In the opinion of many, humanity’s greatest asset and the sole reason for its place at the top of the food chain is its brilliant mind. Developed specially for pursuit predation, following, tracking, and using ingenuity to hunt an animal at a walking pace until it drops dead of fatigue, we evolved to think. As we grew and grew as a species, out achievements only became greater. Fire, the Wheel, Ancient Rome, and more all fall under things no other animal can even fully comprehend. Sadly, though, we’ve grown complacent. We’re becoming so self aware that we’re beginning to question wether our life actually has purpose, so we try to dull the fear and uncertainty by distracting ourselves. As stated by Theodore Roosevelt, “To educate a man in mind and not is morals is to educate a menace to society”. Many novels both modern and old portray exactly this, a populous so ignorant of their own individual moral code that it too falls prey to the greed of people who abuse their power. As seen in stories like Cat’s Cradle by H.G. Wells, The Lottery by Shirley Jackson, and The Pedestrian, mindlessly following a cause with no questions or answers as to “why” will eventually be the downfall of humanity and that we as a conglomerate populous need to invoke change for the betterment of our civilization.
In the Cat’s Cradle, the main character Jonah goes on a quest that leads him to the discovery of a chemical called Ice-Nine that turns every bit of water it touches into more
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ice-nine, which leads him and a group of civilians to an island in the Caribbean controlled by a fascist dictator. All people of the island share an illegal religion called Bokononism, which has
philosophies that aid in the support of controlling, power hungry rulers. The people don’t even recognize the terrible conditions they live in (insert citation when found). Many of them are unaware of what the world past the island is like, favoring to stay in constant ignorance and deep seated, normalized fear. People in our own world are beginning not to explore their real-world surroundings in favor of staying glued to their screens.
The Pedestrian is a perfect example of normalized seclusion and propagandic media. A man is arrested and sent to a psychiatric ward for simply going on a walk outside in the evening instead of staying inside and gluing his eyes to the supposedly state-run news channel. This antagonization of such an insignificant deviation from the norm gives the impression that the society in the year of 2053 has reverted to a zombie-like, soulless, vacant state, seen in Bradbury’s words “Sudden grey phantoms seemed to manifest upon inner room walls where a curtain was still undrawn against the night, or there were whisperings and murmurs where a window in a tomb-like building was still open”(Bradbury 1). This perfectly parallels what mainstream media is doing today, spreading omissions, half-truths, and lies about pretty much everything in favor of something more dramatic and amusing rather than the truth the people need to hear. They twist people’s words and stories into a grotesque creature that demonizes good people and makes saints out of criminals. These are all because of the laws of society and the government’s fear of individual thought. If one would think about it, there have been many times when a person of power has made a promise to get to power and then simply abandoned it or did the exact opposite! One would also not easily be able to recall any because the media simply dusts it under the rug like many other less-interesting crimes. We torture and slaughter innocent people without a second thought because it’s “the norm” or “the victim’s fault”, or it even simply “has always been that way, we dare not change it”.
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Thomas Jefferson stated that the Constitution should be remade with new, improved laws every twelve years, but in the entire history of the United States, not one law has been altered or changed in over 300 years. A similar story is shared in Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery, where every year one person in a town is slaughtered as part of a macabre tradition. This inhuman act is never questioned morally, and continued to take the lives of innocent people, not only in ONE town, but many across the country “… over in the north village they're talking of giving up the lottery…
Pack of crazy fools… There's always been a lottery”(Jackson 4).Following old, outdated laws that have very loose or even no application to modern life is the closest thing to a crime as something can be without actually being a crime itself.
As seen, we as a society need to learn to have individual thought and to stray from the forced hive-mind of a government terrified of the power of its people. We need to take control of our own being, be aware of our complacency, and DO something about it. It’s time we change our world to benefit ALL of the world’s people, and not just those with power. Change is imperative to the survival of an advanced civilization and we are far, far overdue.