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Missive #435

The Human Situation is a collection of lectures delivered by Huxley at [University of California] Santa Barbara in 1959. The topics covered range from the nature of man to the foundations of language, with discourses on religion and nationalism thrown in for good measure.These lectures were given to a university audience so Huxley used a language they could understand versus his usual elitist essay language. I could understand them much better and found them to be an enjoyable read. Huxley brings his penetrating and prescient insights to bear on his topics, addressing them not as universal truths to be uncovered but rather as open questions to be examined from all angles. Of particular interest is his treatment of the ancient links between mysticism (‘the religion of immediate experience’) and mainstream Christian denominationalism (‘religion as the manipulation of symbols’). The Human Situation stands on its own merits as a well-written, accessible text on issues that, even today, have broad impacts on public policy, human health, and social order. This book also serves as a useful primer or jumping-off point for further forays into philosophy, religion, and the life of the individual in modern times. — Customer review @ Amazon

Here Dr. Harrison Brown has posed a question: What likelihood is there of man’s being able to make the transition from an industrial life based upon rich ores to an industrial life based upon the poorest ores, a transition that will require an incredible amount of ingenuity and skill? Dr. Brown, like Bertrand Russell, offers three alternatives. One is that we will succeed in making the transition, but that we shall then have a world-wide industrial civilization completely controlled by a totalitarian authority. The second possibility is that the transition will be made and that we shall then have a world-wide free industrial society devoted to the full development of human beings; but this alternative, while obviously the most desirable, is extremely difficult both to achieve and to maintain. The third possibility, which Dr. Brown thinks the most probable of the three, is that within the next thousand years or so, provided we escape war, we shall find ourselves gradually reverting to the agrarian state.— Harrison Brown’s Challenge of Man’s Future

In fact, what historians describe as history is simply those aspects of the past which, according to their own philosophy of life, they regard as particularly important and significant. But what is brought home very clearly is that what we live through subjectively is very far from being the essence of history as perceived by the historians of a future time.

LAW OF CONSPIRACY: When there is a contradiction between the official story reported by the mainstream media that exculpates government officials, large corporations, and public figures and an alternative explanation for the same event, the alternative explanation is always and inevitably closer to the truth.

YES, so far so good!

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