by Anita Benedict
I have been bone-tired lately. Lack of good sleep, brain working overtime doesn’t help. All the old tricks no longer work, hot milk or Agatha Christie murder mysteries. I don’t think I am alone; I hear the same thing from others about being weary with the constant state of unrest and unknown and this constant barrage of bad-manners from the south.
We, as North Americans, have never had to deal with this level of bull crap on such a large scale except on TV and in books. I have been thinking of the books we were required to read in high-school. The ones with the Coles Notes that you borrowed or purchased to help you understand better. They were fiction then, but maybe they were prep for what is to come.
I vaguely remember “The Lord of the Flies”. I remember the feeling of hopelessness as society became so degraded: loss of morality, loss of the societal rules that keep us from returning to a total animal state. Lord have mercy even the animals have a better ruling system, most of them anyway. Rats will eat each other, weasels will kill once they get a taste of blood whether they are hungry or not, pigs eat what you feed them. I must go back and read LOTF, I just skimmed it recently with something called Spark notes.
Then there was “The Chrysalids.” I did go buy a copy of that one but still have yet to re-read it. The storyline stuck with me for several years even though I had forgotten the title. I kept thinking I need to move to Newfoundland in case of a nuclear war. I was sure that was the setting for the book. Perhaps it was Greenland, but I don’t need a passport to get to NFLD.
A quick Google search says the story is about encouraging understanding and acceptance of diversity, highlighting that true humanity is about accepting and respecting differences. The search tells me the book teaches us about survival, faith and love; protecting those we love and finally the moral lesson is that even in societies that are morally corrupt, there are individuals who have the power and responsibility to make their own moral choices. (source enotes.com)
I read Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451” and I bought Margaret Atwood’s “A Handmaids Tale” after all the talk about it becoming a reality as opposed to the fiction it was intended to be. I am afraid to actually read it. I don’t want to see the correlation between the loss of women’s rights and the book; fiction to fact.
There was hope in all those books, people who refused to give up their humanity and morality. I chose to look up the understanding of morality, to be sure I had it correct. It is less about what we learned from a church and more about how we treat others in our society with the principles of honesty, fairness, respect, compassion, and justice.
Time to read again with a fresh conscience and understanding.
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