Aldous Huxley

Who he was: Aldous Huxley was known for his satire and fueled his book Brave New World with irony. Huxley wrote the book in 1931 while still living in Italy before moving to the United States in 1937. He had already published four other satirical novels entitled Crome Yellow (1921), Antic Hay (1923), Those Barren Leaves (1925), Point Counter Point (1928) and After Many a Summer (1939).

Brave New World is renowned for its insights into the future of an industrialized world. Electricity and machinery replace a world of calloused hands and animal drawn plows. The days of woodburning hearths and homemade bread were on the wane, and Huxley believed that he could see a future where man was no longer a necessary component within the framework of his own life. The book was both a warning and a prophecy: In the future, most humans would be totally controlled by government.

Huxley wrote a variety of magazine articles beginning in his early twenties, and had become known in the United States before he fully made his entrance onto the Hollywood scene. Brave New World was his fifth book. He spent close to a year in the United States prior to putting pen to paper, so that he might understand how the Industrial Revolution was affecting a younger, newer and freer, yet already more promiscuous nation. Finally, Huxley moved to Los Angeles in 1937 where his fame quickly followed him. He wrote poetry and later wrote screenplays for the film industry.

Huxley, with his first wife, Maria, and son, Matthew, moved to Hollywood where he was under contract for several screenplays. He lived out the remainder of his life in Southern California, with only a short stay in Taos, New Mexico, where he wrote Ends and Means (1937). The book explored peace, justice and the wishes of the American people. Yet Huxley drew the conclusion that mankind does not know how to attain those ideals. It was in Taos that he further pursued metaphysics and practiced meditation. Huxley was known to take psychedelic drugs and in every way, he was an extremely spiritual pacifist.

There is a good deal of suspicion that Huxley knew more than he let on in the writing of Brave New World. He moved in elite circles, was a Fabian socialist and likely believed in the scenario set forth in the book. There is evidence that Huxley's family was connected to Anglosphere elites.

It is possible that people like Huxley and George Orwell (Animal Farm) were both employed by the elites of the day to write these kinds of books. What is familiar seems less dangerous than what is not. What appear to be exposés are actually intended as a kind of mind control, familiarizing people with what is to come. Orwell was a student of Huxley's.

Background: Aldous Huxley was born on the 26th of July 1894 in Godalming, Surrey, England. His father was a writer and a schoolmaster, and his mother and father together founded Prior's Field School in England. Huxley's grandfather was a brilliant scientist who emphasized the relatively new field of zoology. Two of Huxley's brothers became biologists; another killed himself after years of struggling with depression.

Huxley began his studies in his father's laboratory. He then went to the Hillside School where his mother supervised his education. His mother and mentor died in 1908. Huxley later went on to Eton College. When Huxley was 17, he suffered from an illness that left him mostly blind for several years. When he had essentially recovered from this siege of blindness, Huxley was able to study English literature at Balliol College at Oxford.

For a short period of time, Huxley taught French at Eton College where he encountered a student by the name of George Orwell. Most of Huxley's students thought that he was undisciplined and rather incompetent, but George Orwell very much appreciated the utterances of Aldous Huxley and was impressed with his special use of words.

On his deathbed in November of 1963, Huxley was administered 100 micrograms of LSD twice. He died at 5:20 pm, several hours after President John F. Kennedy was assassinated.

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