discussed: how it effects our life; B.F. Skinner; Aldous Huxley, and Zbigniew Brzezinski.

Technological Culture

The world has become a technological mecca, filled with gadgets and wonders that only a generation ago would have been impossible for the average citizen to envision, except perhaps in science fiction novels. However, today, the majority of households have at least one computer, if not more. The Internet allows one to access endless sources of information and to communicate with people around the world with a click of the mouse. Cell phones, once a handy luxury for professionals, are now carried by children and parents as a way to keep in touch. Technological advances in genetics has enabled scientists to clone species, and make remarkable leaps in medical research. The last one hundred years has brought mankind from the horse and buggy days to space age technology as a part of daily…

It is practically meant to raise public awareness concerning how the masses wrongly direct their attention toward profits. This makes it difficult for them to concentrate on more important matters like health, happiness, and the environment.

Similar to Huxley, Edward Abbey wanted to enable the masses to see that it is up to them to change the world. "EcoDefense" is not only important because it criticizes corporations for destroying nature, as it is also significant because if condemns simple people for not doing anything to preserve the environment. Abbey wanted people to realize that the environment belongs to them and that individuals and communities polluting it are practically harming the world as a whole. Simply ignoring the problem will not make it go away and it is essential for the masses to acknowledge that it is up to them to save the world and to actually go through with getting…

hile the winner gets a huge amount of money for supposedly being the strongest human, in fact, the strongest human is merely the one that uses the greatest amount of self-centered cunning and brute strength. If one is going to define humanity, especially in the post-Darwinian age, then it would seem that humanity, to be set apart, would depend on altruistic feelings and use of intelligence rather than selfish feelings and use of brute force alone. In this respect, there is little to separate the producers of TV reality shows from Dr. Moreau, and, by extension, little to separate the participants from the man-beasts. hile it is certainly a cynical viewpoint, it would seem that those who participate in the reality shows might be assumed to be as dimly aware of their condition as the man-beasts after their reversion to the more animal state.

Graff compares Dr. Moreau to Mary…

Lupack points out that conventional male and female roles are "comically reversed" (Lupack 96), emphasizing the "underlying principle of ironic contrast and the reason for the novel's universal appeal... madness is sanity and sanity is madness" (96). In addition, we come to grasp the notion that the patents are more "sane" (96) than their caretakers are but they only become aware of this after they check themselves into the asylum. Lupack observes, "The Combine's order is actually chaos, and the random natural elements of the world outside provide the only real meaning and order in life" (96). hile life appears to be orderly, it is actually empty. In Brave New orld, the irony exists in the premise of what defines happiness. The Savage touches on it briefly when he realizes that without pain, there can be no real, measurable pleasure. In a sense, everything is equal and while this may…

Some governments are terrified of their people: The military government that is running Burma (the junta calls the country Myanmar: Many of those who oppose the brutality of the regime refer to the nation by its former name of Burma) murders Buddhist monks who protest its policies.

The longer one thinks about this fact, the more clearly one summons up the image of the slaughter of young holy men, the clearer it will be that this is a government that will do anything that will increase its power, its control over the population, and the longevity of their regime. When one reads Orwell and thinks about Burma, one thinks that Orwell was a jolly optimist about human nature and the role of government.

And Orwell's vision of government is indeed grim one, and it gets grimmer over the course of the novel as Winston -- the protagonist who is nothing…

If it has, how has it? If it hasn't, how much is it left?

Fordism thus remains. It remains in worker surveillance, to guard against morality and time theft. It remains in the increased bureaucratization of the global economy, as multi-million dollar conglomerates dominate the world. It remains in the modern emphasis on productivity, rather than training in franchises. It also remains in the developing world, where the poor with little hope of mobility, labor for the rich. And it remains at companies that invest little in worker training like al-Mart.

If it is a combination of both? (Recommend to choose this)

Fordism has given the world many benefits -- affordable goods, particularly technological goods that would be prohibitively expensive without mass production. However, companies such as Google that strive to maximize efficiency, create a corporate culture and climate that permeates every facet of employee's lives, yet still makes an…

Transparent Society: ill Technology Force Us

To Choose Between Privacy and Freedom?"

There seems to be no doubt that the genie is out of the bottle, never to be capped again. Individual privacy is being treaded upon daily by new technological devices that a mere generation ago were considered science fiction to be found only in novels such as George Orwell's "1984" and Aldous Huxley's "The Brave New orld." However, today these stories of surveillance and cloning have become reality. In "The Transparent Society: ill Technology Force Us to Choose Between Privacy and Freedom?" David Brin examines how privacy as it was known a quarter of a century ago is gone forever and how citizens of the world have very tough decisions to make regarding how this new technology will be used and more importantly who will be in control.

