From Never Yet Melted
Written by CS Lewis in 1948.
“ ‘How are we to live in an atomic age?’ I am
tempted to reply: Why, as you would have lived in the sixteenth century when
the plague visited London almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking
age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and cut your throat any night; or
indeed, as you are already living in an age of cancer, an age of chronic pain,
an age of paralysis, an age of air raids, an age of railway accidents, an age
of motor accidents.
In other words, do not let us begin by
exaggerating the novelty of our situation. Believe me, dear sir or madam, you
and all whom you love were already sentenced to death before the atomic bomb
was invented: and quite a high percentage of us were going to die in unpleasant
ways.
It is perfectly ridiculous to go about
whimpering and drawing long faces because the scientists have added one more
chance of painful and premature death to a world which already bristled with
such chances and in which death itself was not a chance at all, but a
certainty.
The first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If
we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes
find us doing sensible and human things—praying, working, teaching, reading,
listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our
friends over a pint and a game of darts—not huddled together like frightened
sheep and thinking about death. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do
that) but they need not dominate our minds.”
https://neveryetmelted.com/2021/09/14/c-s-lewis-on-living-today/
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