Destroyers of Cities

Near the end of Ray Bradbury's classic novel Fahrenheit 451 the main character, Guy Montag, leaves his city for the countryside and joins up with a band of exiled hobo/intellectuals. While sitting around a fire talking they see the sky light up as the city is destroyed. In Bradbury's imaginary future world there is never ending war and sudden destruction.

The group's leaders Granger, has a soliloquy near the end of the novel that kind of nails it all together:

"Now, let's get on upstream," said Granger. "And hold on to one thought: You're not important. You're not anything. Some day the load we're carrying with us may help someone. But even when we had the books on hand, a long time ago, we didn't use what we got out of them. We went right on insulting the dead. We went right on spitting in the graves of all the poor ones who died before us. We're going to meet a lot of lonely people in the next week and the next month and the next year. And when they ask us what we're doing, you can say, We're remembering. That's where we'll win out in the long run. And some day we'll remember so much that we'll build the biggest goddam steam-shovel in history and dig the biggest grave of all time and shove war in and cover it up. Come on now, we're going to go build a mirror-factory first and put out nothing but mirrors for the next year and take a long look in them."

Mirrors, not bombs. Please recommend this post