Enlightenment Vision of Humankind Experiments - Essay Example

Enlightenment Vision of Humankind Experiments TA’s Enlightenment Vision of Humankind Experiments In this essay, I will arguefor the Huxley’s enlightenment vision for humankind and strongly support his conclusion on possibility of an alpha society as well as free society given enlightenment. According to Huxley, enlightenment (see the light) entails the ability of an individual to recognize and determine the truthfulness presented by a particular phenomenon based on the understanding of the BNW’ logic. In addition, enlightenment calls for a rationally thinker to identify and recognize falsehood presented by a particular situation driving by the ability of an individual to recognize his own conditioning. With respect to the Brave New World, Huxley illustrates how individuals and systemic achieve enlightenment. With respect to Systemic enlightenment, freedom of delta is the centerpiece but it faces system failure (Huxley, 2006, p. 11). The successful enlightenment is based on individuals’ self-realization. Several options are attached to a particular enlightenment take such as through; alienation, travel, love, and intelligence. Huxley thus attaches alienation based on sense of apartness, individualism based on dislike group and being rejected by group, sense of an option, superior intelligence and education based on liberal arts as the framework for enlightenment. Besides, alphas and men are rated as those capable of being enlightened with masses and futility to system alteration seen as cohorts incapable of enlightenment. With respect to the ‘The Cyprus Experiment’, the underlying question asked here is, ‘How can a society attain an alpha individuals?” This was based on the need to investigate the possibility of having a better society where all individual establish faculties rated as Alpha. The experiment is focused on a society of Alpha who are capable of being enlightened. It focuses on the realization of potentiality of humankind driven by universal and equitable education for every humankind in the society. This question is driven by the vision to attain a society of Alphas through realization of human potential, ensuring equity and universal education and intelligence for all individuals, weeding out class struggle and civil wars as well uprooting conflicts with logic productions. The vison of the Cyprus experience is in line with the entire Huxley’s vision of determining ‘who is capable of enlightenment’? The vision of Huxley’s two experiment is to showcase who exactly within the population is capable of being enlightened (Huxley, 2006, p. 17). He attaches alphas and men as the only cohorts that can receive enlightenment. Masses are rated incapable of being enlightened based on their futility to accept system change. Despite his vision of attaining an all alpha society for the societal members, failure crops in based on confrontation with the logic of production. Besides, existence of Menial jobs such as Epsilon and Delta-level persist presenting daunting challenges to achievement of alpha society. In addition, social class battles as well as civil war continue to pose threats towards the achievement of the alpha society. In the second experiment ‘Ireland Experiment’ the overarching question asked is, ‘What is a free society” The overarching questions asked here is whether it is possible to achieve a society of leisure. This follows attainment of freedom based on the liberation of individual from the overwhelming societal constraints. It aimed at answering whether individual after attaining freedom from Realm of Necessity can fully live a better life. It is benchmarked against reduction of hours of labor, freedom amongst the masses as well the existence of self-development amongst the citizens. This experiment focused on interrogation of whether liberated individuals from Realm of Necessity and live life fully resulting from attained freedom. It focuses on the need to attain a society of leisure based on freedom for its populace. The vision of the Ireland experiment is to ensure a society of leisure driven by need to reduce working hours, self-development and freedom to citizens so as to attain societal freedom from the constraints of Necessity. However, the attainment of this vision is derailed by the persistence of people to consume more soma, a necessity. This is due to the inability of individual to be capable of getting more as the erected feature of reality inhibiting the realization of the Ireland Experiment vision. This presents a challenge towards the attempt by the society to break from the chain of Necessity. Besides, the liberal democracy is attached to the notion of one man, one vote and it is therefore dependent on education and religion. It is always seen to culminate into starvation and wars amongst the masses and this further complicates the vision to achieve a society of leisure. The arguments and belief of Huxley based on the enlightenment of humankind draws sound support from Plato’s point of view as portrayed in his masterpiece ‘republic.’ Plato is in full support of Huxley argument of the need to enlighten individuals and remove them from the chains of lack of freedom. He uses the prisoners to showcase the lack of freedom that is also advocated for by Huxley based on his vision to achieve an enlightenment. Plato advocates for education to create enlightenment as he raised an idea that education does not involve instilling knowledge into empty minds but rather adding to knowledge endowment to what people have already known. Enlightenment by alienation is revealed as initially the prisoner’s takes low profile to enlightenment driven by world of illusion in the cave in the same way student ignores education. Only those capable of going through education become enlightened are made rulers. This is in line with Huxley’s question about those capable of being enlightenment (Plato & Allen, 2006, p. 12). The rebel prisoners would thus fall under those futile to accept system changes. Plato instill the notion of the truth as mind-embedded and thus this help as realize both the falsehood and truthfulness about a particular situation, a concept that is also recognized by Huxley. Plato is focused on enlightenment he alludes to an image of ignorant humanity, cornered and unaware of his limited perspective, does not understand the meaning of life. He is