"So, for thousands of years, you humans have needed kings, priests, philosophers, fine examples to look up to and say, 'They are good, I wish I could be like them. They set the grand, good style.' But, being human, the finest priests, the tenderest philosophers make mistakes, fall from grace, and mankind is disillusioned and adopts indifferent skepticism or, worse, motionless cynicism, and the good world grinds to a halt while evil moves on with huge strides."

From "I Sing the Body Electric!"

(page 730 of "The Stories of Ray Bradbury" (Knopf, 1980)

This friend in college used to laugh at my "hero-worship" every time the subject of Bradbury came up and say, "If you have to have a hero, pick someone who's dead, they're the only ones who won't screw up on ya." I respectfully disagreed. Ray has not screwed up on me yet, but on the chance that he someday does, let's hope I don't get like *that*. Thanks for the quote!

You are welcome, Dandelion . . . I thought it was a good quote for these times . . .

While I am here, I have been meaning to inquire about a speech which Mr. Bradbury gave at the Tuesday Evening Forum at Pasadena City College in 1974. It was SO good, as I recall . . . I wish I had the transcript for it, there was one particularly funny part he had in it about a cat and a humongous hairball, and how not taking care of the creative drive can result in a "hairball" building up in a person . . . if you or anyone here knows of a source where I could find a transcript for that speech, I would just love that.

Finally, I've come to read that story too and it's become one of my most favorite!

In a way, I think it sums up Ray's ideas of technology (or rather the "proper" use of it) and (technological) progress quite neatly. After all, it is a means to accomplish our visions.

It was some years ago I became aware of the danger of "motionless cynicism" as sjacob qoutes, because I often tended to become a cynic myself. Now I think of it as an attitude that provides a kind of "shelter" from the atrocities of this world (by saying well, that's just the way it is and has always been), but on the other hand is something static and utterly uncreative. It completely denies the fact of development and evolution.

I've only ever seen the Twilight Zone episode :/

That TZ episode draws a lot of complaint. Ray blamed its failure on the omission of one crucial scene, but perhaps the truth is that the full idea could not be developed in half an hour--as evidenced by the fact that it never appeared on "Ray Bradbury Theater."

I thought it was a pretty good episode. It did seem a bit rushed, though.