ARTICLE 1
Many Utopian visionaries speculate that the reorganization of a single mode of human interaction is the key to unlocking the gates of paradise on Earth. One dominant institution, they suggest, exerts the great dystopic force that prevents humanity from achieving its full potential. Opinions differ on which specific institution requires reengineering. Some identify politics, others economics, still others a sociological construct such as gender relations. What ever is chosen, the proponent contends that reforming it will reorder the structure of human society and thus produce a utopian civilization. In contrast, Aldous Huxley suggests that the principle dystopic force preventing humanity from achieving its full potential is each individual’s own lack of self awareness and self knowledge. The path to utopia that Huxley describes in Island (Harper & Row, 1962) is "… the road that leads towards happiness from the inside out, through health, through awareness, through a change in one’s attitude towards the world".

Huxley’s Island, the virtually inaccessible Pacific nation of Pala, is the product of over a century of enlightened guidance. One hundred and twenty years earlier, in a proactive move to shield Pala from the woes of encroaching industrial civilization, Pala’s Raja and his Scottish physician-advisor embarked on a great plan. By combining the best offered from their diverse traditions in Tantric Mahayana Buddhism and scientific experimental method, the two men set out to build a society that would foster the spiritual enlightenment and well being of all Palanese. Recognizing that "Public health and social reform are the indispensable preconditions of any kind of general enlightenment," they took a holistic approach to reform that devoted as much attention to the physical needs of Pala as to its mental and spiritual aspects.

The great plan has yielded bounteous results by the opening of Island when Will Farnaby, a cynical reporter investigating the neighboring military regime, is shipwrecked on Pala’s shores. In contrast with its industrialized, militarized, 95% poverty stricken neighbors, the Palanese are educated people, enjoying good health, long life, and well being in a relatively undeveloped, and thus undespoiled, tropical paradise. "We’ve never allowed ourselves to produce more children than we could feed, clothe, house, and educate into something like full humanity," states one of the current Palanese generation. What the Palanese mean by full humanity is what Huxley most explores in Island, through theoretical discussions of the nature of perception, and the dawning self-awareness of Will Farnaby, contrapuntal representative of the outside world. Increasing self awareness, increasing attention to the here and now, increasing sensitivity to the internal and external functioning of the universe. This is the prescription that Aldous Huxley writes for "the twentieth-century plague; not the Black Death, this time; the Gray Life," that is devastating modern society.

In many respects Island is a companion piece to Huxley’s previous novel Brave New World. In both novels Huxley postulates social engineering through the application of science-based techniques; birth control, eugenics, hypnosis, perception-altering drugs, the early conditioning of children. However, while Brave New World describes social engineering and scientific method employed in the pacification and control of citizens, Island describes the same capabilities devoted to stimulating citizens towards ever greater self-actualization and personal freedom.

Island, the utopic antithesis of the numbed and desensitized Brave New World future, characterizes Huxley’s ideal of living with an exquisite awareness of life. And yet life is uncertainty, life is pain, and the only guarantee at birth is that the ultimate destination is death. Island, like life (and unlike most typical utopian novels), contains many tragic elements. Any utopic ideal that depends upon the disruption of this fundamental truth, Huxley seems to suggest, is no more than mere fantasy. It is each individual’s response to life, in all its aspects, that creates our personal utopias and dystopias. In the end, Utopia is a state of mind.
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