Unwind

Pro-Choice and Pro-Life. Can this debate ever reach a point where the victory is more important than the principles that started it in the first place? What if both sides could win without any noticeable concessions? Unwind...

Too many young delinquents in your neighbourhood? All these kids will end up dead or in prison anyway... Meanwhile, good, hard-working people die every day, because there aren't enough organ donors to go around. Unwind...

State orphanages are full to the brims. Abortions are illegal. New babies keep coming in. What to do? Some of the kids in there are exceptional, really smart and talented. But what about the rest? Unwind...

You are blessed with an extended family. God have blessed you with health, comfort and happiness. What have you done to pay back a small portion of this generosity? Give your child the opportunity to ascend from this material life, give back his/hers body so his/her soul can live on. That's the ultimate honor, the ultimate reward. Unwind...

So... That's it. If you find it too hard to suspend your belief and accept that a First World, educated, civilized society can read the above, nod its head and announce "Yep, that's sounds reasonable!", then stay away from this book.

The rest are just details.

We have seen some really awful things happen in this world. I don't think we are clever enough to avoid the worse. At least we can avoid those that some author wrote about and pointed out how revolting they are.

There used to be an era when a man was the three-fourths of another, or a woman was part of the property of her father and her husband. When your bed habits dictate your status in life, you aren't feeling that civilized. Every war in history reduced human lives to numbers on a paper, with WWII winning by far.

So, being appalled by this imaginative lack of human appreciation presented in this book is an encouraging sign that your brain is healthy and working properly. Just don't assume everyone is as balanced as you. And please, ask yourself if you belong to the majority in this world. Then you might get a bit scared...

Enough with the bleakness! All the above was a pessimistic view of the world, so you can enjoy this book for what it is. It's a YA dystopian novel, written at a time when this genre wasn't an insult for the book it tagged. Plot holes should annoy you, but never ideas. I know first-hand because I hated Brave New World to no end because of its ideas (still do shhhh!).