A Time of Debasement and Falseness

I've been reading Shikasta by Doris Lessing. I didn't really begin enjoying it until I was about thirty pages in, but everything beyond that is golden. It is one of those novels that gives you so much food for thought that you aren't exactly sure what to start with first.

Shikasta is an Earth-like planet which a benevolent alien civilization has taken an interest in. Because it is a rather timely, considering the upcoming Presidential election this year, I thought I might post this quote:

The qualities prized in "public servants" on Shikasta were, almost invariably, the most superficial and irrelevant imaginable, and could only have been accepted in a time of near total debasement and falseness. This was true of all sects, groupings, "parties": for what was remarkable about this particular time was how much they all resembled each other, while they spent most of their energies in describing and denigrating differences that they imagined existed between them.

I've said this before, but not quite so elegantly or concisely. It's why I refused to state a party when I registered to vote. I dislike both parties equally, and they both have the same motive in mind: to control my life and perpetuate themselves at the cost of freedom and harmony. They just have different methods of getting there.

Another Interesting Quote

From Shikasta by Doris Lessing:

The old watch the young with anguish, pain, fear. Above all what each has learned is what things cost, what has to be paid, the consequences and results of actions. But their own lives have been useless, because nothing they have learned can be passed on. What is the point of learning so much, so painfully, at such a cost to themselves and to others (often the offspring in question) if the next generation cannot take anything at all from them, can accept nothing as "given," as learned, as already understood?

And these old ones who have lived through everything know very well that every horror is possible and indeed inevitable, but the young are feeling that well, perhaps, it will be all right after all.

The old live waiting, longing, for the young to come to their senses and understand they personally have so little time left, and the planet has so little time left: "For God's sake! There is no time left, no time left for you, and not for us either, while you peacock about and play little games..."