We have a lot of political, philosophical, Utopian/Dystopian fiction lying around our home. Most of them are Lance’s, but one or two selections are mine. With the amount of time I find myself with these days, my nose has ended up in a number of books accumulating to far greater numbers than those read in the past five years combined.
While a number of current best sellers have found their way into my hands, I have found myself craving these “It COULD happen here” kind of books that during their time seemed impossible, but currently have made better predictions than a top notch psychic.
Most recently ‘1984’ revved up my engine, then had me shaking my head with frustration at the ending.
Not because it was poorly written. Oh, no; because it was so flawlessly written. If you have never read it, do. It will make you check yourself. It will make you check society. It will make you promise yourself that you will never be so weak as to succumb to accepting a way of life that someone else would attempt to force on you.
Sadly, as I dig deeper into more and more of these classic novels, I find that we are ignorantly letting ourselves slip into worlds that these great authors attempted to warn us about. I find the words of my high school history teacher echoing in my head, “History is the consequences of man’s choices. Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it”.
In general, it seems that our society has fallen guilty of this. We refuse to learn from the past and continue to think that new faces and new opinions will provide the answers to all our problems. Little do we realize that we are allowing ourselves to be deceived by those who appear greater than us when we are the ones who should really hold the power for change.
Though this may not be a normal post for me, I hope that it will inspire you. I hope it will get you interested in your history. If anything, that you might search for answers, or better yet, demand answers. I leave you with a quote from another of these inspiring books, ‘Fahrenheit 451’ by Ray Bradbury:
“We need not to be let alone. We need to be really bothered once in a while. How long is it since you were really bothered? About something important, about something real?”
Get bothered.
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