Space Trilogies 1--Matt Brennan

This quote is from That Hideous Strength, by Dimble:
“Have you ever noticed that the universe, and every little bit of the universe, is always hardening and narrowing and coming to a point…I mean this…If you dip into any college, or school, or parish, or family—anything you like—at any given point in its history you always find that there was a time before that point when there was more elbow room and contrasts weren’t quite so sharp; and that there’s going to be a time after that point when there is even less room for indecision and choices are even more momentous. Good is always getting better and bad is always getting worse: the possibilities of even apparent neutrality are always diminishing.”
Lewis wrote this book nearly 40 years ago and the quote above itself has remained timeless. As each year goes on, there are more and more contingencies that gradually wrap around the things we enjoy and value, and they begin to constrict them to the point where there is no more breathing room. It’s hard to imagine that there are any more rules or contingencies you can put on some of these things, but at the same time you think about how that whatever it is say 10 years ago and wonder if the people it affected then were thinking the same thing—that there were too much politics tainting it and how could it get any worse. That said it’d difficult to know how we should react—should we try and change the way things are and fight for a looser hold on things? Or should we, in a sense, be a little more apathetic—or grateful, even—and be appreciative of the fact that more rules and contingences will probably be placed on these things we enjoy in the next generation that we don’t have to deal with now?