Do You Feel Lucky?

(and feel free to comment! My older posts are certainly no less relevant to the burning concerns of the day.)

Thursday, March 03, 2011

YES Aldous Huxley! You SAID it, Aldous Huxley!

"Within the realms of science, art and philosophy the workings of what I may call this 'Will to Order' are mainly beneficent. True, the Will to Order has produced many premature syntheses based upon insufficient evidence, many absurd systems of metaphysics and theology, much pedantic mistaking of notions for realities, of symbols and abstractions for the data of immediate experience. But these errors, however regrettable, do not do much harm, at any rate directly — though it sometimes happens that a bad philosophical system may do harm indirectly, by being used as a justification for senseless and inhuman actions. It is in the social sphere, in the realm of politics and economics, that the Will to Order becomes really dangerous.

Here the theoretical reduction of unmanageable multiplicity to comprehensible unity becomes the practical reduction of human diversity to subhuman uniformity, of freedom to servitude. In politics the equivalent of a fully developed scientific theory or philosophical system is a totalitarian dictatorship. In economics, the equivalent of a beautifully composed work of art is the smoothly running factory in which the workers are perfectly adjusted to the machines. The Will to Order can make tyrants out of those who merely aspire to clear up a mess. The beauty of tidiness is used as a justification for despotism.

- Aldous Huxley


But then, especially after that big buildup in the Title of the post, I'm sure you knew who said that.

5 comments:

Pearl said...

One of my favorite authors/thinkers...

Pearl

dogimo said...

THANK YOU, Pearl! Thank you!

Oh my god! Wow.

Best start to a day ever. Um, to a work-day. Um. Okay. Disqualifying kinky stuff, needless to say.

dogimo said...

Oh wait.

Shoot.

Damn you, Aldous Huxley.

kourtney said...

I presume your last comment was referring to Aldous's quote:

"An intellectual is a person who has discovered something more interesting than sex."

(I must not be very intellectual).

k.

dogimo said...

No, I just thought at first Pearl meant me. I was like, man - I saw the comment and took it and ran with it and didn't even consider the post itself!

I mean, there's not really much of my writing in this post. It's got the good stuff.

I did always think that quote was kind of funny, though! Coming from him especially, but very funny no matter what.