What does this society need? What water, what nectar can make fruitful this cracked expansion?

For today's society is desolate. Or should I say, in disrepair. Or acting in foolishness. There is a great rift, as I see it, between past and future. There has been for centures and ages, but never more so, I think, than today. Science, technology, and religious dieas surge forth into the future, iconclasm leaving tradition crushed in its wake. Moral codes that have been sustained for thousands of years are fraying at the edges, straining to cope with an ever-modernizing, progressing world.

Stem cell research, for example, is causing people to rethink and extrapolate their morality in regards to other humans, and how far is too far in finding cures for diseases. The internet is thrusting the once sheltered into a world where all humanity is unified and in constant communication, regardless of distance. Various advances are shoving the previous traditionally held ideas and morals to their knees. People are beginning to think, whether they like it or not. And this inevitable thinking, this inescapable contemplation, causes within them a moral shudder. They thusly fear the future and its threat to their values. Thusly, they cling to the past in order to feel some sense of saftey and invulnerability. The man that is static is impervious to the dangers of the future, but he stagnates in the present all too easily.

This futile attempt to reconcile past with future has created a collective shockwave in our culture. The older generation does not want us to advance. The yonger cannot live without progressive action. So what can be done? Do we cling, trembling, to the past, and turn our eyes to the future? Do we fling ourselves into what awaits us with total disregard for the past, with an ignorance and blindness to what was before?

No.

We must do neither.

If we allow ourselves to drown in the past, we will do just that: drown. If we leap without looking into the future, it's likely we will leap off of a cliff to our demise.

So, we must welcome the future with prudent restraint, and stay mindful of the past, which holds within itself a host of lessons and teachings for society today. We cannot sever our ties with the past, for it is all we are presently composed of. We cannot curl away from the future, for without it we would stagnate as a race. To advance, we must quietly regard our past as a weathered tome of knowlege, not weepingly and desperately clutch it to our chests like some piteous, dependent wretch.

We must spread our wings and take to the skies, but ever remember the earth from whence we soared, and from which we came.

Romantic realism is what we need. To stylize ourselves as we might be, but also retain a sense of realtiy and reason, and not be given over to longing for utter fantasy. We must realize our limitations as we advance and not stumble over our own strides. We must mold ourselves into simultaneous beauty and imperfection, all the while looking to the sky of progress, feeling the firmament of the past beneath our feet.

=Marguerite Noire=