The Perennial Perversion: Idolatrous Self-Worship in Brave New World

Abstract

This literary analysis compares the spiritual landscape of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World against his nonfiction work, The Perennial Philosophy. In Brave New World, Huxley’s World State appears spiritually promising. It embeds self-transcendence and interconnectedness into its social order, minimizing the individual self in favor of a collective identity. These themes are highly suggestive of the Perennial Philosophy, a framework championed by Huxley through which individuals can eclipse their separate selves and spiritually actualize. However, the Brave New World does not eclipse self at all; it cultivates a “selfness writ large” that idolatrizes instant gratification, consumerism, technology and progress, and social order as ersatz for genuine liberation. This Perennial Perversion is spiritually bankrupt, systematically misleading World State inhabitants with false promises of unitive liberation. As a consequence of preventing its citizens from achieving genuine mystical unity, the World State’s population is spiritually and psychologically damaged—far from happy and stable, despite the lie they have been conditioned to believe.