In the end, living is defined by dying.
Bernard BeckettA society that fears knowledge is a society that fears itself.
Bernard BeckettThe more the media peddled fear, the more the people lost the ability to believe in one another. For every new ill that befell them, the media created an explanation, and the explanation always had a face and a name. The people came to fear even their closest neighbors. At the level of the individual, the community, and the nation, people sought signs of others’ ill intentions; and everywhere they looked, they found them, for this is what looking does.
Bernard BeckettTags: dystopia you-ve-been-warned
But time passes. Fear becomes a memory. Terror becomes routine; it loses its grip.
Bernard BeckettI cannot choose to ignore this feeling, of life slowly bleeding out of me. I cannot ignore the fact that life only makes sense to me when I see a smile, or feel another hand in mine.
Bernard BeckettAre you saying a society wracked by plague is preferable to one wracked by indifference?
Bernard BeckettThe mind is not a machine, it is an idea. And the Idea resists all attempts to control it.
Bernard BeckettIn the end, living is defined by dying. Book- ended by oblivion, we are caught in the vice of terror, squeezed to bursting by the approaching end. Fear is ever-present, waiting to be called to the surface. Change brought fear, and fear brought destruction.
Bernard BeckettEven the plainest of events is tied down by a thick tangle of permutation and possibility, but the human mind struggles with such complexity. In times of trouble, when the belief in simple gods breaks down, a cult of conspiracy arises. So it was back then. Unable to attribute misfortune to chance, unable to accept their ultimate insignificance within the greater scheme, the people looked for monsters in their midst.
Bernard BeckettDo you believe in God?' Grace asked him. The question was not strange. They were past strangeness.
'Of course' he replied. It was easier than the truth, simpler.
'Why?'
'Because without God' he started, his voice slipping easily into the lilting rhythm of recitation, 'we have no reason to believe in reason. Without God, our reason is an accident of the cosmos, as ultimately inconsequential as the spinning of the planet or the pulling of the tides. Reason becomes unimportant, and hence untenable. Without God we have only belief, and yet we are left with nothing to believe in'.
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