when philosophy interrupts fiction

[surei]

It's amazing (it shouldn't be, but it is, and that's another rant for another time) what kind of philosophical and social commentary you can find in a children's book.

But the fortifications had long been neglected, for the whole country was now under one king, and all men said there was no more need for weapons or walls. No man pretended to love his neighbour, but every one said he knew that peace and quiet behavior was the best thing for himself, and that, he said, was quite as useful, and a great deal more reasonable. The city was prosperous and rich, and if everybody was not comfortable, everybody else said he ought to be.

When Curdie got up opposite the mighty rock, which sparkled all over with crystals, he found a narrow bridge, defended by gates and portcullis and towers with loopholes. But the gates stood wide open, and were dropping from their great hinges; the portcullis was eaten away with rust, and clung to the grooves evidently immovable; while the loopholed towers had neither floor nor roof, and their tops were fast filling up their interiors. ... everybody in the city regarded these signs of decay as the best proof of the prosperity of the place. Commerce and self-interest, they said, had got the better of violence, and the troubles of the past were whelmed in the riches that flowed in at their open gates.

Indeed, there was one sect of philosophers in it which taught that it would be better to forget all the past history of the city, were it not that its former imperfections taught its present inhabitants how superior they and their times were, and enabled them to glory over their ancestors. There were even certain quacks in the city who advertised pills for enabling people to think well of themselves, and some few bought them, but most laughed, and said, with evident truth, that they did not require them. Indeed, the general theme of discourse when they met was, how much wiser they were than their fathers.
      - George MacDonald, The Princess and Curdie

Quite the cynical and foreboding view of the city where heroic adventures are supposed to take place, isn't it? Now read it again, and this time keep in mind that this is much the same attitude we hold ourselves. The idea, after all, is Progress: the people of tomorrow will be more educated, more knowledgable, more understanding, more advanced, wiser and smarter and better than the people of today. It follows naturally that the people of today are likewise better than those of yesterday, and we fall into the habit of thinking of our ancestors in terms of what we have that they haven't; think of them as ignorant, prejudiced, credulous, brutish, short-lived, dirty and unhealthy, primitive.

Go on, read the passage again.

I don't really need to say anything more, do I? He's already said it for me.

Okay, with that off my chest, back to the story!