For the next several weeks, we will be discussing Aldous Huxley’s Island. Click here for all the book club posts.

Like many people, lately I’ve been a little obsessed with the results of the presidential election. Every time I hear the words “President Elect Obama,” I get a thrill up my spine. Possibility is in the air; I can feel it and it seems like lots of other people can, too. It is with this electric sense that now is the time when we can make things happen that I turn my attention back to Pala, the practical, functional society of Aldous Huxley’s Island.

When we last discussed the book, we talked about the Palanese conception of family, and how a diversified family structure allows children to grow up in a world of options. In the next chapter (chapter 8), Will asks to spend a little more time in Pala, to learn about all the options which are part of the Palanese way of life, and Dr. MacPhail decides to allow him to stay for a month, even though he works for an oil man’s newspaper and oil companies have been trying to make destructive inroads into Pala.

“When in doubt,” said Dr. Robert, “always act on the assumption that people are more honorable than you have any solid reason for supposing they are.” Reading this phrase, I couldn’t help but think of the way President Elect Obama ran his campaign, appealing to the better angels of our nature and a desire to create a better world. Who would have thought that so many Americans would respond to this hopeful message?

After years of culture war politics-as-usual, I had been half afraid to bring up big ideas in mixed company. Sometimes it seemed as though conversation might be impossible in the heavily rutted political field—instead of connecting, we often seemed to get stuck in the ruts of polarized thinking, spinning our wheels and grinding our gears. But since last Tuesday, I feel no hesitation in asking people what they think. It feels like that rutted field doesn’t exist any more—or, perhaps, through Obama’s election,  we’ve started to rise above it.

Huxley talks a great deal about the ruts of ideology and religion, and how dangerous it is to build a society on this uneven ground. When people are connected to strict ideas instead of each other, cultures lose flexibility and find themselves locked into destructive patterns. In contrast, Pala is built on relationships between people, and ultimately on the relationship each person has to herself and to life itself.

Dr. Robert shares the story of how his great-grandfather Dr. Andrew MacPhail and the Old Raja became friends and started reforming Pala. Dr. Andrew had been practicing medicine in Asia for several years when he heard that the Raja of Pala was deathly ill and needed help. He arrived on the island to find the Raja consumed by a massive brain tumor.

Although he had little in the way of anesthetics or disinfectants, Dr. Andrew was moved by the Raja’s pleas for help. He decided to try an experimental procedure he’d read about some years before, in which a patient was anesthetized by putting him into a trance. For several weeks, Dr. Andrew fed the Raja up and, in between meals, kept him in a trance to allow his body to get a little stronger.

He also used the trance state to rehearse the surgery with the Raja, taking him through every bit of the procedure and telling him how it would feel and how his body would respond.

Ultimately, the surgery was a success and the Raja recovered fully. More importantly, Dr. Andrew and the Raja became friends who were convinced that the impossible could in fact be made possible. If Dr. Andrew could perform this incredible, implausible surgery and the Raja could come back from the brink of certain death, what else could they achieve? They dedicated their lives to finding out.

Right now, I feel as though America is where Pala was at that moment—full of possibility and energy and faith in ourselves. If the American people can look beyond what we think has divided us and instead focus on what we share ... if we can give up fighting and take up discussion ... if we can stop scrabbling in mudslinging and instead look up to an integral man with a great mind and ask him to lead us into a new way of living ... what else can we do?

Right now, the sky is the limit. Injustice and cynicism are not inevitable—they are choices we make. Last week, Americans proved that we are a capable of making different choices and backing them up with action. We’ve jumped to the next level, and now we must remember the stunned, happy glow that has illuminated the country for the last week as we do the work of making that level real, stable, and tangible in our lives.