The Human Situation 12: Language
Aldous HuxleyJonathan
May 12, 202626 October 1959UC Santa Barbara, CA
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Summary
The lecture argues that language is both humanity’s greatest gift and a source of distortion, enabling science, continuity, and thought while also fostering superstition, propaganda, and tyranny. Through examples from philosophy, religion, history, and psychology, it contrasts immediate experience with symbolic order and warns against mistaking words for reality.
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