Warnings in the Mist

Stargirl Caraway. Clarisse McClellan. People who made a difference. People who changed a life. They are the most important people, our guiding stars, the people who bring us back to the path we need to take. But if you look at them, who are they? Oddballs. Strangers. They never stay long, and they’re always unexpected. Is this gift going to die out? Disappear? Become rarer and rarer? Will we become the bookburners, the firemen, convinced that we’re doing it for the greater good?


Look at our civilization. We have everything. Technology, comfort, entertainment. But are we truly better than the cavemen playing with fire? Maybe all we are is a different, more advanced kind, and more dangerous. People wrote those books to leave some kind of a warning for the future generations, and yet I watch this generation groan and grumble through them and I fear we are on the train headed straight for that direction with the cliff looming ever nearer as we, still young and ignorant, throw more coal on the engine fire.

We scoff at these words, and in these very actions we show that there is still a reason and a need for these stories, that there is danger in the things we do. If we cannot bring ourselves to understand this, then, indeed, that culture, that repression, will become the fate of our sorry race. We will become the pleasure-seekers, the layabouts, and we will accomplish what? Nothing. Progress without spirit, without soul, means nothing. Technology and all the improvements it has given to our society means nothing if we don’t progress in how we use it. We may say it’s for entertainment, but do we want to end up like Mildred Montag, a videot, engrossed in things that don’t make any sense to her just because they talk to her? “I laugh, they laugh!” Did we come out of the dark ages for this?

We seem to be following some kind of life cycle. After all, how does the human life go? Babies, knowing nothing, understanding nothing, doing everything. Children, bright-eyed and innocent. Teenagers, growing sharp, maybe jaded. Adults, in their prime, capable, working. And then? Elderly, feeble, and falling into the “second childhood”. Well, we had the adult stage, it seems. Days of explorers and people who did things, days of expanding and working and collaborating. Is this the result? Second childhood? Confused and not understanding again?

Let these words serve as a warning. Let these tales serve their purpose. Let them pull us away from the danger of the plunging cliff. It’s not too late. As long as there are willing, ready minds, as long as there are people willing to take a hand in things, as long as there are people willing to be active, and as long as there are people willing to remind us, we can still survive. As long as there is one person left with hope and the fire to do something, there is hope. Let that person be you.