Aldous Huxley

"When the student is ready, a teacher will appear." An adage containing truth.

Aldous Huxley was a famous British author whose name is familiar to many of us. His classic "Brave New World" is required reading in most schools. I read it in high school and was impressed by its prescient understanding of authoritarian regimes and their use of technology to numb a general populace.

What I didn't know until this week is the breadth of Huxley's oeuvre. He wrote dozens of books on a wide variety of topics. I discovered this during my reading of Michael Pollan's last two books which cite, quote and address Huxley's work. Toward the end of Huxley's life he migrated from political and social commentary to questions of human consciousness, reality and art. These are my chief obsessions right now and I find Huxley's insights, written 70 years ago, as current as today's dinner-bell.

I just read Huxley's other classic work "The Doors of Perception" (1954) and quasi-sequel "Heaven and Hell" (1956). Both blow me away. "The Doors of Perception" was inspiration for the name of Jim Morrison's rock-band in the Sixties (The Doors); its title comes from a 1793 book by poet William Blake.

Here are a few of my favorite lines from the books:

- "The urge to transcend self-conscious selfhood is...a principal appetite of the soul."

- "[T]he artist is congenitally equipped to see all the time. His perception is not limited to what is biologically or socially useful. A little of the knowledge belonging to Mind at Large oozes past the reducing valve of brain and ego, into his consciousness. It is a knowledge of the intrinsic significance of every existent. For the artist...draperies are living hieroglyphs that stand in some peculiarly expressive way for the unfathomable mystery of pure being."

- "...the power to see things with my eyes shut."

- "...return to the reassuring banality of everyday experience."

Curious Coda: When Huxley was a teenaged student at Eton, he contracted a disease that left him almost totally blind. His vision improved slightly after two years but was seriously impaired for the rest of his life. Huxley described the loss of his eyesight as "an event which prevented [him] from becoming a complete public school English-gentleman." (Brits call private school "public school"; Eton College is an elite private boarding school.)

Internet Slang

Sometimes Internet slang has actual use.

We face pressure to conform our whole lives. Late in life, however, our tolerance for it diminishes. 

We have individual preferences on subjects like art, entertainment, personal activity. Those preferences deserve respect.

I'm adopting the trendy expression: "Don't yuck my yum!"

First Contact Day

To all who celebrate, Happy First Contact Day [FCD].

FCD is, of course, the holiday honoring "first contact" between humans and an alien species (the Vulcans) on April 5, 2063. The day also memorializes the historic first warp-speed flight of the Phoenix spacecraft which, as all schoolchildren know, caught the attention of Vulcans flying nearby and led them to land and say hello. 

First Contact paved the way for later formation of the United Federation of Planets.

Live long and prosper. 🙂

Dark Side of the Moon

The Artemis II space-craft will circle the Moon and see its "dark side" -- including areas never seen before by humans. I'm curious what we might find there.

My guess is a restaurant so good that aliens have kept its existence a secret to prevent the place from becoming too popular. 

Failed Experiment

When we're young we experiment with alternate selves, looking for one that fits.

I once donned a carapace of bad-boy bravado (shown above). It felt ridiculous and I quickly abandoned it. But we don't learn without making mistakes.

Kurt Vonnegut

I've discovered it's fun to circle back to our youth and explore things we enjoyed then in greater depth. Like re-watching old TV shows or reading books by favorite authors.

When I was a teenager I read a few Kurt Vonnegut novels. He was very popular then. I liked "Cat's Cradle", "Slaughterhouse Five" and a few others. But Vonnegut was exceptionally prolific: he wrote fourteen novels, three short-story collections, five plays and five non-fiction books. There's a lot in his literary oeuvre I haven't touched. 

I'm heading over there now. Any suggestions? Did you like any of his books?

Cerebration

Words are like cars: they work better when you use them. And, like cars, they can transport us to new destinations. 

My fleet of words are driving me to noetic insights. And I'm learning which parkway exits to take for that knowledge.

Most of my life my equable demeanor concealed a roiling cauldron of fiery emotion. Now, however, as I approach a new town called Serenity, I'm surprised to find beatific smiles on my face that I didn't put there. Mind you, I'm not complaining, just surprised.

A basic problem, it seems, is that humans develop perceptual and conceptual ruts in our thinking as we grow into adulthood. Children don't have this problem: they still view the world with open eyes, unhindered by expectation. But the self we create growing up conquers our consciousness. It hides as much reality from us as it allows to pass through. Adult brains "see" what they expect, not what actually is. This is why most people find it urgent to quickly label and put things in known boxes. Reflexive "non-thinking" diminishes our understanding and our discourse.

I'm learning that it's possible to reduce mental blindness by removing ego from our consciousness. Ironic certainly to hear this from a literally-blind person but the point is true. We can open our minds with various techniques, the most salient of which is becoming aware of our limitations.