We must not attempt to live outside the world, which is given us, but we must somehow learn how to transform it and transfigure it. Too much “wisdom” is as bad as too little wisdom, and there must be no magic tricks. We must learn to come to reality without the enchanter’s wand and his book of the words. One must find a way of being in this world while not being of it. A way of living in time without being completely swallowed up in time.
“
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Aldous Huxley’s last words [as written next to deathbed] (via thefagartist)
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In the course of evolution nature has gone to endless trouble to see that every individual is unlike every other individual… Physically and mentally, each one of us is unique. Any culture which, in the interests of efficiency or in the name of some political or religious dogma, seeks to standardize the human individual, commits an outrage against man’s biological nature.
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Savage: But I like the inconveniences.
Controller: We don't, we prefer to do things comfortably.
Savage: But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.
Controller: In fact, you're claiming the right to be unhappy.
Savage: All right then, I'm claiming the right to be unhappy.
Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are dead.
Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the over-compensations for misery. And, of course, stability isn’t nearly so spectacular as instability. And being contented has none of the glamour of a good fight against misfortune, none of the picturesqueness of a struggle with temptation, or a fatal overthrow by passion or doubt. Happiness is never grand.
All gods are homemade, and it is we who pull their strings, and so, give them the power to pull ours.
And that, that is the secret of happiness and virtue - liking what you’ve got to do. All conditioning aims at that: making people like their unescapable social destiny.
amodernmanifesto:
aisle7:
Amusing Ourselves to Death by Stuart McMillen (May 2009)
Aldous Huxley (Author: “Brave New World”) vs. George Orwell (Author: Nineteen Eighty-Four)
What they never imagined is that both would happen simultaneously…
During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.
- George Orwell
All gods are homemade, and it is we who pull their strings, and so, give them the power to pull ours.
-Aldous Huxley
But I don’t want comfort.
I want poetry. I want danger. I want freedom.
I want goodness. I want sin.
