3. Aldous Huxley and Personal Relationships
The latest episode of Themes and Variations, the Aldous Huxley podcast, explores a facet of his life many biographies gloss over: Huxley and his wife Maria lived in what we’d now call an open or polyamorous relationship. But here’s the twist—it wasn’t some free-love utopia. It was messy, painful, and required Maria to scout sexual partners for her “cerebrotonic” husband. She’d arrange dinners with attractive admirers of Huxley’s work, facilitate brief encounters, and receive back “a very satisfied and pleasantly exhausted husband” the next morning. One relationship, with Mary Hutchinson, became a years-long ménage à trois.The podcast connects this personal history to Huxley’s broader critique of modern life. Dating apps? He’d loathe them. Not for moral reasons, but because they turn people into commodities you swipe through like items in a supermarket aisle. The mechanical, habit-forming nature of endless swiping represents exactly the kind of “downward self-transcendence” Huxley satirized in Brave New World—where many relationships are encouraged but none can be serious.Nuking the Nuclear FamilyIn a scorching 1930 essay titled “Baby’s State Property,” Huxley predicted the family’s extinction within generations. His argument? As we pursue self-fulfillment, we have fewer children and less willingness to do the hard work of child-rearing. The state steps in to standardize education and care, effectively nationalizing childhood.But Huxley didn’t leave it there. In his utopian novel Island, he imagined “mutual adoption societies”—voluntary family units of 40-50 people where children could choose different families if their birth family failed them. This resonates powerfully with modern queer concepts of “chosen family” and family abolitionist movements that see traditional family structures as privatizing care that should be communal.Efficiency, Success, and the B***h GoddessHuxley saw modern society worshipping two false gods: Taylorist efficiency and what William James called “the b***h goddess of success.” These forces turn us into robots pursuing mechanical optimization—the productivity influencer waking at 5 AM, chugging supplements, grinding all day, hitting the gym, then collapsing into structured leisure.His remedy? “Systematic inconsistency.” Instead of repressing our multiplicity of selves, acknowledge them. Our minds are “colonies of separate lives existing in chronically hostile symbiosis.” Fighting this makes us more robotic. Accepting it—balancing excess with awareness—might actually make us human.The podcast leaves us with an uncomfortable question: Can we be happy robots? Huxley’s answer, threaded through his novels, is a resounding no. True happiness requires acknowledging 100% of what we are, not just the 1% our ego finds acceptable.Works by Huxley discussed in this episode* Do What You Will (1929) - Essay collection* Point Counter Point (1928)* Brave New World (1932)* Island (1962)* Crome Yellow (1921)* Grey Eminence (1941)* “Babies: State Property” (1930) - Found in Hidden Huxley edited by David Bradshaw This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit themesandvariations.substack.com