Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. -- Aldous Huxley
Facts certainly don't cease to exist just because they are ignored, and the fact is, I am now on day 75 of my 30 Authors in Thirty Days project. I offer no apologies. Ye, I plug on. Blogging is my hobby, not my job, and I am thankful for it. It's sports writer syndrome. You may love it, but when you have to do it, you end up hating it. But I digress. On to Aldous Huxley.
Aldous Huxley is best known for his utopian masterpiece, A Brave New World. Huxley's utopia ain't what it's cracked up to be. Genetic and pharmaceutical engineering is the machinery that keeps society moving. People are born in test tubes into several classes which are genetically engineered to fill different roles in society. They are controlled by soma, a mind altering drug that causes them to be happy consumers, while taking part in hapless, recreational sex as a pastime. (All reproduction is done in laboratories.) So in a way, it is a utopia -- life is pleasurable, there is no war, no poverty, no crime, but the utopia is only on the surface. In such a brave new sterile world, they miss the very things that make us human: love, art, family, religion, the self. In short, culture.
Aldous Huxley himself is as interesting as his writing. Late in his life Huxley became interested in mysticism and enlightenment. He experimented with mind altering drugs such as peyote and mescaline, and ultimately began experimenting with LSD. He thought that LSD in particular could lead man towards enlightenment. As Huxley lay dying in the early sixties, he asked for a dosage of 100 micrograms of LSD. He died peacefully several hours after he took the drug. LSD was legal at the time.