A POEM to PONDER 2012 State of our Culture by Aldous Huxley

This short dramatic presentation talks about the IDEAS used against us... that the origins were, in the days, of Aldous Huxley. His work, especially his most renowned and often controversial novel, Brave New World, has served as a form of social critique to the ills of the current era. Huxley also enjoyed a successful career as a screenwriter and became an influential figure in American counterculture. Aldous Huxley was a polarizing figure who was both hailed as an emancipator of the modern mind and condemned as an irresponsible free-thinker and an erudite showoff. Rock group The Doors, whose front man Jim Morrison was an enthusiastic drug user, owes its name to Huxley’s book The Doors of Perception.

Huxley died on November 22, 1963, hours after the assassination of president John F. Kennedy. Both deaths, unwittingly, heralded the rise of counterculture, where conformity and belief in the government were questioned.