Being a HUGE fan of The Twilight Zone, I have seen all of them countless times. I hope where my brother is, he somehow knows he instilled this love, which started out as a way to terrorize his MUCH younger sister. It is said that “art imitates life and life imitates art,” and bizarre as some episodes are, I always feel this is true.
Many episodes, which were all written well over 50 years ago, are as timely now as ever, some even more so. Consider the episode where the earth is continuing to get hotter each year. Was there any talk of climate change circa 1960? I particularly loved one where the news anchor woman wanting to stay young looking, bought into a water system that would reverse her aging looks…only problem was, there was no way to keep up with the rising cost of looking young and once she stopped drinking from “the fountain of youth,” the aging process sped up in overdrive. Whenever people try to sell me products that will make me look more youthful, my mind immediately goes to this episode, which is one of my favorites.
Serling always ended the show with the same tag line about how these things can happen only in Twilight Zone. There was only ONE episode which ended quite differently. It was the episode called Death’s Head Revisited, and it was about the ghosts that linger in the concentration camp of Dachau. This was an amazing episode and I highly recommend if you are going to watch JUST ONE episode of this show, this is the one. The episode concludes with this question:
“Dachau. Why does it still stand? Why do we keep it standing?”
Serling replies with this closing text:
“There is an answer to the doctor’s question. All the Dachaus must remain standing. The Dachaus, the Belsens, the Buchenwalds, the Auschwitzes – all of them. They must remain standing because they are a monument to a moment in time when some men decided to turn the Earth into a graveyard. Into it they shoveled all of their reason, their logic, their knowledge, but worst of all, their conscience. And the moment we forget this, the moment we cease to be haunted by its remembrance, then we become the gravediggers. Something to dwell on and to remember, not only in the Twilight Zone but wherever men walk God’s Earth.”
Personally, I am very frightened by the amount of hate floating around in our world and our own country right now. Hatred and discrimination NEVER fix hatred and discrimination. I have NO question that Hitler felt very justified in singling out people that he hated/feared. Lots of people followed his lead, because I am sure he was quite believable…and he was, after all, a leader!
People have walked around for almost 60 years wondering how this could ever happen. That answer lies in the answer above.
We must be very, very careful what we wish for and who we chose to follow, or have lead us.
Me, I will ALWAYS chose peace and chose to follow leaders that best reflect that choice. While I am saddened by today’s news of the attack in Brussels, this or any attack by sick extremists will NOT force me to be hateful or to discriminate against a particular race or religion.
I will NOT be a gravedigger.
Thanks for “listening.” Wishing YOU peace today and every day.
Regular schedule at the gym tonight. See you there. Or back here.