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This month on Film, Literature and the New World Order we’re joined by Will Morgan of The Sync Book to discuss Aldous Huxley’s final novel, Island. A philosophical exploration of Huxley’s imagined utopia, Island raises the question of what paradise looks like and how it can be achieved. Join James and Will for this exploration of the subject from two different viewpoints and discover more about Huxley’s most overlooked work.
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SHOW NOTES
The Sync Book 42 Minutes podcast
1984: Warning or Conditioning? – Questions For Corbett #012
Aldous Huxley’s LSD Death Trip
Next month: Charlie Wilson’s War
Lecture by Huxley relevant to the question of his motives and influence.
http://www.gnosticmedia.com/rbn-gnostic-media-radio-003-aldous-huxley-the-ultimate-revolution-7012015/
A girl I know who’s actually able to cure temporarily my nerve damage at the left temple area of my brain is big into magic, white, grey, black, it’s just like hackers, except most of it is crap..lol. Anyway what she’s doing is something James must know about, it’s Japanese hand healing “Reiki” or such, and I was skeptical but it worked, she said I was extremely receptive but it was during our younger crazy days and we were on shrooms, whether you believe in DMT (or the derivative of DMT found in shrooms 4-hydroxy-DMT) is another matter.
She was very attractive too so I said ok I’ll put my head on your lap and do your thing and I could feel something from her hands and my nerve and articulation of the jaw there is also damaged and when she would end it, she sort of pulled out the “pain” right from my left ear, I could even hear a pop.
Then she told me that she was into gnosticism and never really checked it out until one day she had me do a questionnaire (while sober and just the 2 of us) and she told me that although I consider myself agnostic, as in, well you people here know what it means, that I also had strong beliefs that humans if they don’t do something rapidly, something all non-psychopaths need to do to keep living on this miracle of a planet, but that our chances are slim and that I always knew that deep inside of me, the music (hard to get more truth music than hardcore punk, melodic hardcore punk (Bad Religion, Propagandhi even more) are examples and even some thrash metal lays it all and I was attracted by the ideas proposed in such 80’s and 90’s bands (some continued into the 2000’s but these are the legends normally).
All this to say, I know that Gnostics were a sect of Christianism, there a lot of different sects of christianisms during the end of the roman empire and the dark arges, I know that Gnostics were all killed by so-called better than thou Christians so yeah…I need to listen to this.
You wont find out anything about the Gnostics in that link. Its all Huxley in his own words saying many things that are very shocking and telling.
I’ve been in to Punk since I was 13 in 99’/00′ and I like tons of bands of all the sub genres weather I agree with them or not. Punk largely got me into truth and all that, from bands like Leftover Crack calling out 911 right off the bat, to Against All Authority lyrics,or Dick from Subhumans talking in interviews about Bohemian Grove and all kind of stuff, so much I’ve gotten out of some bands and punx and I’m glad but there is a lot of bands and musicians full of crap and are promoting the bs political agendas and the left right illusions…. I sort of put Bad Religion in that category, their music is ok to me, more so earlier stuff, I’ll be seeing them in October actually (@ a fest) and I’m glad to have the perspective of a lot of these bands but like I say so many are full of it.
Try reading Greg’s book, Anarchy Evolution…you might have a distorted view of what they’re about, maybe their first early 80’s output were like you say, but they were 16. Speaking of Greg Graffin, the singer of BR. He’s a PhD in Animal Biology and Archeology, so yeah, you might think he thinks of himself as smarter than all of LA combined but nope, he’s funny live still at his age (53 now?). And get a good listen to the whole album Against The Grain, which is their best one when it comes to politics, No Control and Suffer are close, it’s the unholy trinity of their awesome 88-89-90 streak of albums, the third ATG being quite something. They’re more genuine than supposed anarchists like Anti-Flag, and they have a dude from Minor Threat in the band since 96..there’s only one album to ignore by them, No Substance in 98…they play no songs from it yet play songs from all other albums, The New America in 2000 is a bit slow and it was time they changed drummer in the awesome The Process of Belief in 2002. When there’s a song where the chorus is “why do you lie?” and explaining it purely physical manners that it just causes chaos in your brain…back then on their old website he even had a short dissertation on that whole song “The Lie”. They’re totally unconcerned by politics in the way they exist in the USA meaning that, just take a bit of these lyrics from Entropy on Against The Grain :
Random blobs of power expressed as that which we all disregard
Ordered states of nature on a scale which no one thinks about
Don’t speak to me of anarchy or peace of calm revolt, man
We’re in a play of slow decay orchestrated by Boltzmann
It’s entropy, it’s not a human issue
Entropy, it’s matter of course
Entropy, energy at all levels
Entropy, from it you can not divorce
>>>And your pathetic moans of suffrage tend to lose all significance
Extinction, degradation; the natural outcomes of our ordered lives
Power, motivation; temporary fixtures for which we strive
Something in our synapses assures us we’re okay
But in our disequilibrium we simply can not stay
It’s entropy, it’s not a human issue
Entropy, it’s matter of course
Entropy, energy at all levels
Entropy, from it you cannot divorce
A stolid proposition from a man unkempt as I
My affectatious nature I can not rectify
But we are out of equilibrium unnaturally
A pang of consciousness at death and then you will agree.