Brin argues that the more open a society is the…

Whether the notion of the futility of war played any role in his joining the Trappists is debatable but may have had an impact on his sensitive mind. (Graham); (King, 121); (oyal, 36)

The study of Thomas Merton's conversion to Catholicism is undoubtedly one of the most captivating ones in modern Christian history and has fascinated many people not only in the Christian world but even amongst other communities worldwide. The fact that Merton has been appreciated by many religious leaders including the Dalai Lama speaks volumes about his spiritual insight.

eferences

Cooper, David D. Thomas Merton's Art of Denial: The Evolution of a adical

Humanist. University of Georgia Press. 2008.

Cunningham, Lawrence. Thomas Merton and the monastic vision.

B. Eerdmans Publishing. 1999.

Detweiler, obert; Jasper, David. eligion and literature: A reader.

Westminster John Knox Press. 2000.

Graham, Terry. 'The Strange Subject' - Thomas Merton's Views on Sufism, The

Nimatullahi,…

To that end, throughout the course of his life "he remained convinced that the drug had the potential to counter the psychological problems induced by 'materialism, alienation from nature through industrialisation and increasing urbanisation, lack of satisfaction in professional employment in a mechanised, lifeless working world, ennui and purposelessness in wealthy, saturated society, and lack of a religious, nurturing, and meaningful philosophical foundation of life'." (Telegraph, 1) To Hofmann's view, many of the psychological problems associated with the detachment imposed by modernity could be addressed by guided use of a substance that caused reflection, insight and self-awareness otherwise largely inaccessible.

It was through what was for Hofmann an unwanted combination of premature commercialization and the proliferation which this allowed into the underground market that would cause LSD to earn its dubious reputation and its relationship to recreational rather than psychiatric users. Accordingly, Sandoz would immediately jump on the opportunity to…

hile the system is not exactly the same as that described in e, the result is much more dramatic, since a far greater number of Americans are disenfranchised.

As I mentioned above, e was not the first dystopian work that I encountered. However, it was the first dystopian work that I encountered, for the first time, in a post 9-11 world. hat shocked me was not how far OneState was from modern American society, but the startling similarities that the two share. hile modern life is not strictly limited in by tables and graphs, personal liberties have been restricted at an alarming rate. This is not mitigated by the fact that the trend in the last 75 years had been an increase in personal liberties. A free society is characterized by an expansion of civil liberties. For example, most democracies begin with powerful males having the right to vote, and…

" This predictability is not and could never be a part of democracy; democracies must change with the will of the people, and so might have periods of instability. In fact, Berber notes, "Multinational corporations sometimes seem to prefer doing business with local oligarchs, inasmuch as they can take confidence from dealing with the boss on all crucial matters." Consistency and predictability are almost by definition easier to find in harsh dictatorships or oligarchies than democracies. The real danger I see in this is the possibility of a totalitarian state that looks like a democracy, such as the imagined by Aldous Huxley in Brave New World and which is every similar to the McWorld Barber sees us approaching. It might, in fact, already be happening, as warrant-less wiretapping becomes executive practice, and perhaps even more insidiously through the attempts of companies like Google to maintain huge databases of information about…

Marie Corelli writes in her article: Poisoning Young Minds in Nazi Germany: Children and Propaganda in the Third Reich about a math problem taught in the German schools under the Nazi regime: "The Jews are aliens in Germany -- in 1933 there were 66,060,000 inhabitants in the German Reich, of whom 499,682 were Jews. What is the percent of aliens?"(Corelli, 2002).

Another important age group, the youth, received full attention from the part of the Nazis and the first youth organization was established in 1922 and was called the Jungsturm Adolf Hitler. It went through a series of transformations and had several different names, till it finally became the name: Hitler Yugend. y 1935 over a half of the total German youth was member of this organization. After 1939 it became compulsory for the young Germans to join the organization.

It is obvious that children, young people, mothers were only…

In Rowson's version he mimics Eliot in the sense that his comic book is part satirical, it is pessimistic, and it is told in fragments, as well. But the two literary works could hardly be farther apart in substance, as Rowson parodies a crime novel's trashy tone -- parodying noted pulp crime writer Raymond Chandler more than Eliot or Eliot's poem -- and it shows in his edgy comic drawings that there is more than one "waste land" in the world.

Rowson had some problems in getting his lawyers to sign off on his parodies of Eliot's lines; for example, in Eliot's "The Fire Sermon," line 205, the poet writes "Jug jug jug jug…" and originally Rowson had his hero, Chris Marlowe ("Philip Marlowe" was a Chandler character ) walking past six jugs in the British Museum (which he uses in his comic illustrations). So instead of the six "jug[s]…"…

history of the 1920's, a colorful era of tycoons, gangsters, bohemians and inventors. Areas covered include the arts, news and politics, science and humanities, business and industry, society fads and sports. The bibliography includes fives sources, with five quotations from secondary sources, and footnotes.

