There is something about science that saddens me slightly. I don't mean that I do not enjoy the benefits that science has given the human race - for the most it has enormous benefits - but could we have lost something in the getting?
The human race has an innate need to explain everything. Everything must have its cause and its reason and its purpose. To the scientific minds of modernity, anything that cannot be explained clearly doesn't exist. There use to be myth and legends; superstitions and religion. Stories taken with the utmost belief that the unexplainable was real. Our ancestors could believe that just because something didn't have a cause or a reason or a purpose that it did not mean that it was any less than that which did. We seem to have lost that ability. We have lost, for the most part, the willingness to trust in the unknown. But the stories had to come from somewhere didn't they? Surly every fiction grows from a seed of truth.
Oh we still have religion, but it is no longer at the centre of our lives. We still have superstitions, but they are followed in jest. And we still have myths and legends, but they are our entertainment.
We send our children door to door begging strangers for candy while dressed as ghouls and vampires and zombies. But to the children these creatures are nothing more than Hollywood fantasy and Halloween is nothing more than a sugar rush. True meaning is all but lost.
It is hardly as important as some of the problems that surround the world, but it still saddens me.
On a completely unrelated note, NaNoWriMo starts in just under an hour. Time to fetch the writing cap - I am going to win this year come hell or high water.
No comments:
Post a Comment