World Enough and Time

One of my favorite instructors at my college recently loaned me a very interesting book. The book is "World Enough and Time" by Robert Penn Warren. I was reading it earlier, and I came across this passage. I thought it really summed up a few problems with mankind:

"But, on second thought, we may be like these [duelers]. We do not stand up at dawn, but we lie in a scooped-out hole in a tropical jungle and rot in the rain and wait for a steel pellet whipping through the fronds. We go down in the deep sea in a steel casket full of mechanisms like a watch and wait for the shudder of the depth charge. At five thousand feet in the air we ride a snarling motor into the veil of flak. For Hecuba may be something to us, after all.
For who is Hecuba, who is she, that all the swains adore her? She is whatever we must adore. Or if we adore nothing, she is what we must act as if we adored. And if we adore her, we must do so, not because we know her, but because we do not know her. If before we go out on our great design we lean to kiss her hand, she will always withdraw it and we must ride away to leave her brooding on a winter lawn. Or to regard the matter in a different light, we can never leave Hecuba. She is what we must carry in the breast, though we can never know her. She is our folly and our glory and despair. And if we do not adore her, we can adore nothing or only Silly Sal, who was found tasty in Bowling Green by the hot boys of the town."

Really deep stuff - a rather pessimistic view of mankind. I look forward to discussing this with my professor tomorrow!!