The 1920's are commonly referred to as the 'Roaring Twenties', an appropriate title for a decade that did indeed roar out of the Victorian Era. Gone were the corsets and up went the skirt hems as flapper girls bared their legs and speakeasies with bathtub gin dominated the nightlife.

Tycoons became America's royalties while bohemian lifestyles bore the twentieth century's most influential era of art and literature. Inventions brought us into the modern age of convenience and history making events.

The twenties began with a serious but short-lived post-war recession, following World War 1.

Yet, by the mid-twenties, business and industry had created legends that have…

Maslow gave them that self-meaning and appreciation and became one of the pioneers of a movement that brought the focus of individual feeling, yearning and wholeness into psychology. He sort of read them out and spoke their thoughts, feelings and aspirations for them. He devoted much energy to humanistic psychology and the human potential and inaugurated the "fourth force" in psychology towards the end of his life. The first force consisted of Freud and other depth psychologists; the second force, the behaviorists; his own humanism and European existentialism, the third. This fourth force was made up of transpersonal psychologies that derived from European philosophies, which examined meditation, higher consciousness levels and para-psychological phenomena and which reacted against the then dominant psychoanalysis and behaviorism schools of the 20th century. Among the most prominent European philosophers were Kierkegaard, Husserl and Heidegger and the most prominent in the humanist/existential group were Carl Rogers,…

Ethics of Human Cloning

In 1971, Nobel Prize winning-scientist James atson wrote an article warning about the growing possibility of a "clonal man." Because of both the moral and social dangers cloning posed to humankind, atson called for a worldwide ban on any research leading to cloning technology (atson 8).

Until then, cloning had been largely relegated to the realm of science fiction. Scientific research concerning cloning and in vitro fertilization was obtuse and technical, and hardly written about in the news. atson, however, was a highly-respected scientist, a Harvard professor famous for his discovery of the double helix structure of the DNA. The article he wrote sparked an intense debate over cloning, a debate that was renewed with the 1996 birth of Dolly the lamb, the first cloned mammal.

The argument no longer centers on whether cloning is possible, but on whether cloning is ethical. This paper examines the…

Further, warfare and poverty have all but been eliminated. But in order to have happiness, the people are dependent on government produced stimulation, including Soma and promiscuous sex. The reason for this is because this society lacks the staples of human identity and individuality, such as family, culture, art, literature, science, religion and philosophy.

n this sense, Huxley's utopia is an ironic, or false utopia as without individuality and happiness, society is not really a utopia. Thus, Socrates would agree with Huxley's underlying philosophy that true happiness is only possible through an expression of individuality. Without individuality, society is in fact a distopia.

This is a sentiment that Thoreau would agree with as the premise of his Walden Pond was to create a personal utopia through an expression of complete individuality. Thoreau's premise was that by depending on pure individuality one would experience true happiness. n order to accomplish this,…

" (Adams et al.)

hat the report went on to show was how a decades long deception was practiced on a race that was viewed primarily as a guinea pig for medical science.

The Tuskegee Institute had been established by Booker T. ashington. Claude McKay had passed through there in 1912 to study agriculture (under the patronage of alter Jekyll, a man who provided the basis for Robert Louis Stevenson's classic horror tale character). Around the same time that Eleanor Dwight Jones was striving to preserve the white race, the United States Public Health Service began the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. hat took place was a forty year analysis of the life of syphilis. The two hundred black men who had syphilis were "deliberately denied treatment" (Adams et al.) in what was just one more step in oppression and callous social engineering.

And at the same time the Tuskegee experiment was…

They both are seeking wisdom and spiritual growth, but for very different reasons. Frankl has to find some kind of order and reason in his experience, or he will either go mad or die. Thoreau's spiritual quest is one of peace and harmony, while Frankl's is one of duress and oppression. He writes, "What matters, therefore, is not the meaning of life in general, but rather the specific meaning of a person's life at a given moment" (Frankl 171). At that given moment in time, Frankl's life did not mean anything to anyone but himself, and he used this experience to develop his own philosophy on life and wisdom, just as Thoreau used his experience to develop his own philosophy. The two men had the same goals, but reached them very differently due to their circumstances.

It is difficult to judge who has the best approach, because they both did…

limiting free speech ID: 53711

The arguments most often used for limiting freedom of speech include national security, protecting the public from disrupting influences at home, and protecting the public against such things as pornography.

Of the three most often given reasons for limiting freedom of speech, national security may well be the most used. President after president, regardless of party has used national security as a reason to not answer questions that might be embarrassing personally or would show their administration as behaving in ways that would upset the populace. Although there are many examples of government apply the "national security" label to various situations, perhaps some of the stories that are associated with the Iran-Contra issue best display what government uses limitations on free speech for. In horrific tangle of lies double and triple dealing that resulted in the deaths of many Nicaraguans, the egan administration sought to…