support of Huxley as those who rarely escape from the cave undergoes enlightenment and become intellectual thus discovering higher realm later understanding the true meaning of life. The enlightened individuals from the caves are misunderstood and wrongly tagged by those incapable of enlightenment who cannot see the falsehood and truthiness in life, the ones referred to as masses in Huxley arguments. The prisoners under chains only see the shadowy representation of reality since they are ranked as deltas and consumes soma and are thus blocked from seeing situational realities. Just like Huxley strong believe about falsehood and truth, Plato’s allegory significantly supports Huxley’s work based on the fact that only enlightened individuals will see invisible truths underneath phenomenon. However dissenting views on Huxley’s view point arise from his critiques, Kant and Schopenhauer. According to Kant, the ability of an individual to develop courage to use his own reason is the bedrock for enlightenment. He describes enlightenment as a breakthrough from man’s self-incurred tutelage-inability to be self-reliance in understanding without leaning on others. Self-incurred is thus achieved when tutelage leads to lies not as result of inadequacy of reason but resolution and courage to apply it without assistance from others. Kant argument antagonizes Huxley as it does not inquire into the nature to get truth and falsehood of a phenomenon existence (Immanuel, 1963, p. 17). For instance, there is higher levels of dependency and lack of self-reasoning in Kant’s argument based on the example of having a book that understands for an individual or a pastor that has a conscience for one and a physician determining one’s diet, such a person’s sees nothing but to sit back and relax and hence don’t think for himself. This is non-acceptable according to Huxley who sees an enlightened person to be able to inquire into the nature and to be free from such constraints. In addition, Kant opposes the notion of society of alpha based on his allusion of an individual being in a possession of enough money and hence can pay for his activities and thus will not be doing things by himself. Huxley pessimism of having only social class (alpha) does not augur well with Kant who feels there must be other people to work for the elites. Kant illustrates dependency between the guardians (superintendence) and domestic cattle making their domestic cattle dumb, their freedom is curtailed and thus are not enlightened and have to depend on the guardians to harness them and are threatened never to go alone. Huxley opposes restrictions attached to people and calls for the liberalization to achieve a society of leisure as well as an alpha society. Huxley asserts that only those capable of being enlightened will not be shuttered by such threats and would break away from such chains. In this example, the threat advanced by guardians to their domestic cattle is less impactful only if these cattle could see the reality liberalized from the Realm of Necessity, they would be enlightened and would subsequently walk alone. Dissenting from Huxley’s argument on the incapability of masses to enlightened, Kant argues that given freedom, masses can enlighten based on the public self-enlightenment following the breakthrough the yoke of tutelage. This will make such masses appreciate their own worth and ability for one to think for himself. Some of the enlightened guardian may incite the masses who turns around advance vengeance acts to guardians based on revolution, a factor opposed by Huxley who restricts enlightenment solely to men and alphas and not the masses as proposed by Kant. Unlike Huxley who advocates for greater degree of freedom, Kant attaches lower degree of freedom to increased room for a man’s mind to reach his full capacity. Another critique of Huxley is Schopenhauer based on religion disturbed by the distinction on whether religion is Benevolent Shepherding or Enlightenment. He explains how one should cope with changes such as mortality or loss and aims at how to discourage aggression based on lying and killing to which is against Huxley’s argument as to him, aggression should be encouraged. He advocates for the need to coexist based on law, culture and economy but to Huxley, enlightenment is only capable in men and alpha cohorts and hence creates a rift between alphas and masses leading to a dissatisfied society. Schopenhauer attaches Metaphysics as a requirement by man to restrain aggression and to ensure endurable change. Whereas Huxley appreciates the role of philosophy as a commitment tool to truth regardless of its destination, “The freedom to be unhappy”, Schopenhauer uses religion to thwart down philosophical position as being impractical rendering philosophy unfit to guide people. Philosophy is only applicable to adults as it comes too late and viewed as to lack clarity based on being non-definitive. Schopenhauer feels that philosophy is too demanding hence difficulty in understanding by people. Religion used by Schopenhauer in his explanation is seen as a barrier to truth and falsehood determination as it is driven by unquestionable beliefs, for example when a child dies, conclusion is hastily made that his time had come and hence stunts thinking. In a snapshot, despite the critiques view of the Huxley’s enlightenment vision of humankind, it is the researcher firm stance based on the facts raised by both Plato and Huxley on the need to enlighten individual. Besides, Schopenhauer is at times in supportive of Huxley’s argument on the need for freedom indicated on the critiques of religion based on philosophical point of view. Based on the experiments used, it is revealed that only the enlightened are able to identify both the falsehood and truthiness of a particular phenomenon. It is therefore, rational to enlighten individual who are capable of being enlightened as these are the only one who are able to become leaders driven by rational decision making ability. Reference Breazeale, D., & Hollingdale, R. J. (1997). Nietzsche: untimely meditations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Huxley, A. (2006). Brave new world. New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics. Immanuel Kant. (1963). On History: What is Enlightenment. New York. Macmillan. Press. Plato, ., & Allen, R. E. (2006). The republic. New Haven [u.a.: Yale Univ. Press. Read More