In the book, Island, by Aldous Huxley, a distinct philosophy of life is presented by the author and is manifested in the culture of the island of Pala. In this culture, science has helped to propel the inhabitants of the island to a better life. But is it a better life?
This paper will discuss the pros and cons of the life on Pala in the areas of education, religion, dying, and self-actualization for every person. The methods of self actualization will be presented here and compared with methods of Western culture. A conclusion about which culture best allows a person a life of self-actualization, Western or Pala, will be drawn.
In Island, Western culture and the culture of the utopian Pala come into direct conflict when newspaper reporter Will Farnaby from England is shipwrecked and thrown onto the island. The island has never been visited by a reporter, and this shows how much the island has been cut off from the rest of the world. Its philosophical ideals have been put into practice by now for more than 100 years.
The people of Pala believe in a different type of schooling than Westerners do. They believe that school is not only for learning specific thoughts but also for learning with one's whole being, in a very broad context. This is exemplified by the nurse Radha's explanation of the way she was taught medicine: "Whether it's prevention or whether it's cure, we attack on all the fronts at once. All the fronts, from diet to auto-suggestion, from negative ions to meditation."
Radha observes that Western medicine is more apt to step in during a crisis which it is great at doing than trying to prevent a health crisis in the first place. She does not understand this. If people don't take care of all aspects of their bodies, how can they expect to be healthy?
Radha also states that Western psychologists do not seem concerned with the physical side of a person's being, but only with the psyche (which is th...