Robin Hull "The Education of an Amphibian"

Tähenduse teejuhid (Maps of Meaning) is an Estonian language monthly newspaper that is distributed with the country's largest daily Postimees. The first issue came out in September 2020. The centre of gravity of each number is a ca 4000-word interview. We have been fortunate enough to converse with (in the order of appearance) David Fuller, Charles Eisenstein, Merlin Sheldrake, Jeremy Narby, Jules Evans, Richard Tarnas, Rupert Sheldrake, Mark Vernon, David Abram, Matthew Fox, Paul Kingsnorth, Regina Hess, Peter Sjöstedt-Hughes, Kyriacos Markides, David Lorimer, David Luke, Dean Radin and Robin Hull. While a couple of these interviews have already been made public on this channel, the most of them have appeared only in the newspaper. In this English language playlist we shall make them public for the first time. We start with the spring season of 2023. The interview with Robin Hull, a curator for the International Aldous Huxley Society, appeared in the 36th issue of the paper (November 2023). Here are seven highlights from this interview. The first comes from my brief introduction, the other are direct quotes.
1. According to Huxley a human being is a multiple amphibian who lives simultaneously in many different universes. “If you create a political theory based just on the ordinary self - and most political theories try that - we only address a tiny fraction of the human mind and body. In other words, a real attempt at an ideal society has to include all the levels of man, the multiple amphibian,“ explains Hull Huxley’s ideas.
2. These days I see a return of political interest in teenagers. That is not surprising. There is Greta Thunberg who helped to start it, there are the wars in the Middle East and Ukraine and of course there is the big question of what to do with environmental issues. So I think teenagers are now rediscovering an interest in politics. It is just a different kind of interest that we had in the 70s. It is less ideological and certainly less coloured by Marxism.
3. By 1937 when he published his political manifesto “Ends and Means” he had basically disowned Fabianism. To the extent that Stalin and Hitler had by then tightened ruthless grip on their countries, Huxley did not see the greatest dangers neither in communism nor in fascism but in their common denominator - statism, the political doctrine that considers the state as the value in itself to which citizens have to subject their aspirations and well-being
4. We are not talking about changing human nature but changing the human psyche. For that to be doable one needs a coordinating philosophy on which a better world could be created. That was something Huxley announced as an aim in “Ends and Means” and then in “The Perennial Philosophy” (1945). In the latter he introduces the fourth key component of his social and political thought (apart from decentralisation, pacifism, and psychology) - spirituality which looks at the relation between man and nature from a new angle.
5. Great works of arts originate in a very deep layer of the subconscious where the ego steps away from the helm and creates space for new insights and inspiration. In other words, great art comes to the artist and great music comes to the composer. Neither of them can force it to happen. It is very close to what he says of grace - experiences of the Divine are similar in that they cannot be forced and made by the ordinary self. They are only possible when the ordinary self becomes passive and allows them to happen.
6. Painting, including the painting at the centre, was part of his healing effort. It was something which gave him a holiday from words. That is why so many great writers and poets - from Hesse through to D.H. Lawrence, Goethe and of course Blake - have also painted. The challenge of standing in the no man’s land between verbal and nonverbal knowledge can in Huxley’s opinion open up a way to holistic understanding.
7. Huxley interpreted “The Devils of Loudun” as an experiment by Richelieu to see how far he could go in murdering a relatively innocent member of the church without there being a rebellion. There is another aspect, though, in this book, which is very important to him - the whole question of crowd insanity. Huxley believed that Nazi fascism and Stalinism thrived on crowd insanity by actively cultivating it. That is a very important aspect of “The Devils of Loudun”.