It’s entropy…
Entropy, it’s matter of course
Entropy, energy at all levels
Entropy, from it you cannot divorce
Entropy
Entropy
Entropy
Entropy
—–
So yeah, not lefties. There’s 2 lyrics and music writers in the band, this is obviously a Greg song, Brett’s tend to be more personal and even metaphysic “Generator”…not sure what its about yet since 1992. So give the only old school real punk band left (with Agnostic Front who also had a great album this year “The American Dream Died”, quite something from a band that at some times was composed of mostly skinheads (real ones not the wannabe nazi skins).
And Canada’s Pride Propagandhi isn’t buying into actually voting since their first album in 93. And hell, listen to some Dead Kennedys, especially Plastic Surgery Disasters and Frankenchrist….he was that outraged (Jello) in 82 and the lyrics fit our times even more.
OK guys, as fascinating as all of this is I think we’ll have to view any more back and forth about 80s punk rock bands as officially off topic on this post. Perhaps you’d prefer the Truth Music thread?
https://www.corbettreport.com/truth-music-summer-2015/
Sure, no problem, I actually commented on the podcast though, I’m currently listening to it.
yea I agree kind of off topic!
…I meant, so you will likely be able to give them credit cos it is due. Plus no band has harmonies like them, maybe old Pennywise when the bassist who wrote all the songs was there, shot himself in 96 and the album following his death is one of the best but after that…they should have stuck to making EP’s like Paint It Black do, Jason was one hell of a song writer.
Also relating to the podcast, I laughed at James’ “spend the rest of his existance in this state of LSDiness”. We call that ego death James 😉 When chairs and grass and the breathing walls are as one with your now dissolved ego and even your own body looks alien. It’s my favourite part of a real good LSD trip when you become sort of a fly on the wall if in a room, although I say, when coming down and it is sunny outside, you have to go. I think the japanese, at least, some when Raving was popular, did not do MDMA but shrooms as they are easily found in Japan, not surprising, every islands tend to have them, but I know James seems a bit afraid of these things, even if natural (LSD is practically natural, when only a semi-synthesis is required to obtain it and natural alkaloids found in seeds of 2 plants at least, but probably more, we surely have not found out all plants and submarine plants in this world yet, it wouldn’t be surprising LSD happens to be natural, when LSA and other lysergamides are, all migraine medication is based on ergot pretty much, at least the tryptans and ergotamine tartrate (my grandma was taking that, it was ergotamine tartrate and caffeine in the same pill). They phased it out completely in the beginning of the 2000’s because ergotamine tartrate is the precursor needed to make LSD.
Very strange this dude died when JFK died…what was he sick from? If it’s something that rarely kills, he must have had something else in the syringe, maybe not wanting to live in the post-JFK assassination world and I didn’t catch the third name you said who died on the same day…I’m practically bilingual but this name sorts of flies away past my frontal cortex into nothingness even with headphones ;p
I believe Huxley had cancer and was on his last legs at the time of the LSD
I know many of there songs and albums I get it, never been a big fan but there is def a lot of bs to filter through with many punk bands, and even if there is some truth there still can be other things at hand, but anyway that Aldous Huxley! haha
oops that was supposed to be a reply to notdole
Thank you, JC & Will. Having just re-read BNW and read Island (for the first time) in 2020, this conversation was fascinating. Taking the proverbial time machine back to your earlier works is one of my most beneficial www occupations. Continuing gratitude.
It’s amazing going back isn’t it? All the BR fans lol