'Island' by Aldous Huxley
'Island' by Aldous Huxley

The good

  • Whereas Brave New World shows us a dystopian society, this book focuses on what a utopian society could look like. The juxtaposition between the two novels is fascinating: e.g., group living in the former to eliminate individuality vs group living in the latter to prevent children being overly exposed to the neuroses of a single set of parents.

  • Some interesting ideas and concepts: e.g., the focus on all aspects of being a human (mental, physical, spirtual, sexual, etc) as the key to being a healthy and whole human, focusing on the here & now, living in the moment, meditation, mutual adoption clubs, directly confronting suffering/death rather than avoiding it, embracing nature rather than avoiding it, and so on. There were also a few interesting tidbits about dealing with problematic members of society early on to prevent them from turning into monsters (e.g., think of Adolf Hitler), and also how a certain percentage of society are easily “hypnotized” by such monsters, obediently following these leaders, and totally blind to reality (this part made me shudder as I looked around to see 70M+ people vote for Donald Trump).

The not so good

  • In elementary school, my English teacher taught me, “show, don’t tell.” This book is, in every way, the opposite: at times, it feels like an endless monologue that tells you about the utopian society, rather than letting you live in it and see it play out. Even though I personally find some of the themes of the book deeply interesting, I often found myself bored and irritated, as it felt like I was being lectured, with some character droning on and on and on about how wonderful this utopian society was, how much more clever and enlightened they were than everyone else, about how stupid and primitive and childish Western society was, and so on. It was borderline intolerable at times, and I really struggled to force myself to finish reading.

  • Many of the ideas seem naive or impractical or to go entirely against human nature. I think Huxley is a little too enamored with Buddhism, psychedelic drugs, communes, and doesn’t give nearly enough credit to the power of families, genetics, and tragedy of the commons. I was rolling my eyes often during this book, even when reading about parts I agreed with, as it just felt, well, a bit too utopian: or more specifically, impractical, beyond the tiny scale of a single village or commune, and therefore, unrealistic and not useful in the real world.

Rating: 2 stars