Aldous Huxley – Time Must Have a Stop – 1944 – extract 2
This is another short extract from the novel ‘Time Must Have a Stop’ which Aldous wrote in 1944. It is also extremely revealing and still as pertinent today as it was seventy years ago – if not more so!
I completed a reread of this novel on the way back from London yesterday. It made me think.
He could be describing the hatreds, vengeance and continuing cruelty and bloodshed of the Middle East. Violence and atrocity breeds violence and atrocity. The hatred resounds down the centuries. The injustices are piled up in never ending heaps to fester down the centuries. Each new outrage is stored away for use when the opportunity arises.
Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Israel, Gaza, Palestine, Kuwait, Yemen, Nigeria, Syria, Islamic State, the USA, Britain and the rest. One after another in a plethora of inhumanity, bigotry and unending revenge.
Here’s what Aldous had to say way back in 1944:
‘And all those treasures of knowledge placed so unhesitatingly at the service of passion. All the genius and intelligence dedicated to the attempt to achieve ends either impossible or diabolic.’
‘All the problems inherited from from the last crusade and solved by methods that automatically created a hundred new problems. And each new problem would require a new crusade, would leave fresh problems for yet further crusades to solve and multiply in the same old way.’