CULTURE WATCH : Cherishing Children

“Brave New World,” Shakespeare’s radiant phrase, became a category of modern thought thanks to Aldous Huxley, who made it the title of his 1932 novel. But the irony of the title is lost unless one hears behind it the joyful cry of the young Miranda in “The Tempest.”

Laura Huxley, 82, the writer’s widow, has not forgotten Miranda. For the centenary of Huxley’s birth, she organized a just-ended conference on “Children: Our Ultimate Investment,” about which one might say, with equal justice, “only Huxley” and “only in Los Angeles.” In whose name but his, and where else but here, would singer Kenny Loggins and tai chi master Chungliang Al Huang appear alongside anthropologist Ashley Montagu?

Aldous Huxley and his near-contemporary George Orwell have been seen as twin prophets, “Brave New World” and “1984” satirizing, respectively, the decadent Western World and the totalitarian East. Of the two, however, it was Huxley who looked further ahead. “Brave New World,” set in the 25th Century and dealing with, among other ills, the drug culture and overpopulation, addresses a world that is more our own with each passing year.

But as this conference rightly reminds us, Huxley, more than Orwell, also retained an optimism that may partly explain why he made Los Angeles his home for the last third of his life. Behind the horror of drug abuse, he saw a thirst of the spirit. And he dreamed, in the shadow of overpopulation, of a world in which every child would be planned for and cherished as Prospero cherished Miranda.