I think it was from Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy that I remember the theory of opposites, that the good, to be truly good, must have an opposite of evil.
In thinking this evening of the onslaught of digital visuals in our world, in particular, the television commercials that are using graphics instead of actors, it brings up the question of the complete replacement of reality, of man, of employment. To have thought that even actors could be replaced by computers would have been a bit off the wall even as skilled workers lost their jobs on production lines, in accounting offices, and that last holdout–the voice on the telephone. Now that voice calls you!
Bad? Good? Who knows what’s going to happen when a path is chosen? In reading Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, the ‘new’ world is an exaggeration of a possibility brought up within the current situation. In that case, it is the religious right, the fight for women’s rights that are carried to only one of the likely ends.
What then, can imagination do with people who aren’t people?
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology