For the next several weeks, we will be discussing Aldous Huxley’s utopian final novel, Island (click here for all posts on the book). As our discussion of the book unfolds, I will be referencing and, in many cases, agreeing with Huxley’s critique of modern culture.

I want to be clear that I do not mean to dismiss the progress we have made over the years. Certainly, we have come a long way. At the same time, we have a long way still to go. Part of the reason for looking into this book in detail is that it shows pathways we might travel to get to a future in which humans live more fully, happily, and harmoniously.

Island begins with Will Farnaby, an embittered, cynical, yet quite charming journalist, wrecked in the forest of the “forbidden island of Pala.” Pala is not so much forbidden as difficult to reach, but he has crashed his boat into it, climbed up a cliff in a rainstorm, fallen after being frightened by snakes, and climbed back up again.

Birds trained to say “Attention!” and “Here and now, boys!” deliver their lines repeatedly, while he is trapped in a fever dream of regret. His adultery, his wife’s car accident and subsequent death, and his own guilt play themselves over and over while he lies injured on the ground.

Two children find him, and from this, the book’s first moment of engagement, we see the fundamental beliefs about humanity embodied by each culture. Will is less than whole, distracted, lost in past horrors. He is, as he says himself later in the book, “the man who can’t take Yes for an answer.”

By contrast the children are “beautiful, faultless, extraordinarily elegant,” “little thoroughbreds.” They see and react to the world as it is in reality, with compassion and good sense.

From this first moment, we can clearly tell that Palanese culture sees and treats humans as inherently good, capable, and strong—not without fault, of course, but without original sin. Will’s culture, on the other hand, sees humans as fatally flawed, incapable of living peaceably with each other or within themselves.

To me, this is one of the fundamental points of the book—that how we see ourselves sets up the way we see the world and each other. When we are wracked with guilt and worry, the world is unfriendly and cold. When we burst with positivity, the world is full of possibility.

This is directly observable by any of us. Think of the last day in your life when something went wrong early on and you got into a bad mood—maybe your car didn’t start, or you were out of milk for your coffee, or you heard that someone you love is suffering. Contrast this to the last sunny Saturday when you leapt out of bed with something exciting to do. Was the world itself fundamentally any different on those two days?

Hardly. It was all your mindset. Huxley believes, and I completely agree, that the mindset most of us have in this culture is self-defeating.

Should we put our blinders on when we look at problems? Should we blithely pull a Pollyanna when faced with adversity? No. What I’m talking about is a deeper orientation. We are here on planet Earth; crazy stuff happens all the time. And yet we are surrounded by beauty. Even on mornings when our cars won’t start, even when our friends are sick, even when we are suffering, still, thousands of things are going right. Why focus so intensely on what goes wrong? Is our idea of life as full of struggle and negativity “real”? Huxley proposes that it is not; it’s merely a bad habit we have, passed on through the generations.

This is not an idealistic point of view. On the contrary, this point of view is extremely pragmatic. A positive orientation towards life makes all of life—even the scary parts—easier to handle. Moreover, such an outlook strengthens our bonds, so that we can support rather than injure one another. Life is unpredictable enough. Do we need to create our own misery on top of that?

As it unfolds, Island explores what a fundamentally positive, pragmatic approach to life looks like in action, in detail. When I read and contemplate it, I find myself wondering, how different would I be were I raised in such an environment: one in which conflict is handled decently and humanely, where shame and punishment are replaced by learning and reconciliation?

How different would we all be?

What do you think?