Island (novel)
Island (ISBN 0060085495) is a novel by Aldous Huxley that was first published in 1962. It is the fictional account of Will Farnaby, a cynical journalist and would-be poet who is shipwrecked on the fictional island of Pala. Island is Huxley's utopian foil to his dystopian Brave New World. Common background elements will be used for good in the former and for ill in the latter. Such elements include:
- Drug use for enlightenment, and self-knowledge for pacification
- Group living for children (Mutual Adoption Clubs) so that children would not have unalloyed exposure to their parents' neuroses. For elimination of individuality.
- Trance states, super learning, indoctrination
- Easy access to contraception, expressive sex, meaningless sex
Island can be considered a more intelligent and circumspect manifestation of the New Age Movement. The culture of Pala is the offspring of a Scottish Secular Humanist medical doctor and the island's existing Buddhist tradition. This novel has served as the inspiration for the Island Foundation, a non-profit corporation "dedicated to the creation of a psychedelic culture."
Pala appears to be a reference to Pali, the language of the scriptures of Theravada Buddhism. Theravada is the Buddhism most akin to Secular Humanism.