Swung back

The pendulum of human behavior, my dad used to say, keeps swinging back and forth between extremes. He pictured it taking some time to do so, but it seems to be moving so fast these days it resembles the horrific denouement of that old Edgar Allen Poe story. It seems to me all the best elements of the world are being strapped down, starved, tortured, and the final cut could be coming. Small wonder that fiction which takes one off somewhere in the universe is appealing. Somewhere beings appreciate the landscape and don't want to strip it to build malls and golf courses. Pure fantasy.