By The Waters Of Babylon Sparknotes

“Every generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.” George Orwell For the past 200,000 years, the human race has collectively strived to create a utopia. From Russia to the United States of America, various planned cities have been created for the sole purpose of living the highest quality of life possible. Over thousands of years and attempts, we remain in square one. Some argue we have gone backwards. Is our civilization, defined by technology and science, truly wise and knowledgeable? Will our impact on the world allow us to expand human civilization to other galaxies, or will we suffer the consequences of our own innovations? In The Uglies by Scott Westefeld,

Tally has to choose whether she wants to go through with the procedure or stay with her friends and stay ugly forever. In “By The Waters of Babylon” by Steven Vincent Benét, John visits the “forbidden place of the Gods” in his search for the truth. He soon realizes there are no gods and that the city was made by men, and their collapse was caused by nuclear warfare. In the Uglies by Scott Westerfield and “By the Waters of Babylon” by Steven Vincent Benét, they both critique the rapid pace of development in society which is relevant to us today as technological advancements we are continuing to create do not consider the long term effects as a result of

Through a dystopian lens, we see our own civilization crumbling through imagery and repetition. Benét emphasizes the word “Gods” to hint at the intelligence of those who lived during our time period, as their knowledge continued to enlarge as their societies advanced. Although, Benét hands us the same fate as Westerfield, as he says, “It was fire falling out of the sky and a mist that poisoned. It was the time of the Great Burning and the Destruction. They ran about like ants in the streets of their city—poor gods, poor gods!” (Benét 9). Through the work of imagery, we can conclude this “fire falling out of the sky” was most likely an airstrike or nuclear warfare. Such developments in weaponry and machinery today amplifies the possible effects of warfare in the future. Disputes between countries are not out of the ordinary in the history of human civilization, but the rapid growth we are seeing in our society is absurd, as government leaders can now single handedly decide the fate of the planet. We were given a world that can suit all our needs, and yet we continue to produce weaponry that will annihilate it. Are we really a society of knowledge and wisdom if we are blind to what we are creating? Benét emphasizes this point when he says, “I saw them with wisdom beyond wisdom and knowledge beyond knowledge. And yet not all they did was well done—even I