My response to the Cuban missile crisis was appallingly immature:
(i) like some Emberversers, I was being taught that each of us was an immortal soul which, provided that it passed on in the right state, would be OK throughout eternity so I was not too bothered about maybe dying sooner rather than later;
(ii) I had read action-adventure fiction set in post-apocalyptic scenarios, maybe some of it written by Poul Anderson, so I had already accepted such scenarios as representing one possible future, the other possibility being "spaceships" (no one was going to mention "nuclear winter" for several more decades);
(iii) I was kind of excited that the society that was trying to make me conform to its demands was maybe going to destroy itself before I had even finished school.
As I say, an appalling response but my response at the time, nevertheless.
9 comments:
There are people who don't fit where they are, but there are generally alternatives if you're unhappy enough. Someone born into a knightly family can go into the Church or move to a chartered town and try life as a merchant; someone who doesn't like the tight-knit communalism of the Mackenzies can go to Corvallis.
Though most people have to be farmers, of course, but that's been true of most of human history.
There have been socieities where the only way to learn and study was to become a celibate cleric! I am glad we have got beyond that!
It did give an outlet for people who didn't want to do pair-bonding or have children. And of course it provided a means of birth control, and other functions like avoiding the division of a family inheritance.
Years ago, in large Irish Catholic families (I think), the eldest son inherited the family business, the 2nd son went into a respectable profession like law or medicine, the 3rd, not needed to inherit or to perpetuate the family, could, equally respectably, become a priest. There were also families that went in for particular professions, again like law or medicine.
Gentlemen,
And, of course, there were many celibates who took seriously the words of Christ and St. Paul about being "eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven." That is, the celibate state enabled them to serve God and man more fully and freely.
Sean
Kaor, Paul!
Yes, Poul Anderson wrote some apocalyptic science fiction. TWILIGHT WORLD and AFTER DOOMSDAY comes to mind.
Sean
Sean,
AFTER DOOMSDAY combines apocalypse with "spaceships" as, later, does TWILIGHT WORLD.
Paul.
Paul:
I read a humorous novel from the mid-1960s in which a small Latin American nation had a somewhat similar tradition.
As I recall it, the eldest son went into the military (in that country, it was the same as going into politics), the second son became a priest, and the third son joined the rebels against the government.
Kaor, Paul!
I agree. And I also thought of GENESIS, because of how we see mankind becoming extinct in that book. Albeit, doing so more with a whimper than a bang!
Sean
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