Island

 Island

A novel by Aldous Huxley

  This is Huxley’s final novel, so in that way his final word on the human condition in which he found himself in his lifetime.
  It is said to be a utopian novel. In a way it is that.
  We have an outsider, Will Farnaby, from our world shipwrecked on the island nation of Pala. He is a journalist who is looking for a big score to take a year off the grind of the work he has to do for his boss, the industrialist who owns the paper he works for. There are unexplored oil reserves on Pala. That puts Will in a position of manipulating the situation in favor of his boss who is bidding on drilling rights. Except Pala does not want this. They are protective of the culture that they have nurtured over the past 100 years. It is naturally based and protective of that by not permitting the machines of civilization into their island. They have, limited industry, very few cars, no TV, safe from these outside capitalistic corrupting influences. They are passively protective which adds to their vulnerability, but would they be what they are if they fought back?  

  Will is given a book written by one of the long dead influencers of the island. The Notes on What’s What

“Dualism. . .Without it there can hardly be good literature. With it, there most certainly can be no good life.” -Notes on What’s What

    The novel is thin on plot. It is mostly a tour of Pala’s culture and modes of operation as we travel with Will and his local guides. Through this we get the idea of what a mostly equitable, non-dualistic, social structure would look like and how it could be maintained if left alone.
    During Will’s tour his heart is opened to the place so that he rethinks his position of betraying it for his own financial betterment. They use psychedelic mushrooms as a tool toward enlightenment.
Will ultimately takes the mushrooms and we are shown what he sees and feels in the long trip at the end of the book.

  Although the book is somewhat utopian, it is a fragile utopia that is headed for ultimate destruction. The outside threat is far worse than Brave New World, it is militaristic fascism. Pala is only a utopia for the moment. This could be taken as the major theme of the novel. Modern capitalism is on an unstoppable march across the earth. This was clear to Huxley in 1962, the year of the book's publication. What then is the point to the tour through the utopian structure? Perhaps it is that if we can find a space out of the range of interest of modern civilization, then THIS is how it could be structured and maintained. This is how children should be educated and nurtured for connection, non-dualism. But it is very unlikely that we could find that space to live, grow, and play out of the line of fire. In the meantime, which is basically forever in the human condition, we can have another connection to utopia through non-attachment to anything other than THE MOMENT.
  Utopia is in the breath of the HEAR & NOW. All the rest, important as it is on its own level, is a matrix of nostalgia or regret for the past, and dreams, or fear, of the future.
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Mild spoiler:
  It is interesting that the coup occurs during the mushroom trip, complete with assassination. It is a fact that Aldous Huxley was injected with LSD on the day he died of cancer. That was November 22, 1963, and like the book a day of an assassination and what could be seen as a coup d’etat.
He was tripping during the assassination as in the novel.