Aldous Huxley – Time Must Have a Stop – 1944
This is a short extract from the novel ‘Time Must Have a Stop’ which Aldous wrote in 1944. It is extremely revealing and still as pertinent today as it was seventy years ago – if not more so!
It was as if Aldous was looking back through history, through all the wars, crusades, jihads, pogroms, revolutions and bloody massacres and then into the future.
We are that future and the picture has not changed. There are the same idealists, fanatics and idealists believing they can bring their own brand of utopia into being throught violence, cruelty and destruction.
Utopia never comes out of violence, hatred , power or greed; it comes from peace, love and happiness.
Strange isn’t it?
This is what Aldous had to say way back in 1944:
‘Silliness and murder, stupidity and destruction. And the motive was always idealism, the instruments were always courage and loyalty – the heroic courage and loyalty without which men and women would never be able to persevere in their long drawn suicides and assassinations.’
He might have been talking about the brainwashed armies of the Islamic State with their lust for war, revenge and wish to impose their views. He might have been referring to the suicide bombers, and the cruelty, greed and hatred that fuel their vicious campaign. He might have been referring to the intolerance, bigotry and perverted dogma deployed as the power seekers manipulate the fanatics.
The dirty work is always carried out by idealistic believers duped by the evil powerful. It was always thus.